Radio CEO: giving inventory to Google hurts business

LR’s been following Google’s efforts to sell advertising on traditional media outlets for quite some time – since the company bought an outfit that specializes in giving advertisers a way to purchase airtime online. Now the CEO of one of the nation’s top broadcasters is speaking out. “That is further commoditizing our product. I think it is a fundamentally flawed model. It says we cannot sell all of our inventory,” Citadel Communications chief Farid Suleman told a radio symposium Thursday. Radio & Records says Suleman told the crowd that he worries what happens when Google makes a deal for a chunk of station’s inventory – and can’t sell it.