• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 28, 2009

Struggling with falling advertising revenue and a huge debt from the deal to take it private last year, Clear Channel Communications is cutting costs across all its businesses. The latest round cuts Clear Channel Radio's entire corporate marketing department. The radio division also laid off a number of employees in other areas and stopped matching contributions to 401(k) funds Tuesday.

With the end of CCR's corporate marketing department, all staffers are leaving the company, including Senior Vice President of Marketing Sanda Coyle and her top executvies.

The company did not specify how many employees were affected by the cutback. Overall, at the beginning of this year, Clear Channel Communications employed about 800 people in its corporate operations, from a total 21,300 employees worldwide. The company laid off about 1,850 employees in January, bringing the total down to about 19,450, with 1,500 of the layoffs coming at the radio division.

The demise of the corporate marketing department was followed by a wider set of layoffs, including a number of local on-air personalities.

Among the high-profile pink slip recipients are the hosts of "Brian and Joe," the morning duo at Cleveland's WMVX; Tommy Bodean, the production director and music director at WNOK in Columbia, SC; Charlie James, the morning talker at WVOC-AM, also in Columbia.

In addition, Brian Anthony, production director at WMKS in Greensboro, NC; morning host Mike O'Brian, co-host Linda Welby and producer Nikki French at KUSS in San Diego; veteran production director Russ Francis at WAEV in Savannah; afternoon host Mookie and production director Nathan Reed at WVKS in Toledo, OH; and over a dozen staffers at Clear Channel stations in St. Louis were laid off.

In some cases there was no information about replacement programming to fill the slots left by departing hosts. However, it was revealed in January that Clear Channel Radio is cutting costs by replacing some local shows with syndicated content. (Popular local shows will stay on the air.) Local morning shows have been replaced by Ryan Seacrest in a number of markets.

Finally, Clear Channel Radio said it is suspending matching contributions to employee 401(k) retirement funds for the remainder of 2009, beginning after the April 30 payroll. CC is the latest in a series of big media companies to suspend 401(k) or pension funds. There is a sliver of hope, however, as the company said it will make retroactive contributions if it meets 90% of its budget targets for the rest of the year.