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Clear Channel Goes Private and Streamlined
7Prime writes "Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nations largest radio, billboard, and entertainment outlet, announced their intention this morning to sell the company to a consortium of private-equity firms for over $26 billion. In addition, Clear Channel's TV division, as well as its smallest 448 radio stations would be sold out of the company and will be looking for potential buyers." From the article: "The buyers, led by Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners, also are bidding for Tribune Co., which owns several newspapers and television stations. That process is ongoing. If Bain and Lee purchase Tribune, they may be forced to sell certain newspapers and television stations to comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations that prohibit one company from owning a newspaper and radio or television station in the same city. The buyers paid $37.60 per share for Clear Channel, the highest price the stock has seen since mid-2004, and a 25 percent premium on the stock's average price in October. The purchase price includes the assumption of about $8 billion in debt."
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Due to recent budget cuts, Clear Channel has reduced the size of their song lineup. Instead of playing 10 different a day, the stations will now loop the latest Coldplay single 24/7.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Clear Channel = Christian Coalition
Guess they finally see that censorship does not make money, but instead looses money. I wonder if their heads are still shoved up their collective asses.
So long Clear Channel and good riddance.
I work for a small Clear Channel owned TV station here in Fairbanks, Alaska, KTVF, and I found out about this this morning when I came into work. Not a whole lot will change when we get sold (depending upon the owner). Many of the CC TV stations were bought by CC just a few years ago when CC tookover The Akerley Group, of which our station was a member. We have been through 4 different coorporations (statewide and national), in the last 15 or so years... none of the sales having any reliviance to the profits of this station.
So, basically, our website will probably change (since it's currently a Clear Channel developed layout), we will no longer be pushed into the sales promotions that are currently required of us, and our logo will probably have to be changed a bit. I just hope the new boss isn't the same as the old boss... so to speak.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
A group of investors wanting to take private some of the largest media companies at high prices and willing to accept large debt for it? I kind of wonder what they expect to get out of it. This kind of a media consolidation at a loss smells of political and not financial motives to me, and I have to wonder if someone's not trying to be the next Rupert Murdoch.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Does this mean that we'll get some decent radio stations back? Clear Channel effectively ruined the radio for me, NPR being the only remaining reason to turn it on.
...that this topic is in the 'Politics' section. That may say more about /. than it does about Clear Channel.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Sounds to me like a case of spontaneous anti-trust. Overall, I think this will be a very good thing for the communications industry. It'll shake things up a bit and hopefully offer some more variety and freshness. That is, of course, unless someone rolls in and buys them all.
Seven goofy icons including "media" and "the media". Way to go Slashdot! Or is that... "the slashdot"?
The money is made in the transactions. The company, likely will be IPO'd a few years hence, because the money is made in the transaction. One can get rich through financial manipulation that is economically unsound. People are worried about taxes, but they should be worried about having their money stolen through financial manipulations of various kinds.
Bain Capital is a private equity firm that was founded by Mitt Romney, outgoing governor of Massachusetts and 2008 presidential hopeful. (Last year they tried to buy the entire National Hockey League.) I guess we can't really know how meaningful that is until the 2008 election is upon us, but a presidential candidate with his own network of radio stations is courting controversy to say the least.
.. I thought the Church of Scientology had got its own TV network.
It will be private just long enough to reorganize and cut the fat and then hello, IPO. Same thing with Freescale and a couple of other big companies just bought by private equity firms.
12:50 - press return.
Take a deep breath. Nobody is forcing you to read Slashdot, read this article or even enter the thread you're bitching about to post an utterly useless comment *.
If it doesn't interest you, skip to the next article. Problem solved!
Or did you come in here with the expectation that a like-minded individual with mod points would spot you
* Yes, I'm aware my comment is utterly useless as well, I just hope it serves as a reminder for the next jackass with the same opinion
since the republican controlled congress pretty much said "monopolies are ok" that clear channel (one of the largest and most insane monopoly) saw this coming and decided to break up before being forced to break up, becuase i'm assuming a democratically elected congress will strike monopolies down pretty quick.
that the headline would stop at "Clear Channel Goes"
To quote Stephen Colbert (from memory, from when he was on TDS): "The problem with music today isn't that it's offensive. It's that it sucks."
The do it because they think the publicly traded company is worth more than the market does.
See here for a nice summary.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
>how is this related to a techno nerd/geek site?
Back in the day, nerdness was all about radio and other homebrew electronics. That morphed into computers, and here we are. Ownership of radio, teevee, computer, and telecom companies has always been fair game for discussion here.
>In Michigan a man was arrested for having sex with hios girlfriends dead dog in full view of a preschool, but I don't expect that to be on slashdot either.
