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Mark Mays temporarily
heading Clear Channel
It appears that Lowry Mays was more incapacitated by a blood clot on his brain than Clear Channel officials had initially indicated (5/4/04 RBR Daily Epaper #87). The company announced late Friday that his son, President and COO Mark Mays, had been appointed interim CEO. "We are pleased that Lowry will be taking as much time as he needs to completely recover from his recent surgery," said Mark Mays in a company statement. "Our record first quarter results show that we have a deep management team in place across all Clear Channel operating units, with the very best people in the industries we serve." The company also released a statement attributed to Lowry Mays: "I have decided to take some time off to focus on my health, so that when I come back, I am at 100%. While I am gone, I have complete confidence in Mark along with all of the managers at Clear Channel to keep things running smoothly."
At a smaller company, the incapacitation of the CEO might have a disastrous impact on the company's stock price. But analysts were telling investors not to panic, since Clear Channel has such a deep management team and is not dependent on any one person to keep operating. We would have to agree. This has also come at a time when Clear Channel has already finished years of rapid growth through acquisitions and is now focused on operations. That means that the heavy lifting is now being done by the managers of the individual business units. We again wish Lowry well and look forward to his return to the business.

FCC to look at license-free operation in TV band
Item #5 on the agenda for the FCC's 5/13/04 open meeting could generate a little heat among the broadcast engineering community, and by extension, the broadcasting community in general, on the TV side at least. The Office of Engineering and Technology will consider the possibility of further utilizing the spectrum in an agenda item entitled, "Unlicensed Operation in the TV Broadcast Bands; Additional Spectrum for Unlicensed Devices Below 900 MHz and in the 3 GHz Band. It is identified as ET Docket No. 02-380. This comes as both the FCC and the Commerce Department are looking at ways to add efficiency to the way spectrum is used to make room for developing and expanding wireless technologies, not to mention to provide more room for public safety services and homeland security uses. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Commission is exploring the possibility of using "white spaces" between TV station allotments between Channels 2 and 51, on the theory that given the increased performance capabilities of modern transmitters and consumer television sets, that low powered services can operate in the cracks between stations without causing undue interference.

Small deal financing is rare,
but we found some! Part 1 of 5
Continuing our quest to locate financing sources for deals under $10 million, we're happy to report some success. There's not much financing available for small deals, but there is a handful of lenders interested in the business. As we reported previously, two of the biggest lenders in the under $10 million market, Silicon Valley Bank and Textron Financial, closed up their media lending shops in the past year or so. That's left new entrants and even some existing broadcasters scrambling to find any lender to finance small radio and TV station purchases. | Full Story |

Moore than meets the eye?
The finger-pointing, he-said, she-said portion of the Disney/Michael Moore /Miramax/"Fahrenheit 911" (5/7/04 RBR Daily Epaper #90) seems to be beginning in earnest, even if a current source we've stumbled upon follows a rather convoluted path. A United Kingdom website, independent.co.uk reports that Moore told CNN that he's known that Disney had no intention to distribute the film for a year now. The article cites an unnamed source which said that in fact, Disney had never committed to distributing the film; that "...the only deal there was for financing, not distribution."

Air America: Can it survive?
Through a bit of intelligence gathering from the network's launch to the most recent news that CEO Mark Walsh has resigned and shortly thereafter Chairman Evan Cohen, Vice-Chairman/investor Rex Sorensen and now EVP/Sales and Marketing Jacqui Rossinsky, RBR is starting to learn more about why Air America Radio has had problems from the get-go. Of course, the first problem was to launch the liberal radio net with only four affiliates. The next problem is if you're on the air in Chicago and LA, you'd like to keep those markets. Here was the most publicized launch in radio history. The fact that they debuted in the top three markets was radio history in and of itself. And within a week, Air America was in spin control over why they've been thrown off markets #2 and #3. | Full Story |

