Sunday, January 15, 2006

More Dropping Shoes: Stop 26 Riverbend Bankruptcy

It took us a while to sort through this here at OMW, but it looks like the Stop 26 Riverbend stations in Youngstown and Columbus are a step closer to being sold.

The company filed for bankruptcy in July, citing over $20 million in debt. And in September, the bankruptcy court ordered Stop 26 Riverbend to either find new financing, or sell the five stations... including WRBP/101.9 Hubbard, WASN/1500 Youngstown and WGFT/1330 Campbell in the Youngstown/Warren market, and WVKO/1580 Columbus and WVKO-FM/103.1 Johnstown in the Columbus market.

After some digging, we've found what actually happened on Friday, the latest step in this drama. The FCC approved an instant application to change ownership of the five stations from Stop 26 Riverbend Licenses, LLC to the same company name "debtor-in-possession". We're not experts in bankruptcy law, but we believe that means an investment banking firm named Ocean Ridge Capital Advisors is now in control of the situation enroute to an eventual bankruptcy auction of the stations.

Know this financial stuff better than we do? The filing is on the FCC website under WVKO(AM)'s license applications (click on "Application" next to the top application granted 1/12/06), and a PDF version of the actual bankruptcy filing from July is attached to that application.

We're now wondering if a certain small Mahoning Valley group owned by someone whose name rhymes with "Blunt" is still sniffing around at least the Youngstown market properties...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why would Mr. Glunt be sniffing around for more radio property is beyond me, he has his hands filled with the five he has now.
Buying any more stations at this time would put him in stop 26 spot.