Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the first quarter earnings call. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, President and CEO, ED Christian. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to Q1. And as always, we start with Sam Bush, and then I will join you in just a few minutes. Well, actually, more than a few minutes. We've got a long one from Sam today. Go for it.

Thanks, Ed. This call will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties that are described in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Form 10-K. This call will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation for all the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure are attached in selected financial data table. It was a very good quarter any way you look at it. During the quarter, historical net revenue increased 12.7%. Adjusting for same station, net revenue increased 7%. Without political, gross historical revenue increased 9.3% for the quarter and 3.6% on a same station basis. Gross political revenue for the quarter was $1.3 million compared to $125,000 for the same period last year. Almost all of the political revenue for the quarter was in radio this year; only $62,000 was from television. Last year, all $125,000 of political was in radio. National accounted for approximately 10.7% of gross revenue for the quarter compared to 11.4% last year. It's also worth noting that for the first time in a number of quarters, all major categories of revenue were up for the first quarter of 2016 compared to first quarter of 2015. Local set the bar, being up $2.2 million for the quarter; followed by political, being up $1.2 million; retransmission from our 2 television markets was up $261,000; and national was up $202,000. While the numbers would be different, all the categories were up similarly on a same-station basis. During the quarter, we closed on our acquisition of WLVQ-FM in Columbus, Ohio for $13 million. We started operating WLVQ under a local marketing agreement on November 16 last year. During the quarter, our Board of Directors declared a $0.25 per share quarterly cash…

We're hopeful that we could do okay in the second quarter. Thanks, Sam. You know what? It appears, from what we're seeing right now in the releases from the other companies, we're kind of marching in lockstep with the other broadcasting companies. Well, we did perform well if not better than most of our peers in Q1. But it is the same for us as others. Most markets were up. A few were flat and a few down but not materially down, more kind of a shortfall. We'll get into that in a second. In revenue reporting markets, we have 6 of those, we outperformed the markets in 5 of our 6 major markets. One market reported negative growth. That was Norfolk, the whole market. While we were up 3.4%, the market itself was down 3.7%. We were up, they were down. In the other markets, they were all up. That would be, like, Columbus and Milwaukee and Des Moines. But this was a down market in Norfolk. The market is experiencing a pricing problem there with other stations, which has accounted for negative growth. We've still been able to command above-market rates, which has mitigated for our growth, by the way. And the numbers that I'm talking about for the markets are for the entire quarter. We are very pleased, as Sam said, with the integration of WLVQ in Columbus, and the revenues there are returning quickly to previous historic levels that they have not seen for years. Harrisonburg has come online and, after a few conversion issues, has returned to a growth performance. Our TV sector is a much smaller part of our portfolio and, as Sam mentioned, was not affected by political in Q1 due to the location of the markets. We have not paid down additional debt as our leverage is below 1x. And with that said, there is always the temptation to pay down debt. Not necessarily become a debt-free company, but we're looking at that. Isn't that right, Sam?

That's right, Ed. It brings a smile to my face when you say that.

Our phones have been quiet for some time, but I'm sure that this will elicit some phone calls in the not-too-distant future. Maybe pay a little down here or there just to keep the account active. You don't want to have them call and say, nothing on your account for a while. In acquisitions, it's interesting, we've become quite proactive of late. It's not a secret in the industry that good properties are in very short supply. That was one of the things that the other news -- the trades reported as coming out of the NAB Convention in Las Vegas. There's a scarcity of the inventory that is out there right now. We're pretty good geologists. And in fact, that we're continually sampling and clearing for the opportunity to bring to market companies or stations or families or companies who are looking for good stewards to maintain the image that they've created in their communities. We're not comfortable long term and once we're able to grow our core, which is radio. But we've always been a specialist in kind of end markets with very strict criteria for acquisitions. We've never embraced nor ever will embrace the concept of growth for the sake of announcement. This has been our thing, that anybody can buy a station; operating it is a different matter. Well, Q1 left us with a good feeling, and it really did. I mean, we came out not high-fiving anybody but at least feeling pretty warm about the environment. Q2 reminds us of trepidations that we experienced in 2015. But actually, let me tell you a short story. I got a phone call the other day from a former broadcaster, a good friend of mine whom I've known for decades, who bowed out of the industry a decade…

It was. We, as usual, asked for questions ahead of time, and we must be getting better at these calls or at anticipating the questions because all the questions that came in were already answered in either yours or my comments, Ed. So we're good. Kim, so I'm going to turn it back over to you and let you wrap up the call for us.

And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference. You may now disconnect.