Clear Channel changes name to iHeartMedia

The company that dominates the broadcast radio airwaves in Northern Colorado and the Boulder Valley has changed its name.

Clear Channel announced Tuesday it is now iHeartMedia to reflect its transformation into a multi-platform media company. The new name will cover its 859 radio stations, its six-year-old iHeartMedia digital streaming service including the iHeartRadio app and website, live music events and related companies.

Local residents can receive up to 15 iHeartMedia-owned stations during normal conditions. Stations in the Denver cluster include 50,000-watt news-talk-sports outlet KOA-AM 850, talk KHOW-AM 630 and KKZN-AM 760, alternative-rock KTCL-FM 93.3, top-40 rhythmic KPTT-FM 95.7, album-rock KBCO-FM 97.3, classic-rock KRFX-FM 103.5 and active-rock KBPI-FM 106.7. Its Northern Colorado cluster includes news-talk KCOL-AM 600, classic country KIIX-AM 1410, top-40 KSME-FM 96.1, country KXBG-FM 97.9 and KOLZ-FM 100.7, and classic-rock KPAW-FM 107.9, as well as KPAW-HD, a low-power alternative-rock station at 94.9 FM.

Locally, Clear Channel has studios at 4270 Byrd Drive in Loveland and 4695 S. Monaco St. in the Denver Tech Center. From its founding in 1977 until it moved to the Denver Tech Center studios in 2010, KBCO had identified itself as a Boulder station and had studios above Mike’s Camera at 2500 Pearl St.

Since a provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed single companies to own up to eight broadcast radio stations in a market – and those markets became rather narrowly defined – many areas including the Front Range receive stations from more than one market cluster. Through acquisitions, Clear Channel at one time operated more than 1,200 radio stations nationwide.

The parent company, CC Media Holdings Inc., will become iHeartMedia Inc. Other company brands, including iHeartRadio, Premiere Networks, Total Traffic and Weather Network, Katz Media Group and RCS, will retain their current names, the company said in a media statement.

The new name “reflects our commitment to being the media company that provides the most entertainment to the most engaged audiences wherever they go, with more content and more events in more places on more devices,” said chief executive Bob Pittman in the media statement.

Publicly traded billboard company Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. will retain the Clear Channel brand, the statement said. “Although we are changing the parent company’s name, Clear Channel Outdoor is built into the fabric of our multi-platform company,” Richard Bressler, the company’s chief financial officer and president, said in the media statement.

Founded in 1972 in San Antonio by Lowry Mays and B.J. “Red” McCombs, Clear Channel was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners in a leveraged buyout in 2008.

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