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Clear Channel Stock Plummets!

While it is fun to be able to laugh at the Mays' expense, do remember that many of regulars on these boards are CC employees who hold clear channel stock as part of 401 ks and have also purchased additional shares through employee purchase plans.

Major hits to the stock can effect their retirement plans greatly. That is no laughing matter.
 
Anyone who staked their financial future on Clear Channel's stock isn't managing their money very well to begin with. It doesn't take a genius to have known their business plan is, and always has been, a short-term gamble for the wealthy owners.
 
Gosh, that is hilarious. ??? Clear Channel's potential sale to the private side is also affecting many of the financial stocks including Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup etc, as their stocks are dropping today. LOL indeed. :mad:
 
zoneguy said:
While it is fun to be able to laugh at the Mays' expense, do remember that many of regulars on these boards are CC employees who hold clear channel stock as part of 401 ks and have also purchased additional shares through employee purchase plans.

Major hits to the stock can effect their retirement plans greatly. That is no laughing matter.
Click to expand...

Well put. I've got THOUSANDS of reasons why I want this sale to go through.
 
I am lucky that my 401(k) was small enough that they made me cash out when I left in 2000. It's been all downhill from there.

I do hope my heavily vested former coworkers have it work out for them.

Has anyone noticed the last paragraph of today's Wall Street Journal article on the deal? Atlanta is singled out as an underperforming radio market for CCU.
 
OutOfTheBiz said:
Anyone who staked their financial future on Clear Channel's stock isn't managing their money very well to begin with. It doesn't take a genius to have known their business plan is, and always has been, a short-term gamble for the wealthy owners.
Click to expand...

A lot of truth to that. CCU stock has been a dog almost since the ink was dry on the AM-FM merger. They bought and AMFM and a billboard company and had an alleged market cap of something like $60 billion and it began to quickly go downhill, long before there was talk of radio ad sales problems, economic turndowns, etc. They just paid too damn much, ran it poorly and you had to be a fool to think they'd somehow pull it off in the end.

I feel sorry for people who lose money when the Mays probably figured out how to pocket many millions from this travesty, but if you had your eyes wide open, you'd have known for years that investing in Clear Channel was one step behind lottery tickets as a means to secure your future.
 
CT Yankee said:
Has anyone noticed the last paragraph of today's Wall Street Journal article on the deal? Atlanta is singled out as an underperforming radio market for CCU.
Click to expand...

My cousin works for CC in a medium-sized Southern city and according to him, ATL is the "sick man" of CC.
 
Bob_Hudson said:
They just paid too damn much, ran it poorly and you had to be a fool to think they'd somehow pull it off in the end.

I feel sorry for people who lose money when the Mays probably figured out how to pocket many millions from this travesty, but if you had your eyes wide open, you'd have known for years that investing in Clear Channel was one step behind lottery tickets as a means to secure your future.
Click to expand...

I think there is alot of that in radio now. Look at the bath Radio One took on the Los Angeles deal. Too many people got into radio during the years of 10-15% growth that didn't have any business getting into it. Now it's time to pay the fiddler. I never wish any ill will on anyone, however one man's Karma is another man's Kismet. Clear Channel and Wall Street have single handedly destroyed radio, I will shed no tears over the current state of affairs in San Antonio.
 
Sing along, BURN BABY BURN,RADIO INFERNO,BURN BABY BURN.CC screwed more people than the republican party.could not happen to nicer folks...Can you say FIRE SALE...
 
I know a lot of folks who work for Clear Channel and I feel bad for them. They have no idea now how violated they will feel when they find all that CCU stock to be absolutely worthless.

One thing I used be ridiculed for not buying into in the '90s (among lots of things, such as "Voicetracking is the FUTURE!") was the stock market. You might as well take your life's savings to a racetrack. Because I knew even then that the stock market was getting too big too fast and inevitably, it ALWAYS implodes. And it's always the handful of CEOs on top that bail out just in the nick of time, leaving the rest of us stuck with picking up their tab at the expense of our own retirements.

And this will likely happen with those working for Clear Channel. It's the Enron of radio.

Of course, people will doubt me, just as they say we're ALMOST in a recession these days. But the writing is on the wall (the one with the skeleton with a felt pen in it's hand leaning against it.....)

That's why you NEVER pledge your retirement to the stock market. Or Social Security or anything else you may need when you're older. Just what you have to gamble with and nothing more.....
 
Bongwater said:
I know a lot of folks who work for Clear Channel and I feel bad for them. They have no idea now how violated they will feel when they find all that CCU stock to be absolutely worthless.

