You ever get the idea that maybe leveraging yourself to the hilt is not a good thing?
Happens many times each economic cycle. Nothing unusual here; about 5% of companies with leverage (in their case, it was likely acquiring stations and making upfront payments to keep talent in place).
I noticed a lot of sports talk stations; they were likely very profitable in their day, but it got saturated in many markets and all the ESPN talk shows dug into the viewership.
They own WFAN in NY for example, and here they own WQAM, which was a big audience in its day, but a lot of infomercial slots now. Just simply a business that lost marketshare after the debt was acquired.