Report: Bob Pittman Office Includes ‘Mist Tunnel’

Bob Pittman

The ultimate status symbol for a corporate executive in the music business is apparently something called "a mist tunnel", according to Richard Johnson at The NY Post.

Millions of dollars were reportedly spent on new offices for Bob Pittman and others on West 55th Street in NYC when the company consolidated staff from San Antonio and other locations.

Jerry Del Colliano, who runs the Inside Music Media Web site, reports that Pittman’s visitors will walk through a fine mist when they get off the elevator.

“As you walk through the mist, you hear directed speakers playing Clear Channel stations across the country,” a source told Del Colliano.

Clear Channel, now owned by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, is said to be $21 billion in debt, and has laid off thousands of employees.

A Clear Channel spokeswoman told me the company spent below-average costs per square foot to renovate its new digs, and said of the mist tunnel, “It’s a hallway that leads to the front desk.”

The mist isn’t for cooling or humidifying. “It’s a low-cost presentation effect,” she said. “If we have an advertiser come in, we can project their logo [onto the mist.]”