The Real Problem with Bain Capital

     Residents of the Dallas-Fort Worth area may have noticed that in March of 2012 popular talk radio host Mark Davis was suddenly taken off the air. His contract ended, and rather than attempting to keep one of local radio station WBAP’s most successful personalities Clear Channel Communications, which had shortly before bought WBAP, simply ended his show. WBAP has yet to fill the hole left in their programming by the end of the Mark Davis Show with anything other than a lackluster show known as “WBAP Talk.” The content is as exciting as the name. Further confusing listeners in the DFW area, Laura Ingraham, another highly rated (and better known) talk radio host, was removed from the air around the same time. Neither program was flagging as far as listeners were concerned, and in fact the Mark Davis Show was one of the more popular on WBAP. It would appear that Clear Channel acted against its own best interests—a very odd decision for a profit-driven company. With this in mind, it is worth considering the possibility that something deeper was at play.