Clear Channel (CCU NYSE)is in a poor financial position. It was allegedly sold at 39 and change but currently is 31 and change. This means it is selling below its 200 day moving average.

The problem is the balance sheet. It has over 7 billion in debt and debt/equity ratio of .82. Generally, a prudent investor stays away from stocks that have debt/equity ratio of .2 or better. It looks great as to PE (about 19) and pays 2.5%, but the whole financial superstructure is shakey.

If interest rates pop before the sale is consumated expect a fire sale. In the meantime no one is 100% sure the sale actually happening--
witness the $8/share discount from the proposed sales price.

Don't worry Bryan Lambert, the filthy capitalists will take care of this problem. Save your pennies and maybe you can buy a station or two.

By the way if you want to check my figures go to Yahoo and this URL: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ccu

LAMBERT: Bleuler, my man, I don't question your figures. As I've written this deal is woebegone. The element of schadenfreude that I like is the titanic bath a few of these characters so richly deserve taking. This after wreaking havoc on the lives and careers of thousands of their employees, small towns, etc.

The underlying beef here is with bad capitalism. Capitalism that stifles competition and innovation and results in the near monopoly of a bland, inferior product is capitalism that needs at least short term government oversight -- especially in the case of radio licenses and broadcast spectrum, which are public and limited.

I use to run one of those small radio stations. My father in law was a terrific broadcaster who owned two small stations in Mass., in small towns. He was all about community service. And so was I (and still am) when I went to work for him.

When we put an 80/90 FM on the air (we had to because the AM was a daytimer and we had post sunset authority of 3.9 watts. The transmitter was about the size of PC CPU), we went pretty far in debt. I can remember day after day seeing the advertising "take" -- $250 gross. Ugh.

Advertising is getting harder to come by for those local stations. IN the past, you could walk in and eal with a business owner. But thos edays are disappearing as chains dominate even small towns and what does some ad agency in New York care about some station in Bupkus, Minn.?

I know folks tend to think of these things in terms of "cities", but what little local radio still being done IS still being done in small towns that roll up the sidewalks at 9 pm, with some owner looking at the day's $250 take and wondering, "how the hell am I supposed to make a living doing this?"

What would these proposals do to them?

You would've liked my father in law. He was a quite a broadcaster. And, man, did he love the communities he served!

LAMBERT: I don't have a miracle elixir for radio, but one thing seems more likely than syndication and that is radio programming of some sort that is both local and unique. The upside to Clear Channel and big radio's diminishment -- CC is selling off several hundred of its smaller properties -- is, I hope, lower prices for licenses, which may -- may, I say -- give actual "new blood" entrepreneurs a shot at trying something different.

I'm ready to comment to the FCC...except, what 'Proceeding' code am I commenting on.

I pulled up the link and the first question is --
1. Proceeding (e.g. 00-221, RM-9920) (required)

And being required and being some virtually hidden FCC proceeding code means right there that the average citizen (whose opinion is supposedly being sought) will not be able to give their opinion.

This is yet again...another farce under the guise of democracy. The FCC 'seeks' input, but makes it such a bureaucratic tangle that no one but the staunchest activists succeed.

Is this representative government...I don't think so.

So, I'll give my opinion here--

Brian--my very first email to you was regarding radio back in 2003 when I first realized how horrible radio had degraded to be. I had sent it first to a couple locals in the radio scene, who gave it the usual brushoff because I was just an average citizen (whose interests don't matter anyway a la this FCC tangle). But, I pressed on and was referred to you, because I actually cared for radio and the service it provided people who liked coming home or hopping in theic car and turning on a radio instead of silence or TV or expensive satellite/CD/iPod options.

I actually even talked to you then and you gave me the weary realization that my cause was doomed to fail, just like undoubtedly your cause a few years earlier was (I assumed), and Walsh's concern a few years before, and who knows how many others earlier as we listened to a vibrant Twin Cities music scene (Prince, Replacements, et al) be strangled into near silence. I was just one other lone wolf among thousands of other isolated lone wolves...lonely, powerless...who naively thought it was all about the music, sadly learning it was all about Silas and his greenbacks.

