When is it time to sell the tower site and what goes into that decision? We’ve been following the WMAL-AM tower site sale in the metropolitan Washington area (see other story) and widened the focus to other station owners in our interview with Gary Cavell, president of Cavell, Mertz & Associates, Inc.
More AMs are selling their tower sites as the land becomes more valuable. Certainly FMs and TV station owner sell their sites, too.
Cavell, Mertz & Associates, Inc. President Gary Cavell has had clients facing this dilemma and tells RBR+TVBR that some clients are facing this decision now.
“It’s a hard decision. What do you do if someone is offering you money?,” and that figure may be worth more than the station is worth, he says.
You need to determine the stick value and determine if you can move the station and re-build somewhere else. That means finding a new site and for an AM that can be difficult because of the large amount of land needed to accommodate the ground system.
“The big issue is what do you do with the signal? Do you turn it off or can you improve it?” according to Cavell.
Depending on the value of the facilities and how much you can sell the station for, it’s better to turn off the station. “Some people will shut it off or cripple the signal just to have “an on-air signal after a move, he says.
But it’s not always a bad story.
Cavell recalls a client in Missouri who owned both high and low frequency stations. The client chose to sell the site for one and fit that into the middle of the other’s property. “He made money on that transaction,” recalls Cavell.
And sometimes being told by the tower owner you’ve got to go “forces you to make a move you had never thought of.”
Meanwhile, Cumulus has told the FCC it plans to move WMAL to the transmitter site for Red Zebra WSPZ, 570 kHz, Bethesda, Maryland. The ground system for WSPZ on 570 kHz extends out from each tower 432 feet and is more than sufficient for WMAL on 630 kHz, the company tells the FCC in a filing.
