Azoff Resigns From iHeartMedia Board

iHeartMedia announced on Friday that Irving Azoff has resigned from the company’s board. In a May 5 supplemental filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), iHeartMedia submitted a “Withdrawal of Nominee for Election as Director,” which read, “On May 3, 2017, Irving L. Azoff, a member of the Board and a nominee for re-election as a director at the Annual Meeting, submitted his resignation from the Board effective May 3, 2017. Mr. Azoff’s decision to resign as a director was not due to any disagreements with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices. In light of his departure from the Board, Mr. Azoff is no longer standing for re-election to the Board at the Annual Meeting. Therefore, the nomination of Mr. Azoff is withdrawn, and no other nominee for election at the Annual Meeting will be named in place of Mr. Azoff. The Board has yet to decide whether a new director will be appointed to fill the resulting vacancy or to reduce the size of the Board.”

According to Variety, Azoff had been on the board since September 2010. In 2013, Azoff launched Global Music Rights (GMR), an upstart music licensing company that represents a handful of top artists. As has been well documented in recent months, Azoff has gone to war with the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC), which negotiates with licensing companies on behalf of the nation’s radio stations. After talks broke down with GMR last fall, the two sides filed competing anti-trust lawsuits against each other, which remain pending in federal court.” As the Variety piece theorizes, “In light of the legal battle — which Azoff has called the most important fight of his career — Azoff’s continued presence on the board of the nation’s largest radio company may have become untenable.”