Yet somehow it made it onto Slashdot after all. Go figure.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The remarkable shittiness of Clear Channel stations and formatted radio helped drive the many (tech/geeky at first)alternatives we have today.
We are in their debt for being so awful that the hole they left in the market fit satellite radio!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_deemed_ inappropriate_by_Clear_Channel_following_the_Septe mber_11%2C_2001_attacks
(List of all songs banned by CC post 9/11)
The group of investors is the Mays family. I am a former employee who still has many contacts there. In another deal, some of their assets will be in new hands, but only a 10% part of it which is under-performing. These include the CC Television and some 448 radio stations.
If the comments in this forum about nothing worthwhile being on the radio dial, with the possible exception of political talk, since the mid 1980s and my own experience with newspapers thus far (I have never been a subscriber) are any thing to go by then these private equity firms are going to loose their collective shirts in this business. When was the last time you saw any of your friends younger than thirty (30) regularly listening to music radio stations or reading a paper newspaper? Clearly there is value in online news, but with Google news bringing even the most obscure sources to the top of the stack where is the equity in an ink and dead wood newspaper brand? Readership and subscriber numbers for newspapers and radio listeners are either stagnated or declining in most of the major markets and have been going in that direction for many years. This article by Jim Cramer really hits the nail on the head. These guys are ultimately going to lose and lose big with this investment.
I can't abide pop music. Top-40 radio is horrid. Blathering, inane DJs suck.
Thankfully, I'm lucky enough to live within the broadcast region of WRNR, an independent station. There's no playlist -- the DJs are free to play whatever they want. Refreshing, that.
If only they did a streaming broadcast...
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
that Clear Channel is hugely in debt? Their marketing peoples' "formula" for success resulted in some of the most grating, asinine garbagey programming ever. People hate it so much they actually donate their money freely to NPR in the overwhelming fear that the one reliable station on the dial might disappear. And fuck me, the COMMERCIALS these ad-wizards came up with, I honestly couldn't think of something more effective in triggering a Pavlovian response to hit the scan button than the shit they engineer to try and sound "cool" or whatever the fuck marketing group-think buzzword their slimy little brains secreted at CC meetings. Seriously.
Yeah, it's also his right to think that they're wrong to be Christian. That's not wrong, right? LOL.
I have heard all of those songs on CC owned stations. Yeah I live in an area saturated with them.
Note: Anti-trust statute amendment and anti-trust budgeting are entirely the province of the legislative branch.
The broadcast model of communication is clearly dying as too few channels producing too little content and being too used to outrageous profit margins on costs based on too small a market. (notice the word consumer is absent from this little tirade.) The blockbuster is dead. Long live pod (Portable On Demand) casting.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The Republicrats baught up all of the media outlets in an effort to produce a monopoly on mainstream thought. What they found is that people will stop listening to you and invest in technology which replaces you if you do that. Thus, one of the 5 media companies is now in a state of complete disarray because it can't turn a profit or stay healthy; the other 4 are in the same boat. The crux of the situation is that the government isn't giving them handouts, and each year their profits are dwindling because the youth of the nation are, year after year, turning to different media sources which they must compete with to get their news. You can't compete with a computer technician with a hobby and talent for political discourse when you're writing propaganda which is easily shown to be false, misleading, or contentless.
Front company for the c******* group. Think control of the news, mass brainwashing, propoganda for the goon run fascist government.
Maybe we can listen to drug addicted, Dominican Republic sex tourist, Rush Limbaugh all day every day.
One thing about going private is that there won't be any stockholder grandstanding for liberal political motives. And the owners can be as political as they want because they don't have to run the company for the stockholders' profit.
Decent radio station out of LA at
http://www.indie1031.fm/
Clear Channel is going to be able to buy something new and ruin it.
After Clear Channel's disgusting support of the Bush Administration, their attacks on free speech and the war in Iraq that killed over half a million, the feds should arrest the Clear Channel 'executives' and charge them with High Treason.
Well, for me that would be Democracy Now!, which you can may be able to hear broadcast somewhere, depending on where you live, e.g. KPFA, in the SF Bay Area, and WBAI in the New York area. In general, the Pacifica stations do a decent job of "alternative" broadcasting, provided you don't mind the almost exclusively left-wing focus.
Also, there are many, many small college stations (and other non-coms) scattered around, usually located at the bottom of the dial. They also all have internet streams these days:
Ah,good ol' private equity,bringing nothing but debt on the table
Maybe the corrected statement should reach In fact Clear Channel would rather try to play the same recording in every market
ClearChannel is not about music or "entertainment". It's about delivering advertising to your ears. You should be able to figure that out from its actions: just enough filler between the ads.
