Company founder and chief executive Lowry Mays declined to be interviewed for this story. But earlier this year, Mays told Fortune magazine: "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."
Clear Channel's critics say that attitude is the whole problem. Although the conglomerate's actions appear to have all been legal and it is not the only media company to have multiple stations in some markets, they say the company should be more sensitive to public opinion.
"There's a public responsibility to those who use these airwaves and if you just completely ignore it and say 'I'm just in it for the money and just in it for the shareholders,' the way their CEO has, you're going to get yourself in trouble and you're going to deserve it," said John Dunbar, director of the telecommunications project at the Center for Public Integrity.
The Mays family's involvement with the Republican party -- Lowry Mays has been a big financial backer of President Bush -- also has caused concern, despite Hogan's assertion that mixing politics with business is bad business, and that the company would never do it.
"If you have a politically active CEO who is of a particularly ideological bent you become worried that if they control entire markets, which Clear Channel does, that ideology might make into some of the coverage," Dunbar said.
Clear Channel Communications Inc.
Some facts about Clear Channel Communications Inc.
Headquarters: Sandpoint, Idaho.
History: Founded in 1972 in San Antonio, Texas, as the San Antonio Broadcasting Co. by investment banker Lowry Mays and a partner.http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09212003/business/94249.asp