The parent company of Clear Channel Communications, struggling in the advertising downturn, announced on Tuesday that it was eliminating 1,850 positions, or about 9 percent of its staff, The New York Times’s Stephanie Clifford reported. The dismissals were effective immediately.þþCreated when Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners took Clear Channel private in July, CC Media Holdings, which owns billboards and radio stations under the Clear Channel name, has been hit hard recently. In the third quarter, its revenue from radio broadcasting fell 7 percent. Outdoor advertising had a milder decline — because of the popularity of digital billboards, it fell just 1 percent. þþ“Everyone in our investor group, on the board and in the executive leadership team remains bullish about the long-term growth prospects for Clear Channel,” Mark P. Mays, Clear Channel’s chief executive, wrote in a memorandum to employees. “Clear Channel Communications has more resources than any of our peers. The tools are here. The support is here.”þþIn the memo, Mr. Mays said that “a significant portion” of the eliminated jobs had come from sales, though all parts of the company had been affected.þþSales at Clear Channel radio have not been strong. Both the number of prime advertising minutes sold and the rates paid for those minutes fell in the third quarter. And there was no bright spot.þþ“The company’s radio revenue experienced declines across all different sized markets and advertising categories including automotive, retail and entertainment,” Clear Channel wrote in its third-quarter earnings statement.þþThe same pattern is occurring throughout the industry. Radio advertising revenue fell 11 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau.þþIn October, Clear Channel introduced an iPhone application, iheartradio, which allows iPhone users to listen to live radio. And it is helping to promote HD Radio, but that has not caught on as industry executives had hoped.þþOne of the largest private equity deals of the latest buyout boom, the $18.7 billion Clear Channel takeover closed in July, after the settlement of a suit with lenders who argued in court that their debt commitment letter was an agreement to agree and unenforceable.þþ
Source: NY Times
