Radio and Television Transactions

On Monday, TRANSACTIONS TODAY reported on the sale of a radio station serving the Nashville market by The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. It turns out we mixed up the call letters of the station Moody is selling with another facility serving Music City. Here's the corrected information on this deal.

The first week in June is upon us, and in just under four weeks the first half of 2018 will have concluded. How's the deal-making marketplace shaping up? Activity is still relatively quiet, and we officially usher in the new month by devoting TRANSACTIONS TODAY to a Michiana FM offering faith-based programming.

Drive two hours east of downtown L.A., and you'll hit the Coachella Valley -- home to such cities as Palm Springs and Indio. This is where a Class B AM has been using an FM translator to offer local listeners a Classic Hits format branded with the translator's MHz frequency. Now, the AM is acquiring a second FM translator in a move to boost its coverage in the shadow of San Gorgonio Mountain.

In late March TRANSACTIONS TODAY reported on the sale of a Chicago-area FM by an operator offering a mix of comedy bits, Polish pop, Euro Top 40, and EDM tunes to Polish-American listeners across the Windy City. That deal has now closed.

It's still very quiet out there in Deal Land. We have one trade to cover in Thursday's TRANSACTIONS TODAY, and it involves two FMs in Texas. The asset purchase agreement was signed six weeks ago, but the Form 314 filing was made with the FCC today.

RedRock Radio Group, LLC, and Grand Junction Media, Inc., have agreed on the sale of radio station KGJX-FM in Fruita, Colorado, and FM translators K284AP, K232CR, and K297BR in Grand Junction, Colorado.

There are, however, a few applications for transfer of control that have been filed, among them one for KPLR-TV in St. Louis, Missouri. Tribune Media Company of Chicago, IL, has filed an application to sell the property.

A Class C AM just west of Altoona, Pa., is trading hands. At the same time, two Boston-area AMs are getting a "Real" change in owners. These are the deals under the microscope in the Memorial Day Weekend edition of TRANSACTIONS TODAY.

There's a change in ownership at a pair of AMs in the Pacific Northwest that serve the region's biggest market with Punjabi programming targeted to South Asians. It's the top deal in the Thursday edition of TRANSACTIONS TODAY, which also has the price Urban One is paying for WTEM-AM in Washington, D.C.

In Colorado is a radio station with a booming Class D signal that stretches to the New Mexico border in the south all the way to the Wyoming border in the north. It also boasts a valuable FM translator that puts a signal right over its primary market. Locals need not ask if the "Blazin'" programming currently heard will be torched by the new owner.

Canton may be best-known as the highly Anglicized name of Guangzhou, China -- and just a few Chinese restaurants across the U.S. It's also the name of a town in the Land of Lincoln, and that's where one company plans on grabbing an AM/FM combo and an FM translator in a deal that is yet to be filed with the FCC.

In what is one of the first deals to arrive following the FCC's November 2017 decision to end its 42-year-old newspaper/broadcast media cross-ownership rules, the owner of a daily newspaper serving a city on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies has agreed to purchase an FM and its three associated translators for an undisclosed price.

A Class B AM covering much of the Baltimore-Washington corridor that has a long, rich history in D.C. is being acquired by a leading broadcasting company with a rich history of its own in the Nation's Capital. The transaction also marks the end of radio station ownership for an entity controlled by the man who controls the NFL's Washington Redskins.

A quartet of non-commercial "educational" radio stations in Maine have just been sold to a religious broadcasting operation responsible for some very "relevant radio" across the U.S. It's the lone new deal up for discussion in the Weekend Edition of TRANSACTIONS TODAY, which also sees a closing in the Midwest featuring Jason James of Patrick Communications as the broker.

A Class C3 station offering "Super Hits of the '60s and '70s" in a rural part of this Southern state is trading hands. At the same time, a business decision in the Outer Banks of North Carolina has effectively reduced "Your Classic Rock" to a single signal, ending a simulcast. Those are the two deals under the microscope in TRANSACTIONS TODAY.