He additionally performed a key function in bringing Formula One racing to Austin by investing within the Circuit of the Americas, the Austin observe the place the annual U.S. Grand Prix race has been held since 2012.
In a press release on Monday, the Dallas Cowboys proprietor, Jerry Jones, known as Mr. McCombs “a true Texas titan across sports, media, business and philanthropy” who had “followed his dreams.”
Mr. McCombs’s most profitable enterprise was Clear Channel, which he co-founded with Lowry Mays in 1972, once they bought an area radio station in San Antonio, KEEZ-FM, for $125,000. (Mr. Mays died in September at 87.)
The two males continued to accumulate radio stations, then tv stations and billboards across the nation. Aided by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which allowed media conglomerates to personal an infinite variety of stations, they constructed the corporate into the world’s largest proprietor of radio stations; by 2000, Clear Channel owned greater than 1,200.
The firm finally expanded into occasion promotion, dwell music and sports activities administration. Mr. Lowry oversaw the enterprise, however Mr. McCombs was instrumental in seizing alternatives to develop, in accordance with John Hogan, the corporate’s former chairman and chief government.
“He was steadfast in support of the notion that when the telecommunications regulations changed in 1996, we had to move quickly and aggressively, and that those who were slow and hesitant would get left behind,” Mr. Hogan mentioned in an interview for this obituary.
Though the corporate was typically criticized for homogenizing radio programming in a approach that eradicated a lot of the native taste of impartial radio stations, the components was extraordinarily worthwhile. When Mr. Lowry started to see indicators that the web would disrupt its well-oiled technique, he and Mr. McCombs offered the corporate in 2006 for $17.9 billion to a personal fairness group led by Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners. As a part of the deal, the group agreed to tackle greater than $8 billion within the firm’s debt.
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