On Thursday, RBR+TVBR was first to report on a swap of facilities in the Wilkes Barre-Scranton area involving the owner of an FM operation billed as “GEM 99 & 100.”
Now, the group led by Benjamin Smith and Kevin Fitzgerald has submitted paperwork with the FCC for its regulatory approval that will give it ownership of a “warm” heritage property in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Geos Communications is agreeing to purchase WARM-AM 590 in Scranton and FM translator W269CF in Scranton from 7 Mountains Media.
It is a deal that makes sense for the buyer, as it has been of late a simulcast partner of the facilities that house “GEM 99 & 100.”
A $100,000 payment has been agreed to between the parties, with $20,000 payable via wire transfer at closing. The remaining $80,000 will be honored via a Promissory Note bearing interest of 6%. Equal payments of $10,686.72 will be made over a total of eight quarters.
WARM has seen extended periods of silence in recent years, and resumed operations in late May ahead of the LMS filing of the asset sale agreement by 7 Mountains. WARM-AM signed on in 1940, and across the 1960s and 1970s served as a leading Top 40 station known as “The Mighty 590.” By the 1980s, with FM radio attracting audiences and WKRZ-FM growing as a Top 40, WARM attempted various formats designed to attract adult listeners.
By the 2000s, WARM became a Citadel Broadcasting property, and then a Cumulus Media station. Cumulus sold WARM in September 2021, with 7 Mountains obtaining the station in January 2022 after it was briefly owned by locally based Major Keystone.
