Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, President and CEO of Saga Communications, Mr. Ed Christian. Please go ahead.

Thanks Greg, appreciate it. Welcome everybody. As usual we have the highlights and the lowlights from Sam Bush. And then we'll have to dialog on that and if there are any questions that have been sent in, we'll deal with those right at that point and time. Sam?

Thank you. Thank you, Ed. I prefer the highlights versus the lowlight but, we'll cover everything we can cover. This call will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risk and uncertainties that are described in the risk factor 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 the selected financial data table. Again this quarter I'm not going to spend much time talking about the numbers for the quarter and year-end. I think the time is better spent in making sure that it is clear what the numbers represent. The press release mentioned four items you need to keep in mind as you are looking at our competitive numbers. First, the television station sale, which closed September 1, resulted in an approximate gain of $51 million pretax or $30 million net of tax. This gain does not reflect in our free cash flow for the year since the television segment was reported as a discontinued operation. In reality, we had over $50 million in free cash flow in 2017, if you include both the operating and sale results. Second, is the sale we reported during third quarter of 2016 of one of our towers in North Virginia. We previously reported a net gain of $1.4 million on this transaction. Third is the $1.5 million charge we recorded during the fourth quarter of 2017 for impairment of intangible assets, due to our analysis of the Springfield, Illinois market. The market is heavily impacted by the State of Illinois' financial difficulties. We do expect to begin to show growth in this market as soon as this year. Unfortunately…

I think that, that was long one.

A lot to cover with the TV sale and the tax change and everything else.

We think we need to read it over again. We get to that. Some people might have trouble [indiscernible] therefore few clarifications.

Well, they can call me, and I’ll be glad to adding the detail.

Okay, why don't you just reaffirm the first --

I can do so.

All right. I need to recognize Goldman Sachs for inspiration on this. And they have a publication titled outlook, and they had this last issue add a great number of excellent articles on the economy. The cover of the report, it just came out, shows a sail boat in a storm. And the headline was -- and I really love this kind of work where we are with -- I think with everything, Unsteady As She Goes, under the picture was an adage that rang of home and so true was its saga [ph]. We cannot direct that wind, but we can adjust the sails. And that’s says it all. There were elements we cannot control, but we're skilled sailors. And with this knowledge saga we’ll continue to sail through the sunny skies and the unexpected storms. Quick comments from me, what Sam brought up at the office reports. In summary, we had a flat to a little off year in radio, similar to other radio companies. We made up for it by selling the TV station, which we owned for many years. But we exited this sector, because we didn’t have scale, and sold to a company, who needed more TV stations. And then we paid taxes, but we didn’t pay all that was due, as we deferred taxes by buying more radio stations, which is what we do. While we still paid all other taxes, but the government changed the laws and we got money credited to us. And we can acquire more radio stations, if we found some that we like. But this time we do not get any tax credit, because it's too late, but we can get some really fast depreciation, if we buy hard assets. And like Sam, did I do pretty good?

I like that one.

Good thanks. We did exit the TV sector for a reason, and I just mentioned that. And we are really a brand focused company, where we create brands in radio. And TV, we were contracting for brands that we didn’t control and we were dependent upon another company, in the network for supplies for the brand. But now, we can spend all of our time working at brand development with our existing stations and new acquisitions. And so quick comment from me on '17. As Sam said, political was down, but we did okay. Our percent of national business was about 10.5%. And where I can remember was '18? And I go back to-date and it was 20%, there was the 80%, 20% rule, 80% local, 20% national. That’s okay, because we want to be in control on the sale process and that depended upon transactional business. We really do prefer to create, maintain and grow local direct business. The bonus here for Saga is that we operate in markets, where there is the ability to work through our companies and not be dependent upon intermediaries. As I tell you, the advertising sector is going through a major transformation. It’s a long story, but in essence, the advertising industry is down to like five mega agencies that control the big part of dollars. They -- the agencies are getting squeezed by the clients and they are passing this squeeze down to the media. Now radio still pays agency a 15% commission, which dates backs close to a 100 years, about 1920s, when it started, that 15% that's been there. In 1956, however the courts ruled that commission or a discount was illegal, as it didn’t treat direct advertisers as equal. But 15% is still there. Today in addition to agencies,…

We did get a couple of questions in, but I believe was answered in between your comments and my comments. And as always as you suggest if anybody has additional questions or wants to further with our comments, please give us a call.

Yeah, and don’t forget to call Sam and ask for the book if you are interested. It's really good compelling reading and it provides a tangential look at sector that we have a dependency on. And we’re trying to reduce and change a little bit on that. Sam, I don’t think we have anything else. Greg if you are there, you can wrap it up. And thank you everybody for being on the call today.

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