-By Jeffrey Yorke, Radio & Records

It's beginning to look a lot like hell in radio land. The Radio Advertising Bureau Wednesday morning (July 16) released the much-anticipated but feared radio revenue estimates for June and they are dramatically worse than expected. Local revenue for the 100 surveyed markets plummeted 10 percent compared to a year ago. National revenue are off by a stunning 13 percent. Combined, local and national revenue dropped by 10 percent.

The RAB, which gets its figures from Los Angeles accounting firm of Miller Kaplan Arase & Co., reported that non-spot revenue (which includes revenue from radio Web sites) grew 10 percent for the month. Factoring that into the mix only offset total revenue by 1 percent to a total decline of 9 percent.

Veteran Wall Street media analyst Jim Boyle of CL King & Associates forecast a disappointing month, but even he underestimated the level of incoming pain. “June is the second biggest revenue month of the year. It appears the combination of recessionary times and ad share erosion has kept the news discouraging. May was down 8 percent, and that is historically the industry’s largest revenue month of the year,” Boyle wrote.

The RAB plans to report quarterly radio revenue in dollar amounts Monday, July 21.