More Radio Days For McLendon?

Although the listing in the telephone book still reads “McLendon Broadcasting,” The McLen-don Companies of Dallas, legendary in the broadcasting business, haven’t owned a radio station since the late Seventies. Bart McLen-don, whose father, Gordon, built McLendon Broadcasting into the largest chain of independent radio stations in the United States, looks back on his dad’s accomplishments and the history of the company he now directs with the modest pride of a son who followed a famous father into business.

“We sold the last of the radio stations-KNUS in Dallas-in 1977,” McLendon says, somewhat nostalgically. “We-my father and grandfather and myself-had initially started disbanding the broadcasting part of the operations as early as 1970.”

McLendon wishes he still had those radio stations, but his business isn’t exactly suffering. The family took the money from the broadcasting sales and put it primarily into Texas real estate. Up until this latest crunch, he says, the company did very well.

“Certainly we did better than with anything we could have done in the radio business. In hindsight, you can say the real estate market has come crashing down, but our company is in fabulous shape. We don’t owe any money.”

So, while he waits for the Dallas real estate market to come back, McLendon is looking to diversify In the future, he doesn’t want more than 25 or 30 percent of the company’s assets concentrated in any one industry. Recently, McLendon entered the energy sector, buying an oil company with sixty-five wells in East Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

McLendon, forty, has a conservative lifestyle in line with his business habits. Up most mornings before 4 a.m., McLendon jokes that he’s pretty boring at night. “When the six o’clock news ! is the late, late show, you know there is something missing in your life.”

For such a straight arrow, McLendon has a very colorful background-though, like his father, he remains right-wing throughout. After he finished a very structured boarding school in California, he joined the Marine Corps as a reservist in 1965. After three years stateside, he got out of the Marines and was hired by the Chicago Sun-Times as a teenage war correspondent. After three years in Vietnam, McLendon entered Columbia University in New York City.

After graduation, he landed a job in the city in financial public ;relations. Finding that a pretty dry business, McLendon also co-hosted an all-night radio show. When that life got too hectic. Dad invited him into the family business, where he’s been ever since.

Currently, McLendon Broadcasting is a misnomer, though Bart still has a spark for the radio world, “

I think at some stage in our diversification that we want to get back into broadcasting. I love the business and I know the business, so it’s a logical move.”