One thing I used be ridiculed for not buying into in the '90s (among lots of things, such as "Voicetracking is the FUTURE!") was the stock market. You might as well take your life's savings to a racetrack. Because I knew even then that the stock market was getting too big too fast and inevitably, it ALWAYS implodes. And it's always the handful of CEOs on top that bail out just in the nick of time, leaving the rest of us stuck with picking up their tab at the expense of our own retirements.

And this will likely happen with those working for Clear Channel. It's the Enron of radio.

Of course, people will doubt me, just as they say we're ALMOST in a recession these days. But the writing is on the wall (the one with the skeleton with a felt pen in it's hand leaning against it.....)

That's why you NEVER pledge your retirement to the stock market. Or Social Security or anything else you may need when you're older. Just what you have to gamble with and nothing more.....
Click to expand...

I agree it is much better to put under your mattress. You only lose 3% to inflation every year.
 
Atlanta is truly the sick man of CCU ... but the wounds were self-inflicted by a series of incompetent managers.
Heritage brand Peach - gone. Killed in less than 5 years. Lite was an ignominious failure. Now, in desperation, Copycat country. They will never regain those numbers.
A competitive #2 AM-FM news-talker stripped of the FM strength and reduced to either 3rd or 4th place, depending on the daypart. A lame bunch of eunuchs slithers along looking up at their numbers.
96Rock - increasingly irrelevant.
To blame one person --- Mark Chase - the Typhoid Mary of the Atlanta cluster.
 
AMiable said:
Atlanta is truly the sick man of CCU ... but the wounds were self-inflicted by a series of incompetent managers.
Heritage brand Peach - gone. Killed in less than 5 years. Lite was an ignominious failure. Now, in desperation, Copycat country. They will never regain those numbers.
A competitive #2 AM-FM news-talker stripped of the FM strength and reduced to either 3rd or 4th place, depending on the daypart. A lame bunch of eunuchs slithers along looking up at their numbers.
96Rock - increasingly irrelevant.
To blame one person --- Mark Chase - the Typhoid Mary of the Atlanta cluster.
Click to expand...
I agree with all of that.

--86ing the Peach and 96 Rock brands was pure idiocy. I can understand wanting to "freshen up" 96 Rock, but to get rid of 30+ years of brand equity...but hey! Project Buzzkill is the #1 CC station in the ATL market! Who cares if it's #13 or #15 overall.

--Bull will look like a good move in the next book, but only by default because Eagle is gone and Kicks is hurting due to the problems at Citadel. If Disney had still owned Eagle and Kicks, the next book would have shown how utterly STUPID the move was.

--It looks like CC's Latino ride is coming to a stop...with Viva and Patron barely getting a 1.5 share COMBINED.

--But the big winner (loser) is WGST. Not even Planet Radio was this bad. Although Jacor wouldn't pay Clark Howard and Neal Boortz enough to stay, at least they followed up with Sean Hannity. If it wasn't for Rush and the Braves, I bet WGST wouldn't even show up in Arbitron. And even the Braves need help from an FM because of WGST's crappy night signal. You can't build a radio station around ~2 pieces of programming and filler the rest of the time.
 
Anyone on these boards knows what kind of disaster CC is on the operation side. Anyone still heavily vested in the stock anyway pretty much deserves what's coming to them. I do feel sorry for the little people though. The sad part is the clueless fat cats in S.A. are likely going to be rich either way.
 
CC is top heavy in useless Mgmt. Someone will figure that out someday. I work my butt off for CC, but won't include them in my portfolio.
 
Wonder how many old radio owners still have stock from when CC bought them out for huge multiples and paid them
partially with stock? Nothing like having the figures restated for a 100,000 watter selling for $8M including $8.01M in
worthless stock options. Wonder if the IRS will like this?
 
From Associated Press

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=BUSINESS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

NEW YORK-Clear Channel Communications Inc. said the private equity firms trying to buy the company may not be able to close the deal on time because their banks will not provide financing, according to a Friday regulatory filing. [3-28-08]

Ouch! This will probably be another rocky day for CCU. Banks can no longer afford to underwrite deals with such unrealistic terms.


[Link added as a courtesy by Radio Info]
 
Looks real POOR now.You cc employees that got suckered on that stock,shame on you.you know it's not nice to crawl in bed with your boss..i never worked for cc,but did make a NICE pop on the stock years ago,hey you can't marry a stock.remember the Gambler by Kenny Rogers? Well,i'm afraid the dealin's done.
 
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