Lowry Mays, Who Revolutionized the Radio Industry, Dies at 87

“Everybody gets the same McDonald’s hamburger,” the musician Don Henley testified before Congress during hearings in which several senators excoriated Mr. Mays and his company.

Mr. Mays was nonplused. He was, after all, just a businessman, and he was neither sentimental about the products he sold nor particularly interested in their aesthetic details.

“If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn’t be someone from our company,” he told Fortune in 2003. “We’re not in the business of providing news and information. We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.”

That lack of sentimentality continued to serve him well when, a few years later, he decided to get out of the business completely. He had surgery in 2005 following a minor stroke, and though he remained engaged with the company, he handed over most day-to-day operations to his sons and longtime lieutenants, Mark and Randall Mays.

For all the changes that he had brought to the music industry, Mr. Mays could also see that even more disruption was coming, thanks to the internet. In 2006, he agreed to sell the company to the private equity firms Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital for $17.9 billion.

Clear Channel’s fortunes changed almost immediately. It was shackled by debt, hampered by the Great Recession, challenged by changes in consumer taste and, critics said, undermined by listeners’ aversion to a radio monoculture that Mr. Mays had helped usher in. The company struggled for years, even after rebranding itself as iHeartMedia in 2014.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/business/lowry-mays-dead.html