Common Sense Defeats the Clear Channel Deal

At last, a deal that won't blow up after it is closed ... one that blew up before it closed.

The idea that anyone would want to take a radio company private is so painfully stupid that I have to believe it was done simply because someone fooled someone else, the way that Knight-Ridder fooled McClatchy (MNI - commentary - Cramer's Take) in newspapers. I have heard so many other justifications for this deal -- other media properties, billboards -- but they were all the stuff you talk about when you do something stupid but you are rich and smart and have a lot of ego so you stick with it.

Radio's dead in this country, a wasting option that will be even more wasting when the Sirius (SIRI - commentary - Cramer's Take) deal gets done -- Goldman now hates Sirius! Did it like it more before Justice approved? That makes sense, yeah yeah, sure sure.

Now that the word is that the deal is dead, we are reminded that ego was the driving force behind the last deals through the chute and that it took someone with a real set of cojones to stop a deal like one for a sound-system company that makes great sound for automobiles.

The hubris of those in the radio industry -- cash flow this, cash flow that -- astounds me. I worked in that business. It is harder for me to be confused than others.

But I want to make it clear, from the day I visited the Mays Brothers in San Antonio, Texas, some three years ago, that these guys were convinced that radio was about to take off in a big way. They could talk anybody into anything. These guys should be big snowmaker sellers in the Yukon.

Anyway, the main reason why this is great that it is breaking down is that it makes for one less Tribune (TXA - commentary - Cramer's Take), which is a deal that is the butt of many jokes but shouldn't be, because unlike Clear Channel (CCU - commentary - Cramer's Take), which involved actual rich people's money, Tribune involved a deal with employees' money so they could bear the brunt of both layoffs and a loss of their retirement.

We want to see these deals not get done. Now we have a "no harm, no foul" Alliance Data (ADS - commentary - Cramer's Take)-Harman (HAR - commentary - Cramer's Take) kind of thing that will just go along its merry recession way and not hurt billions of dollars worth of bondholders and make us read in the Journal that the world's coming to an end.

I say, bravo. Common sense prevails. Another sign that the bear market may be over sooner than I thought, because we would not be able to have a clear end to the bear until Clear Channel filed bankruptcy, loaded down by too much debt and not enough cash flow!

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At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in stocks mentioned.

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