Clear Channel agrees $18.7bn sale

Clear Channel is the largest US radio station group

Clear Channel Communications, which owns and operates more than 1,500 radio stations, has agreed to be bought by an investment group for $18.7bn (£9.9bn).

Clear Channel is also the UK's biggest outdoor advertising group - also trading as Adshel and Taxi Media.

It will be bought by private equity firms Bain Capital and Thomas H Lee Partners for $37.60 a share.

Clear Channel has been blamed by some critics for creating a blander and more uniform US radio scene.

Clear Channel owns Premiere Radio Networks - which syndicates shows such as the Dr Laura Schlessinger and Ryan Seacrest radio programmes across the US to more than 5,000 stations.

Its shares rose 5% in early Thursday trading on hopes that the deal would trigger a bidding war for the firm.

Criticism

About a decade ago, Clear Channel was a small San Antonio-based radio chain with 36 stations.

Then, in 1996, radio was deregulated in the US, and the company, under its billionaire owner L Lowry Mays, went on a massive spending spree.

Clear Channel bought radio stations in every US state and developed an outdoor advertising empire - which now focuses on billboards and bus stops.

Mr Mays also signed up some 700 recording artists and celebrities when he bought the SFX talent agency, purchased concert venues and formed a division to promote live entertainment.

However Clear Channel's commercialism - Mr Mays once described radio as there simply "to assemble ears for advertisers" - has provoked fierce criticism.

Critics have complained that it exerted a negative effect on American radio through its homogenous playlists.

It also popularised voice-tracking, whereby segments of speech, music and commercials were sent digitally from one Clear Channel network to another.

These were then cut and pasted into the radio programmes, giving the listener the impression that, for example, a DJ was taking a live request or was doing an interview when, in fact, they were not.

Clear Channel argued that this technique allows it to deliver national DJ talent to local markets that could not otherwise afford it. It also cuts costs.

Last year, profits at the firm fell slightly, after it reduced the number of advertisements as a means to attract more listeners.