The New York Times reports that the early merger talks that would have seen SiriusXM acquire iHeartMedia have stalled with the two companies unable to reach an agreement.
The Times’ Dealbook newsletter says that there is a chance for the talks to be revived in the future as both companies look to expand their digital and podcasting holdings to be less reliant on revenue from the traditional radio advertising business.
It isn’t the first time a possible combination of the two audio behemoths was proposed as during iHeart’s 2018 bankruptcy restructuring, Liberty sought to acquire 40% of iHeart and was its largest single shareholder post-restructuring until selling its final 5,941,248 shares for over $150 million in October 2021.
RadioInsight has learned during the merger talks that one potential roadblock to a deal was what to do with the actual radio stations licenses with SiriusXM seeking to divest them similar to Comcast’s spinoff of its cable network holdings into Versant last year.
