In "Right of the Dial," Alec Foege explores how the mammoth
media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications evolved from a
local radio broadcasting operation, founded in 1972, into one of
the biggest, most profitable, and most polarizing corporations in
the country. During its heyday, critics accused Clear Channel, the
fourth-largest media company in the United States and the nation's
largest owner of radio stations, of ruining American pop culture
and cited it as a symbol of the evils of media monopolization,
while fans hailed it as a business dynamo, a beacon of unfettered
capitalism.What's undeniable is that as the owner at one point of
more than 1,200 radio stations, 130 major concert venues and
promoters, 770,000 billboards, and 41 television stations, Clear
Channel dominated the entertainment world in ways that MTV and
Disney could only dream of. But in the fall of 2006, after years of
public criticism and flattening stock prices, Goliath finally
tumbled--Clear Channel Communications, Inc., spun off its
entertainment division and plotted to sell off one-third of its
radio stations and all of its television concerns, and to transfer
ownership of the rest of its holdings to a consortium of private
equity firms. The move signaled the end of an era in media
consolidation, and in "Right of the Dial," Foege takes stock of the
company's successes and abuses, showing the manner in which Clear
Channel reshaped America's cultural and corporate landscape along
the way.
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