On Monday (Sept. 12), Lowry Mays, a businessman from San Antonio who built Clear Channel Communications, the founder of iHeartMedia, into a giant broadcasting powerhouse of the post-consolidation era, passed away at the age of 87.
The San Antonio businessman Mays passed away on Monday, according to Texas A&M University, where he studied and where the Lowry Mays College & Graduate School of Business was established. The place and details of Mays’s passing were not mentioned.
On July 24, 1935, Lester Lowry Mays was born in Houston. Mays was educated in the Dallas suburb of University Park, where he went to Highland Park High School. A&M College of Texas (now Texas A&M University), where he later attended school, is where he earned a Bachelor of Science in petroleum engineering.
Mays enlisted in the Air Force in 1957 after receiving his diploma and served as an officer there. Mays graduated from Harvard University with a Master of Business Administration after leaving the Air Force. During his ten years at Russ & Company, he developed into an investment banker and attained the position of Vice President of Corporate Finance.
With Red McCombs, owner of a nearby auto dealership (who later acquired ownership interests in the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, and Minnesota Vikings), Mays founded the San Antonio Broadcasting Company in 1972. They initially purchased a single station, KEEZ, and later added WOAI in 1975.
It could hear its 50,000-watt broadcast thousands of miles distant on a “clear” night, and it was known as a “clear channel” station because no other station shared its frequency.
The business acquired ten more struggling radio stations over the following years and turned them into successful, typically by changing the formats to religious or talk programming. Their first purchase outside of San Antonio was KPAC in Port Arthur, Texas, which was later improved with a 2,000-foot tower built nearby to cover Houston.
Lowry Mays and Peggy (his wife) Impact Award in the 2017 Year was given to the pair after Lowry Mays received the Sterling C Evans Medal from the Texas A&M Foundation Board of Trustees in 2010 for his endowment to the university. The honor is still given to people whose excellent leadership skills have impacted the institution.
Entrepreneur Lowry Mays had an estimated $1.10 billion net worth.
Amelia Warner
Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.
