Clear Channel Locks Up Senior Execs -- to Keep Them Away From Sam Zell?

By: Mark Fitzgerald Clear Channel Radio, the San Antonio-based radio giant that has lost top executives to Sam Zell's Tribune Co., made a point of announcing Tuesday that it had locked up several key executives in multi-year contracts.

Clear Channel also pointedly noted that its CEO and president, John Hogan, has just signed a five-year employment contract.

Were these signings intended to keep more executives from defecting to Tribune, where at least four top executives are former Clear Channel veterans?

A Clear Channel spokesperson said she was unable to immediately respond to that issue. No company officials responded immediately to a subsequent e-mail inquiry.

But Tribune has been a touchy subject for Clear Channel.

This spring, Clear Channel sued Tribune in federal court, alleging the theft of trade secrets by hiring away Andrew Friedman. The executive had an employment contract that forbade him from taking the online development position at the Tribune until the end of 2008, Clear Channel alleged.

It also moved to prevent the hiring of Carolyn Gilbert, the president of its research and marketing subsidiary Critical Mass Media, to become executive vice president of Tribune's multi-media sales group.

Those lawsuits were settled in July with no terms disclosed.

Tribune Chairman and CEO Zell once owned a group of radio stations that were later sold to Clear Channel. Randy Michaels, one of his former employees who went on to head up Clear Channel Radio, was named COO when Zell took the Chicago newspaper and broadcast company private last December. Michaels left Clear Channel in 2002.