The former golden boy of broadcasting who introduced America to MTV and Morton Downey, Jr. has been promoted from head of media and entertainment (where he's turned the IHeartRadio service from a streamer of CC stations that play the same songs to a potential competitor for Pandora--and promoted it brilliantly in a weekend-long all-star concert extravaganza in Vegas that was streamed on IHeartRadio) to the CEO of the Evil Empire--the first head of the company that comes from programming instead of the money end (or the Mays family):
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/clear-channel-names-pittman-as-its-new-chief/?ref=business Whether this will cause an improvement at CC is unknown, considering that Pittman pioneered voice-tracking at Chicago's WKQX in the late 70s (where he was programming an AOR that basically stole from the Lee Abrams playbook--save voice-tracking, that was Pittman's idea) and got killed when Abrams came to Chicago and turned the Loop into the hard rockin', disco demolishin' station) and did video voice-tracking of the VJs at MTV and what was then known as VH-1 in the days when everyone wanted to watch vidclips (and Pittman proclaimed that MTV was a program with no beginning, no middle and no end). Of course, considering the balkanization of music these days, mass appeal stations like CC will never please the hipsters--and you gotta remember that Pittman turned Downey into a TV star right as right-wing talk radio was beginning its Limbaugh-infused domination of AM. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
