From BusinessWeek Online: "It's a recent Monday morning at Clear Channel Communications Inc.'s limestone headquarters in San Antonio, and the sense of urgency is palpable. Chief Executive Mark P. Mays... bounds into the office of his brother, 39-year-old Chief Financial Officer Randall, carrying an enormous loose-leaf notebook... A handheld receiver for getting rival XM Satellite Radio flickers in its charger like an irritating reminder... "Mark, Randall, and John T. Tippit, senior vice-president for strategic development, are in their weekly strategy session... Delivering a live, local medium to a borderless, timeless cyberworld... "It was only five years ago that Clear Channel was on top of the world... Meanwhile, technology was changing their world. Consumers became empowered as new entertainment choices, from Napster to iPods to cell phones, lured people away from their radios. The speed of technology advances, the rapid rise of satellite radio, the Internet customization of media -- none of these were anticipated during Clear Channel's early dealmaking days. On top of that, an ad recession and the emergence of new and promising outlets for advertisers, such as the Internet, helped put Clear Channel's shares in the tank... "The $9.4 billion-a-year Clear Channel is draping itself in new media offerings. It's launching digital radio channels and podcasting and developing more exclusive content for radio station Web sites. The goal is to find ways to deliver what's essentially a live, local medium to a borderless, timeless cyberworld. Mark says he has had talks with Apple Computer CEO Steven P. Jobs, Microsoft CEO Steven A. Ballmer, and Yahoo! CEO Terry S. Semel about ways their companies might use Clear Channel content. "Clear Channel is also hellbent on winning back some of the status it has lost to satellite newcomers XM and Sirius by signing big names to host their own shows, including Donald Trump and Jesse Jackson... "In hopes of increasing traffic to its radio Web sites, a new feature called Stripped, which debuted on May 24, offers exclusive performance footage and interviews... To inject a bit of hip, the company in the past year brought in 35-year-old Internet guru Evan Harrison, former head of AOL Music, among other new young hires. "We can no longer be limited to a singular distribution method..." "Clear Channel execs now refer to their 'incubators' when discussing new projects, and Mark says the company is 'less radiocentric and more listener-centric. What we do best is deliver an enormous amount of local content. We should be able to deliver that in alternative ways.' At a confab of more than 300 Clear Channel program directors in Atlanta on June 6, radio division CEO John Hogan's message to his troops was: 'Radio is more than tall towers in big fields. We can no longer be limited to a singular distribution method.'.. "Jeff Littlejohn, a 39-year-old former radio engineer... oversees research and development 'skunk works' operations in Cincinnati and Ogallala, Neb. He's working on customizing Clear Channel content for subscriptions on cell phones and pushing into wireless broadband. 'We have lots of towers, billboards, lots of ways to build out a [wireless] network to put the Internet in your car,' he says. "Adds Sean Ross, vice-president for music and programming at consultant Edison Media Research: 'The one thing that could interrupt satellite radio's trajectory as a new product is Internet radio in the car.'" Read this entire BusinessWeek Online article here.