http://streamingradioguide.com/blogradio/?page_id=691
This was the Clear Channel description I wrote in late 2009 about the history of Clear Channel and the takover by Bain Capital and Thomas H Lee that closed in July of 2008.
The main things that have changed since I wrote this are that the PE firms have pushed out the Mays family and the Ford dealer who created Clear Channel (who were nomailly “running” the company to keep the company in compliance with FCC ownership rules) out of the company. The two firms private equity firms are clearly now running the company, but they don’t “own” the company.
The firms have hired Bob Pittman (former head of AOL) to run Clear Channel, after about a year of nobody running the company. His effect on the company is becoming apparent – Pittman is a “Build the Brand” guy – sell the idea and the name, and the quality of the actual product won’t matter.
As to who owns Clear Channel, that’s a tricky question. If you go out and buy a $200,000 house and take out a $400,000 mortgage and take the extra $200,000 and put it into a Swiss bank account, who owns your house? You or the bank?
I don’t have any evidence that Bain Capital or Harvard Business School have any influence over Beck or Limbaugh – but the louder they complain and the more defensive they get that there is no connection between Bain running Clear Chanel and their position on Romney in the election (while incorrectly describing the business transation and equating people who ask questions to being anti-Semitic Mormon cult haters in the case of Beck/Gray) the more it feels like there is a “there” there.