It's being used by Texas-based CapStar Broadcasting, which, along with its sister company Chancellor Media, now owns more radio stations than anyone in the country. Steve Hicks is the president of CapStar, which specializes in small and medium market radio. What you're seeing in a market, especially a small market, is, you put a bunch of radio stations together, and it's a viable competitor to the newspaper. We can offer an advertiser five different stations in different formats, and we can reach a lot of people. Sometimes we have a higher reach than what the local newspaper has.
Profits are way up.
CapStar's operating profits are increasing at a rate of 20 percent a year. It has worked like this. A company like CapStar comes into a region and buys anywhere from three to eight radio stations, depending on the size of the market. The stations are then combined into one building. Support staff is cut.