Clear Channel Communications/mergers & acquisitions
Lowry Mays, who is now one of the wealthiest men in the business, started with a struggling radio station and turned it into one of the world's largest media empires. Through risk taking, mergers, and acquisitions he is now operating in 34 nations around the world, with a group of stations that represents the largest critical mass of broadcasting companies in the world. Mays, not only the chairman and CEO of Clear Channel Communications and but also a namesake of Texas A&M's business school. Mays, graduated Texas A&M in1957, in 1972 borrowed $125,000 to purchase failing KEEZ-FM in San Antonio. In 1984, when restrictions got more lenient he started buying up all these little companies around him. Today, the $50 billion company owns 1,100 radio and TV stations and 550,000 billboards worldwide. What was once a poorly performing station was transposed by Mays, in his opinion, It was performing poorly because it was an FM station and in those days, radio was dominated by AM. The FM band was a new thing and that was something not many wish
No intention on threatening other companies, but I wouldn't be sitting comfortably if I was in competition with Clear Channel Communications. 5 percent annually over the past five years, with corresponding revenue growth of more than 28 percent a year. In the 1980s, Mays expanded Clear Channel to include television stations and later began acquiring outdoor advertising companies. Clear Channel has grown an average of 67. Having gambled successfully on FM radio and billboards, Mays is eager to exploit the new opportunities created by the Internet. The majority of profits seem to come from radio, meanwhile they are still working on expanding the out-door/out-of home areas. He credits the move into television and billboards with enabling his company to survive that decade's economic downturn and position it for phenomenal expansion in the '90s. They are already an investor in satellite radio along with General Motors and DIRECTV and a bunch of others, they made the investment really because we felt they would gain another audience and be successful. He saw a profitable connection between radio and billboards and used that as a selling point for his advertisers. This idea of expansion, expansion, expansion, is going to create a god-like giant. I think they might very well succeed in this new area of the market, as an investor in is XM Radio. He saw something that nobody else saw. It's an entrepreneurial mindset, Mays just keeps expanding, never settling, always wants a bigger more successful company.
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