So, screw 'em. It is all about the music, and I just need to suck it up and go to the Turf Club and 400 Club and turn off the radio until something emerges that is about the music. I thought it might be The Current, but now I'm not so sure...it seems almost as misplaced, just better disguised, than the FCC / Clear Channel drivel.

So, let the FCC have it's bureaucratic fun...until it is disbanded in a few years as being unneeded in a world where no one bothers to listen to radio anymore...and let it be replaced with the Federal Internet Commission or whatever bureaucracy that will replace it. Let RIAA disband because no one bothers with major record labels anymore; let musicians go back to singing and selling their wares at the local clubs. If they were good on the radio, they should steal our souls at the club, right?

LAMBERT: Your scenario of a post-FCC/RIAA world may not be so far-fetched. With virtually anyone with a computer holding a key to a "radio station" and internet service eventually being delivered to cars, I don't see how the Feds do anything but throw up their hands. The big positive is a lot of creative, viral energies applied to making an impact amid all the noise.

The primary reason broadcast licenses were originally issued were to people(companies) that would prove they would be used to provide local information in theier DMA. Over the years that local public service keystone has been forgotten.
Television stations still make a lot of money in their local news operations. Radio has been taken over by economies of scale and lost thier local presence.
Rather than buy a local station, any one reading this comment could go to the FCC, present the case the conglomerate radio staiton does little or nothing to serve local interests - and then lay out a blue print for how they (as the licensee) would. Politics aside, the FCC should then pull the license from the conglomerate and issue it to the new applicant.
(You would then have to buy the hardware & software to transmit)
Seems the time is ripe for some one somewhere to do this.

LAMBERT: The key, as one TV station GM once told me, is, "You gotta have a shtick."

I believe, actually, the original reason broadcast licenses were issued was to regulate the spectrum -- a technical reason more so than a content reason.

Theoretically, FM stations never really "served" their local audience under the generally accepted definition. They were (and are) music intensive. What little "news" they had was relegated to some POS interview at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning.

In many ways, the people abandoned their local radio stations long before the local radio stations abandoned their communities.

The link to the FCC site that includes the correct proceeding number (04-233) is:
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/websql/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.hts?ws_mode=proc_name&proc_id=04-233

You may want to update your blog with this link.

LAMBERT: Thanks, I will.

While I agree wholeheartedly that the demise of local radio is never a good thing, I can't understand why the method surprises anyone. Is this any different than our local Dayton's, (oops, Marshall Field's,) (oops, Macy's) being run out of New York and Cincinnati or our beloved hometown airline being run out of Atlanta? If nothing else, the Reagan years have endured by proving that bigger is better. The question is, how long will it take the Dems to undo all the damage?

LAMBERT: Bigger may have been better, at least for a few. But less centralized and more nimble seems a far better route for local media.

On the music side, does this read of the market sound right?

1 -- Record companies dying on the vine
2 -- Radio stations dying on the air
3 -- Listeners voting with their mouse: We like single songs in digital format without a "hard copy" (read CD)

OK, this is off the cuff, but what about starting a station to which any band can upload any single they want, surrendering rights to it. Weight is given to local bands.

Anyone can go to the station's web site, listen to the song, and then rate it, vote for it, approve it or something like that.

The station then allows the band to upload a 20-second introduction to the song using an MP3 format.

The station then provides the rating ("150 voters and this rates a 3.2 out of 5") and then the band's intro and then the song.

Once a song reaches x level of success it is then available for download, which includes a tag at the end saying where it came from "and you can find more free songs there."

---------------

You could also have deejays act like "bloggers" and invite listeners to send in MP3 that is them telling a story, bit of history, observation, anything.

The deejay then collects, organizes and plays the MP3s.

May have more after my drive home ...

LAMBERT: Not bad. Not bad. A bit like Digg/Music. And it'd help to have a few knowledgeable jocks to provide a little background on the action. The best news of all --- low likelihood of Fergie and/or Fleetwood Mac uploads.

Yo...the only music radio I listen to is satellite, which is the bomb. Check it out, Dog...

LAMBERT: Can I sit at your table for lunch some day?

Lambo: I know you know about Chicago Public Radio's "Sound Opinion," which, I believe, airs on 89.3 Da' Current. How about something like that with dowloads? Wait, what am I saying? I'm sure Kling's already on it.

LAMBERT: Local and unique, baby.