Margret Sloan

Clear Channel owns more radio stations in the U.S. than any other company, but radio is a business that has not turned a profit for years as digital music players and satellite radio have siphoned off listeners and advertising dollars. And, in my opinion, the decline in listeners is also due to the bad decisions of the radio operators and owners in their programming choices and their trend to replace human disc jockeys with homogenized and computerized sound bites and syndicated boffoons who pass off third grade humor as comedy and morning shows.

Now, more than half of Clear Channel’s revenue comes from its billboard business, with about 800,000 signs worldwide, and that business has been growing as advertisers are redirecting their spending away from other avenues, like radio, to billboards, which are harder for consumers to bypass.

So Clear Channel has been desperately trying to sell the business for the past 18 months, which is now in jeopardy because the banks who put together the financing deal are getting gun shy and trying to bail. Can’t say I blame them - the banks have enough trouble with the mortgage foreclosures and the recession, why take on this albatross?