Radio and Television Transactions

An old-fashioned AM-FM combo is getting a new owner. KNCY AM-FM, operating on the banks of the Missouri River, will be going from Riverfront Broadcasting to Flood Broadcasting in a cash deal.

There isn’t a lot of money being exchanged. The station is near but will not reach a top 10 radio market. The station doesn’t even have call letters yet, much less an air presence. But it does have a familiar name to its credit. The station, when built, will be a noncom on the outskirts of Washington DC.

A pair of FMs serving the Abilene TX market is going to Community Broadcast Partners, headed by David and Richard Klement, in a deal structured to give them a chance to run the stations before making the bulk of the payments for them. The seller is Doud Media Group.

A deal under which Educational Media Foundation would have acquired KHLB-FM Mason TX and another FM fell apart – and now KHLB-FM has been resold, packaged with a different FM than included in the EMF deal.

After failing to stop a deal to sell a Roanoke-Lynchburg FM to an already-large station group, 3 Daughters Media owner Gary Burns is contemplating an appeal, and is also calling for the use of Census Bureau rather than Arbitron data when defining radio markets.

Sometimes a deal for a radio station raises questions that are far beyond the scope of the FCC’s regulatory authority, and such is the case in the deal for KCHT-FM Childress TX. Although the deal has an element which might pique FCC interest, it also ventures into an area explored long ago by ancient Greek playwrights.

The price people paid for stations before radio started going south, and in particular before the entire economy went precipitously south in the Fall of 2008, is in many cases much different than they are paying for the same stations now. And WTMY-AM Sarasota FL is a case in point.