The ultimate status symbol for a corporate executive in the music business is apparently something called “a mist tunnel.”
Bob Pittman, who founded MTV a couple generations ago, is now the head of Clear Channel, which owns 850 radio stations across the country. Millions of dollars were spent on new offices on West 55th Street when the company consolidated staff from other locations.
Jerry Del Colliano, who runs the Inside Music Media Web site, reports that Pittman’s visitors will walk through a fine mist when they get off the elevator.
“As you walk through the mist, you hear directed speakers playing Clear Channel stations across the country,” a source told Del Colliano.
Clear Channel, now owned by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, is said to be $21 billion in debt, and has laid off thousands of employees.
The source suggested that Pittman scrap the tunnel and save the money “so you don’t have to keep firing people and cutting salaries.”
A Clear Channel spokeswoman told me the company spent below-average costs per square foot to renovate its new digs, and said of the mist tunnel, “It’s a hallway that leads to the front desk.”
The mist isn’t for cooling or humidifying. “It’s a low-cost presentation effect,” she said. “If we have an advertiser come in, we can project their logo [onto the mist.]”