Bob Pittman is the man who brought you Century 21 Realty, MTV and AOL. He is a man who closely studies what people want and figures out a way to make money from making people happy.
About 6 months ago, he joined Clear Channel – he’s not running the company, but the reality is that he probably is. The Mays family is effectively gone – pushed aside by the Private Equity “lenders”. They’ve been searching for a new CEO without success. $20 billion in debt is a big challenge.
In his 20s, he quickly made a name for himself programming successful radio stations – winding up at programming WNBC-AM in New York at the age of 23 (and immediately firing Don Imus). He understands radio.
You probably are aware that Clear Channel is holding a major concert in Las Vegas in September and is going to revamp iHeartRadio to make it less Radio-like. Premiere Networks no longer has Radio in the nmee.
So based on what I found this morning, I can imagine a recent conversation that went something like this:
Pittman: So I’ve noticed we have around 100 of our radio stations that aren’t even streaming yet. Why is that?
CC Drone: Well, most of them are oldies and country music. “Those people” don’t use the Internet.
Pittman: Where is the research to back that up?
CC Drone: Umm… I don’t have any. Everyone knows that though – it’s “Common Knowledge” in the radio business
Pittman: I work from data, not “common knowledge”. Is there any other reason we aren’t streaming them? Licensing issues? Technical problems?
CC Drone: Well, the main reason is we didn’t think they could make a profit. “Those people” don’t buy a lot of stuff. Anyone with experience in radio knows that.
Pittman: Doofus, it’s not about making money today. It’s about getting critical mass, mind share and controlling the market. AOL never made money, but it became worth so much Steve Case and I took over Time/Warner.
CC Drone: Ah! Now I understand – I’ll get right on it.
Most of the remaining Clear Channel stations are now streaming. The holdouts are a few sports stations, a few progressive talk stations and some stations that apparently are LMAed out to do “urban” programming