Guess who owns Clear Channel Communications, giant media purveyor of Rush Limbaugh, [View all]

[pnwmom]

Sean Hannity, and the rest of the far right wrecking crew?

Bain Capital LLC, with Thomas H. Lee Partners, LP.

Gulp.

And, thank you, Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Channel_Communications

Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American mass media company headquartered in Uptown San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, and was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP in a leveraged buyout in 2008. Clear Channel specializes in radio broadcasting, concert promotion and hosting, and fixed advertising in the United States through its subsidiaries.

Clear Channel is the largest owner of full-power AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations and twelve radio channels on XM Satellite Radio, and is also the largest pure-play radio station owner and operator.

SNIP

News talk stations

News talk stations owned by Clear Channel usually have a standard slate of hosts. The morning show is usually local, with other timeslots filled by local and syndicated hosts. Programs that appear on many Clear Channel talk stations include the Glenn Beck Program -- getting his talk show start at Clear Channel owned WFLA (AM) in Tampa, The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show, America Now with Andy Dean and Coast to Coast AMwith George Noory, all of which are affiliated with Premiere Radio Networks in some fashion. The Savage Nation (which was until September 2009 flagshipped at Clear Channel's KNEW-910), The Mark Levin Show and The Dave Ramsey Show are non-Premiere shows who air on many (if not most) Clear Channel stations. Limbaugh is almost universally carried on Clear Channel stations in markets where the company has a news talk station (there were some exceptions, although the last was eliminated in late 2011). New Clear Channel talk radio stations have typically been using the branding "Rush Radio," while most older ones use a more generic "News Radio" or "News Talk."

While most of Clear Channel's news/talk stations carry some combination of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and Noory (of Coast to Coast AM), this is not always the case. Many stations (particularly in the larger markets) like KFI, KFYI, KOA, WZZR and WLW broadcast a lineup with significant local programming.

Clear Channel does not operate any all-news radio stations. For a brief time in the late 2000s, KFXR in Dallas ran a direct feed of HLN under the on-air name CNN 1190, but KFXR dropped that format in 2009. Almost all of Clear Channel's primary talk stations are affiliated with Fox News Radio for national news, part of a multi-year deal between Clear Channel and Fox.

Liberal talk radio is heard on a few of Clear Channel's stations, primarily secondary to its main news talk stations, and usually feature at least one local host with Dial Global programming; Air America Radio also aired on these stations. Clear Channel has shown a tendency to drop liberal talk affiliations whenever possible and replace it with satellite Fox Sports talk (see, for instance, WCKY, WARF, KLSD, WXKS [which currently runs the Clear Channel conservative talk format instead], and WINZ); this has, in a few rare circumstances, caused protests, such as those involved when Clear Channel wanted to make the same move with WXXM in Madison, Wisconsin (WXXM was eventually allowed to keep its liberal format).