F. Scott Fitzgerald famously intoned that there were no second acts in American life. Fitzgerald never counted on Joe Clayton. The long-time executive would have been elected to the CE Hall of Fame based on his distinguished 25-year career at RCA, which included shepherding RCA's launch of DirecTV. But Clayton then re-emerged five years after leaving RCA as the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio.
Clayton was born October 11, 1949, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father owned a liquor store and Clayton always assumed he would earn his bachelor and master's degrees, then return to Kentucky to sell whiskey. As planned, he graduated magna cum laude with a BA in business administration from Bellarmine University in Louisville, then earned an MBA from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. But he never got back to Kentucky.
Instead, Clayton started his career with RCA in New York in February 1973 as a marketing associate. A year later at RCA's Indianapolis headquarters, he was named the company's color television product manager, then took on successive national merchandising responsibilities for RCA's black & white TVs, its new line of VHS VCRs, and finally, all of its TV products in 1978. Clayton then moved to the sales side, first tackling Detroit, then New York City, Chicago and then San Francisco. In 1985, Clayton went back to Indianapolis as VP of marketing operations, then video product marketing, then was named senior VP of all TV business in North and South America. In 1992, he was named executive VP of sales for the Americas and Asia for RCA's new parent company, Thomson.
Under his direction, RCA launched DirecTV with Hughes, starting with a grandiose event at Jackson, Mississippi retailer “Cowboy Maloney's” in June 1994. RCA also pioneered on-screen guide services with Gemstar, TV-centric Internet services with WebTV, TV/PC convergence with Compaq and interactive TV services with Sun Microsystems.
Clayton also resurrected RCA's long-dormant "His Master's Voice" dog icon Nipper and added the puppy Chipper, in all RCA marketing. Revenues more than doubled under Clayton's stewardship, and the company's market share in TV, camcorders and VCRs rose to more than 20 percent in each category. Clayton became a familiar face at industry events, famously invoking the bucolic scenes of Indiana's cornfields before launching into presentations.
Clayton resigned from what was left of a dismembered RCA in 1996, but wasn't idle for long. In 1997, he was named president and CEO of Frontier Communications, a Rochester, New York-based provider of integrated telecommunications services. The company’s stock price quickly appreciated more than 200 percent, and its market cap grew from $3 billion to $10 billion. Clayton drove the strategic direction of the company while working as a hands-on leader of Frontier's executive management team. In 1999, Global Crossing acquired Frontier and Clayton was named Vice Chairman of Global Crossing and President of the company's North American region.
In November 2001, Clayton began his second life in the CE industry when he was brought in to run Sirius Satellite Radio. As president and CEO, Clayton launched Sirius’ service and expanded its retail presence to 25,000 locations and to the first one million subscribers, and increased Sirius' market valuation from $40 million to $5 billion. Among Clayton's high-profile moves: making exclusive content and marketing deals with the NFL, NBA, the NHL, the NCAA Final Four and signing radio's number one personality, Howard Stern. Clayton became chairman in 2004.
Clayton served as CEA chairman from 1995-96. He also was a director for E.W. Scripps, The Good Guys, Global Crossing, Frontier Corp., Transcend Corp., Infogear and Sirius. In 2007, Clayton was inducted into Indiana University’s School of Business Hall of Fame.