RBC Communications is getting paired FMs on 93.5 MHz serving Los Angeles and San Bernardino – and here are a few of the interesting particulars of that deal.
The broad outlines show the Urban tandem going from Magic Broadcasting, headed by Michael E. Durden, to RBC Communications, headed by Anthony Yuen.
The price will be $19.5M cash.
The first item of interest is the fact that there will be a foreign ownership interest in the station. The FCC caps such an interest at 25%, and in this case it will fall safely underneath at 20%. The stake will be held by an entity called Phoenix Satellite Television Ltd., which is listed as having members home to both the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman islands.
The other interesting tidbit is a milepost which puts in stark relief the vastly diminished optimism about the radio business that has developed over the past several years. We went back in time to August 17, 2004 to look at a prior deal for this FM pair.
At the time, they were KZAB-FM Redondo Beach and KZBA-FM Ontario.
The seller was Spanish Broadcasting System Southwest, and the buyer was Syles Media Group.
And the price was – are you sitting down? – One hundred and twenty million dollars.
Displayed in numerals, that’s $120,000,000, more than ten times the current price.
Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Editor’s note: thanks to an alert reader who caught a typo in the current price…now corrected
