Clear Channel Selling 60 More Radio Stations

Clear Channel Radio is selling 60 more stations in markets around the country. The company is selling the stations to comply with one of the conditions set by the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice for approving the sale of Clear Channel Communications to two private equity firms. With the sale to private equity recently completed, Clear Channel is placing the FCC-mandated stations in the recently formed Aloha Station Trust, where a third-party company, Media Ventures, will have responsibility for marketing them. When it first acquired some of these stations, Clear Channel received special FCC permissions to avoid violating ownership rules, but the FCC said it would not renew the permissions, necessitating the current sale. The 60 FCC- and DOJ-mandated stations for sale are different from the 448 stations that Clear Channel put up for sale last year, of which 173 were withdrawn from the market in the first quarter. At the end of the first quarter, 52 of the 275 stations remaining in this group were still unsold.