Clear Channel
 

So Clear Channel canned Howard Stern. Who are they?
Lowry Mays and Red McCombs form San Antonio Broadcasting Company to acquire KEEZ-FM (now KAJA-FM) in San Antonio, Texas for $125,000.

The Music Group currently owns, operates and/or exclusively books 135 live entertainment venues, including 41 amphitheaters in the U.S. and 30 venues in Europe. In 2001 the Music Group generated approximately 70 percent of concert ticket revenue in the U.S., and has grown considerably since.

Clear Channel Entertainment is a leading producer of Broadway and West End theater, and also presents Broadway subscription shows in nearly 60 North American markets. Clear Channel Entertainment also owns or operates 16 theatrical stages in North America and 23 in the UK.

Clear Channel Entertainment is the leading producer and promoter of specialized motor sports events

CCE Television's programming and production units produce programming for and maintain relationships with all the major broadcast and cable networks, and are equipped to handle all aspects of production, from initial treatment development to budget and programming consultation to final post production management and client follow-up.

SFX Sports Group, a leading talent management and marketing agency, represents over 500 of the world's elite professional athletes

Clear Channel Entertainment-Exhibitions (formerly BBH Exhibits and SFX Exhibitions), based in San Antonio, Texas, is the world leader in providing high quality, state-of-the-art, educational family experiences, and serves as a major development partner with more than 200 leading museums and research institutions.

Clear Channel Outdoor owns over half a million outdoor displays around the world. No one else can even begin to match our strength in numbers.

Premiere Radio Networks, Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Worldwide (NYSE:CCU), syndicates 70 radio programs and services to more than 7,800 radio affiliations and reaches over 180 million listeners weekly.

Clear Channel is the #1 “out of home” media company in the world, and owns largest radio station group of over 1,200 stations in the US.

Clear Channel possesses certain rights with regards to the station's programming pursuant to a local marketing agreement with the station's licensee at 36 TV stations.

They are the 800 lb Gorilla, That's who.

The Feds limit access to bandwidth, then the megacorps that get bandwidth limit speech... its a nice system. I really tried to reply without saying FASCIST SYSTEM, but I couldn't

Hopefully they'll be toast in 20 years. Here's one way how!

Step one. Stern leaves "traditional" broadcasting for satellite radio where the FCC holds no power.

Step two. Over a year, half of his audience follows him.

Step two point five. The purchasing power of more than half his audience follows him. Satellite listeners will be the Stern listeners with money. Left listening to radio are the ones who can't afford a small up front investment and ten bucks a month.

Step two point six. They never return. I don't have satellite myself yet but I hear nobody goes back once they have it.

Step three. Wireless (i.e., cellular) services arrive as the price of minutes goes down and the bandwidth goes up. Tipping point: once you can get 128kbps to a phone, you can use your phone to receive music radio. The wireless companies are a bigger gorilla than clear channel, and their continuing existence will depend on finding new reasons for you to get new phones every three years. And they will, and nobody will wait 10 minutes to get a traffic report if they can get one in 10 seconds.

Step four. FM, which has been advertising shitty products for years already, becomes a lower-class vehicle for ads. Revenue is cut in half. The only audience remaining is over 65 (talk radio listeners), under 18 (music radio listeners), and non-commercial (NPR listeners). Without the ability to market to broad audiences, CC loses its monopoly abilities.

Clear Channel is a truly frightening beast, but this article clued me in to the fact that there are still a lot of other media companies out there. They're not as big as ClearChannel, but they're out there and that is a good thing.

You guys up North didn't have to deal with the morning shitfest that was Bubba The Love Sponge. CC fired him a couple weeks ago and something unusual and pleasant can now be heard on the radio in the mornings: music!

I wonder how long before satellite radio comes under homeland security?:worried:

The XM radio HQ is in downtown Washington.

Doesn't matter because the net already has given us many-to-many broadcasting.

The Stern thing is a tempest in a teapot. Stern's an Infinity Broadcasting (competitor to ClearChannel) produced show. So by piously dropping him, ClearChannel gets morality points while hurting themselves not at all.

I actually enjoyed some of Bubba's shtick. (I listened on my XM radio.)

Satellite radio ought to be successful for the same reasons cable TV is successful: they can provide niche programming that the over-the-air broadcasters feel (rightly or wrongly) is not profitable. Just look at the Discovery Channel and see how many of those programs you think would see the light of day on broadcast TV. Similarly, commercial (and to a large extent non-commercial) broadcast radio have decided that many genres of music such as classical, bluegrass, jazz, etc. simply can't be provided profitably.

But then they squawk when the satellite companies come along and do it!

Similarly, commercial (and to a large extent non-commercial) broadcast radio have decided that many genres of music such as classical, bluegrass, jazz, etc. simply can't be provided profitably.

I thought XM had been "in the tank" financially for quite some time, now? Maybe its just the nature of the startup, because I do see a whole lot of those little black antennas on cars these days.

If my commute to work were longer, I'd get a subscription to XM. It'd be awesome for roadtrips!

By Clear Channel's actions, Stern lost a grand total of six stations. Other stations in those six markets will probably leap at the chance to get Howard's ratings working for them.

Infinity's no prize either, but they're preferable to Clear Channel.

I will be picking up a Sirius satellite radio tuner this summer, as Opie and Anthony are quite likely to jump to Sirius once their existing Infinity contract expires (for which they're currently being paid to sit on their asses; they could jump now, but would have a pile of get-sued-if-they-talk-about-this topics and don't want that hanging over their heads).

I don't pore over the financials, but they seem to be on target for subscriber growth that they have said they'll need to reach in order to be profitable starting next year. So we'll see.

Clear Channel carried Stern because they thought he'd make them money. They dumped him because they feared he'd cost them money.

If Clear Channel, or anyone else for that matter, thought they could make a buck by squirting liquified feces out of your radio, CD player or TV into your smiling faces, they'd do it. They care not one whit about morality, only dollars.

That pretty much goes for every other form of business as well, so they're nothing special.

I don't pore over the financials, but they seem to be on target for subscriber growth that they have said they'll need to reach in order to be profitable starting next year. So we'll see.

That must have been one hell of a business pitch.

"We've got a great idea! We're going to spend the money to launch one (two?) satellites into space. We'll use them to broadcast radio to the country... that people will pay for!"

I cheer 'em on, though. I think it is a very cool idea. The receivers are coming down in price and you can have it indoors if your city has a re-broadcast tower. Neat.

Well yeah, I'm sure that's what it amounted to.
Yes indeed, we have SkyFi hookups in each car and one at home in the kitchen. We can just take the radio units from place to place. (My wife thought it was yet another in a long line of useless but mostly harmless geek gadgets that I've brought home, until I forced her to take it with her on a trip to Hershey. Then she decided she needed one for her car!)

Do you need a subscription for each unit or can you get a "family" package?