Looking to buy a 'little' debt?

Clear Channel plans to sell 448 of its 1,150 radio stations, all outside of the top 100 markets and the 42-station Television Group as well. The total revenue of these made up less than 10 percent of the company's revenues last year. And an investor group led by Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Bain Capital Partners LLC is aquiring the country's biggest radio station owner for about $18.7 billion and assuming about $8 billion in debt.

Radio stocks were once "stock market darlings," but has been rapidly declining in value, especially since 2000 when "competition from the boom in portable listening devices like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPods and the emerging growth of satellite radio" kept it difficult to win listeners back.

Reader's Digest is being bought for $1.6 billion by a private investment group led by Ripplewood Holdings LLC and will assume about $776.3 million in debt. Despite a few recent successes, overall Reader's Digest has been struggling in the competition against other media and the Internet, such as Amazon.com.

Both companies saw a jump in shares after aquisition announcements were made.

What do you think this means, if anything? Where is radio and long-standing traditions like Reader's Digest in our media future?

Posted by AL