Earlier this week Clear Channel acquired Thumbplay, a subscription-based streaming-music service, in an effort to compete with Pandora and its ilk as well as expand the company’s own efforts in free, ad-supported music streaming. Platforms like iHeartRadio, which streams 750 of Clear Channel’s stations nationwide, helped the company gross an industry-leading $175 million in digital revenue in 2009, according to SNL Kagan. While that figure may still be a tiny percentage of the nearly $6 billion that parent company CC Media Holdings reports each year, it also represents the fastest-growing sector of an industry long plagued by the perception that consumers have ditched radio for TV and the web.
“Lucky for us, 93% of the country still listens to radio. It was about 92% in 1970, so that’s actually gone up,” Mr. Pittman told Ad Age. “If TV is America's hub then radio is America's companion. We live with consumers and they consume radio a little more than they do the internet every day. It’s still a little less than TV but a little more than everything else.”
Mr. Pittman is a well-known media veteran from his stints at AOL Time Warner, where he most recently served as the company’s chief operating officer, and MTV Networks, which he co-founded. He joined Clear Channel late last fall as chairman and a minority investor, having invested in emerging companies like Zynga, Thrillist and Next New Networks through his private equity firm Pilot Group. He spoke with Ad Age about Clear Channel’s plans for future growth in digital, competing with Pandora and why we’ll see more apps from the company later this year.
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