A pair of closings that come right before the Thanksgiving Day holiday are done.
One involves two big New York FMs now formally owned by a joint venture that sees its now-former licensee’s founder and CEO team up with Soo Kim — the head of a company that just acquired several radio and TV stations.
The other involves a former “NASH Icon” FM in Georgia spun by Cumulus Media as a required divestiture tied to its emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
SOO & JEFF’S GOTHAM GROUP
Now under the ownership of new public company Mediaco Holding, a partnership between Emmis Communications and New York investment firm Standard General, are heritage Urban WBLS-FM 107.5 and Hip-Hop WQHT-FM “Hot 97” in New York.
Emmis will receive $91.5 million in cash from Standard General to form the partnership, along with a $5 million note receivable. Emmis will also receive 23.72% of the common equity of Mediaco.
Emmis will distribute this common equity pro rata to its shareholders in a taxable dividend.
Mediaco will be a publicly traded company, and is expected to trade on NASDAQ.
Emmis Chairman/CEO Jeff Smulyan is Mediaco’s CEO, and Emmis will continue to manage the stations.
Emmis will remain a separate public company, with its media holdings strictly tied to its four radio stations in Indianapolis and Indianapolis Monthly magazine; and still-for-sale WLIB-AM 1190. While it owns WEPN-FM 98.7, the station is operated through a long-term LMA agreement with ESPN Radio.
Emmis has been involved with WLIB and WBLS since February 2014, when it acquired the stations from YMF Media for $131 million in cash.
It followed an April 2012 arrangement that “merged” former Urban AC WRKS-FM into WBLS and then lease WRKS to ESPN Radio, allowing it to move the Sports Talk network from the 1050 kHz facility.
The ownership of WQHT dates to February 1986, when its original home of 103.5 MHz — at the time WAPP — was acquired by Emmis from Doubleday Broadcasting. It relocated to 97.1 MHz, formerly the home of WYNY, in a much-heralded November 1988 facility swap that also resulted in the end of WNBC-AM 660.
‘QUEEN BEE’ BUZZES AS NASH FADES
In October, RBR+TVBR reported on the sale of Class A “Nash Icon”-branded Country WNUQ-FM 102.1 in Sylvester, Ga., serving an area east of Albany, Ga., to Pretoria Fields Collective Media.
A $90,000 purchase price has been struck for the station, which was placed by Cumulus Media into the Elliot Evers-led Mainstay Station Trust LLC in March 2018, per regulatory requirements tied to Cumulus’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
WNUQ is now set to use the WPFQ call letters, with a format change coming Jan. 2. It already plans to refer to itself as “Q102, The Queen Bee,” according to a Facebook post.
Expect music fit for a brew pub, as Pretoria Fields is a microbrewery.
The buyer is represented by Ladd Johnson of Edinger Associates PLLC.
