Starting off the week with a couple of items outside the usual OMW coverage area, from the Queen City of Cincinnati:
CBS SELLS CINCY: It'll be Entercom buying the CBS Radio cluster in Cincinnati.
The $262 million deal also covers CBS Radio's stations in Rochester, Memphis and Austin. Joining the Entercom family in Cincinnati will be country WUBE/105.1, hot AC WKRQ/101.9 "Q102", oldies WGRR/103.5, and alt-rock WAQZ/97.3.
This deal means two things:
1) It ends speculation that former Clear Channel radio head Randy Michaels was a candidate to buy the CBS Radio Cincinnati cluster, at least.
Another piece of speculation involving Mr. Michaels also fell through recently, as he did not take over programming of Inner City liberal talk WLIB/1190 New York City. And today, AllAccess reports that instead of being a Randy Michaels-programmed competitor to Air America's programming on new flagship WWRL/1600 in NYC, WLIB is set to launch a gospel format on September 1st.
2) It leaves the CBS Columbus operations on the block for now. (CBS Radio's four station group in Cleveland is remaining with the company.)
NO REDS VOICE: The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Steve Stewart won't be returning to the Cincinnati Reds' radio booth alongside iconic team radio voice Marty Brennaman next season, as Stewart's contract won't be renewed.
He joined the radio team as a part-time replacement for Reds radio veteran Joe Nuxhall in 2004, and had his contract extended until the end of this season. Brennaman will reportedly be directly involved in picking Stewart's replacement.
The Reds are heard on a network based at Clear Channel talk WLW/700 in Cincinnati. They were also, at last check, heard as far north as the Canton market on ESPN affiliate WTIG/990 in Massillon...
Monday, August 21, 2006
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7 comments:
I read at one point that Cumulus wanted to buy some of the CBS stations in Cincy. Well I quess that went out the wiindow. Cumulus Youngstown is in the process of placing a new tower for WPIC-AM in Sharon inculding a new transmitter: http://790wpic.com/towerupdate.html
With this new advancement, could Cumulus be planning on moving WWIZ-FM COL to Hermitge after selling WRQK in Canton?
The CBS stations had fit into a possible reason why Cumulus is rumored in selling WQXK and WSOM. By buying the Cinci cluster from CBS, they could of used WQXK,WSOM as trade for one of the Clear Channel AM's so they could of had a complete cluster in the queen city.
That makes sense by going into Columbus. They enter a top 40 market since that is where there is both growth and revenue. Could the possible sale of at least WRQK in Canton and POSSIBILLY WQXK & WSOM in Youngstown fuel a purshase in the state captol? It kind of makes sense it gives Cumulus a presense in more markets in additional to existing markets like Youngstown and Toledo.
They don't. They look for markets that are growing or can produce a postive cash flow, revenue, and can produce ratings and make money. Columbus fits that description. But Cumulus has been making headlines all year so who really knows what next? Unless the new ABC radio corp sees Cumulus has a catch? Rest assured the Cumulus rude is just begining.
When it comes to Cumulus media, they run it pretty cheap. I should know because I was an intern at the Youngstown radio center. Based on the cheapness, I can see all of the laest developments and news. I can see and expect they will try for Columbus. There latest purshaes though might slow it down, and there need to cut underpreforming markets/stations and to bring in more revene will indeed open up new possibilyies. In the end only the Dickey brothers seem to know what is going on an and will make the final decision and I think they are about to make some major moves not being reported on inculding here in the buckeye state.
Will the stations being acquired formats change? I like listening to Rover here in Cincy in the mornings.
WWRL, which once had Steve Malzberg hosting morning drive, is now reduced to Airhead America! How sad.
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