Par For The Course

What a week.

On one hand, we had one of those historic "American Moments" with the inauguration of President Obama (sounds good, right?).

On the other hand, however, job losses appear to have only accelerated this week. Most employees are living in fear...unless they are fortunate enough to work at Apple.

Not surprisingly, the radio industry has also had significant layoffs. Just this week, we learned the following:

1) iBiquity had a small reduction in workforce. This sucks as we really like these folks. We hope that the folks behind HD Radio can pull through this credit crisis.

2) Clear Channel also laid off 1,850 employees this week...perfectly timed to coincide with the inauguration.

Not only was this a cruel joke on 1,850 people who were probably in a great mood that morning in anticipation of the Obama inauguration, but also a ploy by management to get this announcement out there with little press.

But we noticed, and so did many others.

What was also not lost on us was who management is at Clear Channel these days:

None other than the private equity firms of Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital.

As we pointed out in February, it should come as no surprise that there would be significant layoffs at Clear Channel. In fact, the downturn in the economy was likely a convenient cover.

That is what private equity firms do. They "streamline companies" (i.e., fire employees) to "better position" (i.e., breakup and sell) the company for the future.

What else can they do?

Their excel models actually don't teach them how to run companies.

But the joke may still be on them.

You see, they are facing an uncomfortable situation now where they may be NO buyers for even parts of the company...particularly on the radio side.

One has to wonder what an $18 billion write-down looks to limited partners.

Our favorite Presidential candidate may need to dig deeper into his pockets if he wants to see his company survive. Relatively speaking, his futile Presidential campaign will look cheap.

Our sentiments may be best summarized by this astute commenter on John Gorman's Media Blog:

"Bain and Lee are up the creek without a paddle with this deal. Even when they split the stations up and sell them in parcels they will be lucky to get a fraction of what they paid for them. Projected revenue? Hand it to the Mays family. A clan of Texans took those New England Yankee WASPs for one hell of a ride they won't forget for a long time to come. Yee Hah."

Yee Hah indeed.