Measuring the Media Moguls

Cumulus Media:
Lew Dickey, Chairman, President & CEO

2003 stock performance: +48.35
2003 CEO pay: +9.85%

Wearing all three hats as Chairman, President and CEO at Cumulus Media is just one indication of how much Lew Dickey has at stake in Cumulus Media. The fact that he and his family have so much riding on the company's stock price may explain why his paycheck isn't remarkably larger than the other three members of the company's top management. If the team continues to drive the stock price higher, as it did last year to the tune of 48.35%, Dickey has a lot more to gain than he would ever draw in a paycheck. | Full Story |

Adbiz ©

Rich Hamilton on the upfront - - Part II
As the official start of the television upfront is set to begin in just 10 days, we thought we'd provide a bit of observation with a few lines from our upcoming interview with Zenith Media CEO Rich Hamilton, that runs in our July print edition. In Part II, we ask about observations and prognostications. Hamilton is forecasting thead spend is going to be up, not as much as last year. Upfront last year was over $9.3Billion. | Full Story |

Kellner sees upfront gains of 3-4%
Look for a "fairly quiet upfront market" WB Co-CEO Jamie Kellner advised on Friday. In his additional role as CEO of ACME Communications, which owns a group of WB affiliates, Kellner speaks with Wall Street analysts in ACME's quarterly conference call. That produced some comments Friday on what to expect as the annual upfront market begins for the networks. Drawing on his many years of experience in dealing with the upfront, Kellner said he's expecting to see gains in the 3-4% range - - unless advertisers suddenly put a lot more money than expected into the upfront marketplace.

Toys 'R' Us picks Y&R for creative
Giant retailer Toys 'R' Us has named Y&R as lead creative agency for its US advertising, estimated at over $100 million per year. The account had been with Leo Burnett for the past five years. The new creative work is scheduled to break in Q4 - - marking the key Christmas selling season for toys. Media will remain at Starcom. Toys 'R' Us has over 680 stores in the US.

Baseball says no
to on-base Spiderman ads
Well, it's not just patch ads on uniforms that are getting shut down. Responding to public outcry and complaints from teams, Major League Baseball and Sony retreated from plans to cover bases of 15 ballparks with ads ahead of the June release of the movie "Spider-Man 2." In a joint statement, Major League Baseball and Sony said all other elements of the 6/11 to 6/13 promotion would continue, including decorating on-deck circles with red, yellow and black spider-web logos during games. The bases, however, will remain white. Sony is paying about $2.5M for the ballparks promotion alone, plus an additional $1M or so in television advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Media, Markets & Money tm

Salem goes full-bore in Honolulu
Here is Part 2 of the New Wave-Visionary Related Entertainment deal we reported on last week. Visionary is buying four FMs from New Wave, but can keep only two. Now we know that two of the four are being repackaged in a deal with Salem Communications, which will go to eight stations in the market. | Full Story |

Amarillo Christian station going public
By going public, we don't mean in the IPO sense, we mean in the NPR sense. High Plains Radio is getting the station for the purpose of bringing the noncom radio service to the Texas panhandle, according to broker John Pierce. The seller is Pierce's client, David Stephens and family, who will pick up $1.25M for the station. This is the Stephens second recent Texas sale - - Pierce recently helped them move KOFR-FM in Lubbock to another noncom broadcaster, Educational Media Foundation, whose Contemporary Christian M.O. is similar to that often employed by Stephens. That deal was for $550K. | Full Story |

Washington Beat

Monday Morning Shakers & Makers

Deals: 4/5/04-4/9/04
Things slowed down again during the first full week of April - - there were a scant 11 deals filed, for 18 stations, half of which are located in areas where ratings companies do not tread. The lone TV deal is for a CP in Omaha. One halfway decent standalone deal could blow this whole week away.

Transactions

$15,500,000 KNOR-AM Dallas-Fort Worth (Krum TX) from A.M. & P.M. Broadcasters LLC to Liberman Broadcasting.

$1,000,000 WWOD-FM White River Junction VT (Hartford VT) from Great Northern Radio to Nassau Broadcasting.

$340,000 WCTR-AM Chestertown MD from Riverside Broadcasting LLC to WCTR Broadcasting.

| Full Details |

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