Slashdot Mirror
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."
You know, the LAST time I heard good music on commercial radio was probably 1984. I wouldn't necessarily blame all of the crappy music on Clear Channel. Blame it on the desire to "please most of the people most of the time".
...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.
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.
I didn't stop listening to the DCs because of ANYTHING the Bush administration had to say; those ninnies will be lucky just to hold the White House. I just didn't care for the way it went down. They're free to say whatever they'd like; my dad fought for that freedom. IMHO, the DCs were playing to the crowd. This happened in London, during a time when the war was really unpopular there. They wanted to score brownie points with the crowd, and by all accounts did so. Yay for them.
HOWEVER:
If their fans here in the US have a problem with that statement {or the retraction....or the reinstatement...}, and vote with their pocketbooks, that's our right. I'm not trying to censor speech, just the opposite. However, just as I disagree with Louis Farrakhan, David Duke, and refuse to buy their material, I reserve the same right with the DCs.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Yeah, it's also his right to think that they're wrong to be Christian. That's not wrong, right? LOL.
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.
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.