Back when the company was still prefering to keep a low profile, I stumbled across a rare interview with one of the top executives. He confirmed what I suspected even back then by saying flat out that ClearChannel was about advertising and if they could get by without music, they would.
From it's start, up until sometime around the epicenter of the Reagan years, radio had been about public service. There used to be many, many local and regional stations. Most large high schools and many small ones even had their own broadcasting stations. All these low power stations were banned in prep for media consolidation. High power equipment required by law now is neither cheap to acquire nor operate.
Before that consolidatoin, news was largely about passing information about current events, not pushing an agenda, propagandizing or preaching. Music and such was played because people liked it, not because a cartel was promoting. There was even other entertainment like serials and radio theater. I must be old, I can recall when the weatherman/woman stood off to the side and didn't block the weather map.
We still think of it that way, though that world is long gone and replaced long since by corporate output. Very few want to admit how bad it has become, it's much more comfortable to pretend otherwise. Even fewer want to 'rock the boat' and shape it back into something useful. Net radio might be the opportunity.Yeah. Looking back it seems rather naive and no it wasn't perfect, but there was significantly more substance.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Hmm. I'd say the same thing, but lately I noticed that NPR has been narrowing down it's coverage. In the interview about the Dixie Chix, only ClearChannel execs where spoken with and they were the ones who pulled the Dixie Chix in the first place. Lately with the Novell-MS fiasco, NPR interviewed Rob Enderle, no one else, for his pearls of wisdom. Not exactly a promising trend...
In 1991, an independent radio station was started in Hawaii. It was called Radio Free Hawaii, and played music by request. Each week you could fill out a ballot, requesting 10 songs you wanted to hear and 3 songs you didn't want to hear. In addition you could nominate a song you think would be a hit (one that hasn't been played before), and a song or artist that should be "sledgehammered" off the air forever. On Saturday mornings they would count down the top requested songs, and "Sheriff" Norm, the station's manager, would smash the top voted song/artist off the air. Usually it was a song that was pushed and played continuously on other stations.
The station quickly became the top rated and most popular in the state. What other station could a listener call into and actually request a song, and they would play it...no matter what. (Unless it had more negative votes that is.) However it only lasted until 1997 when it was bought out by a corporation. It was lack of advertising, which was needed to bring funds, that eventually brought its demise.
My theory, which admittedly may be a bit conspiricy based, is that because the station didn't bow to record label's pressure to play their artists, the advertisers were pressured not to buy time on Radio Free.
It was a sad day when the station lost its all request format and turned into just another corporate run station.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
26 Billion seems a lot for radio in today's tech landscape.... sounds like they may have a different use for all that licensed bandwidth.
If I had it all available I'd turn it into a massive wireless 'data' network, stream the radio channels with better-targeted ads worldwide and charge monthly fees to users in addition to the normal ad revenue.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Its not a radio station or owner of a radio station thats making radio suck today, its the crappy manufactured digitally processed garbage being passed off as music today. Probably one out of 1000 artists today can actually perform without all of the stage and/or studio processing..we see this most in hip/hop and rap IMO. Its like the saying "everybody wants to be a DJ"...nowdays everyone thinks they are an artist. Im sure some Apple fanboy will mod me down for this next part, but software like Garage Band is adding to the multitudes of crappy bands/artists. It used to be that someone had talent and would be signed to a label and perform/produce. Nowdays someone thinks they have talent...they CREATE a label in mom's basement and make a CD with Garage Band (or insert PC music software)...which has ultimately created more labels out there than actual artists...rediculous! Painful to actually say this because I hate the saying, but it unfortunately fits...hate the player dont hate the game...
Only two Clear Channel stations out of "dozens of country-music stations? Not to mention that it doesn't say Clear Channel banned it at all their stations. So perhaps the headline should be: "Only Two Clear Channel Stations Ban Dixie Chicks out of Dozens of Country-Music Stations"
Clear Channel = Christian Coalition
If that is true, then why are many churches complaining about the moral decay represented on the public airwaves?
The morning Zoo in the Portland OR market (Z100) borders on soft porn in their subject matter. The only thing missing is the pictures.
The truth shall set you free!
I recall that on the US network channel that won the bid for a monopoly on broadcasting the 1996 Olympics an hour of prime time TV contained about 7 minutes of actual sports. The few shows I see nowadays, I see without ads. On US commercial network tv these shows take an hour. Without the ads, they're about 35 minutes, less if you skip the intro music and closing credits.
The web does have the potential to take those guys out, but they key is to promote DRM-free technology and open standards. If we get into a situation on the web where access is controlled by other than the audience, then we have the same mess as with television and radio...
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I didn't say he didn't have the right. That was his argument about THEM.
Mostly, I was pointing it out due the massive anti-Christian bias on Slashdot that thinks nobody should be allowed to believe in a religion.