Bob Pittman: ‘We’ve Not Forgotten Where the Monster Is’

iHeartRadio Theater Lobby (Billboard, See More Photos Click Here)

CCM+E officially opened its new iHeartRadio Theater on Tuesday night with a performance by Katy Perry, celebrating the release of her album "Prism."

The show, filmed inside the former "Tonight Show" studio in Burbank, was broadcast live on 175 Clear Channel radio stations and will get a broadcast TV airing from the CW network on Friday at 9 p.m.

CEO Bob Pittman sat down with the Los Angeles Times just before the Perry event to talk about the company's plans for the new theater and the radio business, which is facing growing competition from Internet companies such as Pandora Media Inc. and Spotify.

What does this event at this theater say about the evolution of Clear Channel as a radio company?

• We're clearly a multi-platform company. Our broadcast stations reach over 240 million people a month. Our outdoor reach is almost 150 million people a month, almost the size of broadcast television. Our digital reach is up to over 60 million now. Our iHeartRadio product was the fastest in the history of the Internet to reach 20 million registered users. It looks like we'll be the second-fastest to 40 million. And now we're doing TV shows. Everything begins to become very blurry.

How does iHeartRadio work for Clear Channel at a time when Internet radio doesn't seem to be very profitable?

• Remember, we do all this at an incremental cost. If you look at iHeartRadio, Pandora and all the Internet radio players, it's only 8% of all the listening. The other 92% is broadcast radio, so we've not forgotten where the monster is. Actually, broadcast radio has increased, and digital is in addition to that, so this is really a time of feast for the radio business, and I think the Internet has really helped us expand our reach.

What do these moves into TV and the Web say about where the radio industry is right now?

• It says the radio industry has never been bigger or better. With the TV business turning into delayed viewing and cord cutting and binge viewing, radio is the last mass-reach, real-time medium. We've never been more important to the consumer or the advertiser. The radio industry may have been coasting a little bit, but what we're trying to do is amp up our performance and show that we're not limited to our towers and transmitters.

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