CLEAR CHANNEL FINANCES

The company that has inflicted Limbaugh & Hannity on America has severe financial problems:

The Sun Valley mogul meeting convenes, and CBS boss Moonves is flying in.

“The flavor du jour this year is telecom,” says Hal Vogel of Vogel Capital Management - which could make things especially interesting, says Variety. With Rupert Murdoch accompanied by the two sons he recently called to his side, everybody’s expecting big deals to be discussed at the Allen & Company meet-up (“the annual media finance conference”). But maybe smaller ones will be nurtured there, too. It’s the kind of free-wheeling atmosphere CBS leader Les Moonves loves, and he gets to play at a very high level. No doubt an analyst or two will speculate about CBS spinning off its radio division, but that still seems highly unlikely. Meanwhile, Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners must do something about Clear Channel in the not-too-distant future. As one dealmaker tells this NOW Newsletter, “we talk about Bain and Tommy Lee as if they’re the owners of Clear Channel, but their equity’s probably been wiped out, and they’re just managing it for some kind of exit.” Murdoch’s rumored to be thinking about making a bid for Time Warner. Not Time Warner Cable, which Comcast hopes to gobble up, but what remains of Time Warner, after it spun off its magazines. (Think CNN.) One thing that greases the dealmaking machinery is all the corporate cash that’s piled up since the Great Recession receded. Though as Variety points out, going into this year’s Sun Valley conference, there’s “a mounting sense that there are fewer jobs in a digital economy.”