WSJ: Pittman Envisions New Life for Radio

From Marissa Marr at wsj.com

(Bob) Pittman, 58 years old, fled the corporate world in 2002 after exiting the now-broken-up AOL Time Warner in a cloud of recriminations over the ill-fated merger. He retreated to his favorite pastimes, flying his planes and traveling. He later launched a private investment firm with his own money, backing start-ups including email newsletter DailyCandy and the tequila brand Casa Dragones. 

Now he's back in the building where he started MTV and where AOL Time Warner was based after its merger. Gone are the round spectacles and coifed hair from his AOL days, replaced by open-neck shirts and stubble. In an office adorned with models of the jets he has owned over the years and MTV Moonman awards, Mr. Pittman has been plotting a revival rooted in trying to make radio cool again and convincing marketers that radio deserves more than the 6% share of total ad spending it currently commands (television attracts around 50%). 

It is a challenge unlike anything else he has taken on. Whereas his involvement with both MTV and AOL occurred when they were fresh and new,Radio is one of the oldest of old media. Its future was bleak even before the Internet and satellite radio came along, but now traditional radio faces an array of digital competitors in streaming music services, from Pandora to Spotify. 

While most Americans still listen to radio in some form, radio advertising grew just 1% to $17.4 billion in 2011, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. 

To make life even tougher, Clear Channel is laboring under $20 billion of debt, a legacy of a 2008 leveraged buyout arranged right before that year's financial crisis. The company reported $4 billion in losses for each of 2008 and 2009 due to onerous impairment charges. By 2011, the outlook improved but the company was still in the red to the tune of $302 million. 

"Bob's drawn to the challenge of a turnaround and working on something that most people think is doomed," said former MTV chief Tom Freston, who worked for Mr. Pittman in the early days of the music channel and is a fellow "Burner" (an attendee of the Burning Man arts extravaganza in the Nevada desert). 

"Bob's had more reincarnations than the Buddha."

Read More Here.