Donald Seehafer is gifting each of four children with an equal chunk of seven stations owned and operated by Seehafer Broadcasting Corporation. But only one will wind up with the control of the group. Here’s how they are pulling it off.
In the first part of the deal, filed as an FCC Form 315 transfer of control, Donald, figuratively speaking, is dividing the company into four pieces, festooning them with wrapping paper and ribbons, and giving one apiece to children Mark Seehafer, Debra Seehafer, Sandra Halverson and Karen Stevenson.
In part two, Mark will turn around and hand a promissory note valued at $1.2M in exchange for their share of the group. So in the end, Mark will have the stations in a deal with a total promissory note value of $3.6M. Figure in Mark’s equal fourth share and the total value of the transaction increases to $4.8M.
Three of the stations are near Sheboygan on the shores of Lake Michigan. They include WLKN-FM Cleveland WI and WOMT-AM/WQTC-FM, both in Manitowoc WI.
The other four are in or just to the west of Stevens Point portion of the Wausau-Stevens Point radio market. They include WFHR-AM Wisconsin Rapids WI, WDLB-AM Marshfield WI, WOSQ-FM Spencer WI and WLJY-FM Nekoosa WI.
RBR-TVBR observation: Speaking as a person who grew up as one kid in a large family, it makes a lot of sense to make sure the care and feeding of this group will be clearly under the care and feeding of one and only one individual. My five brothers and sisters and I had a hard enough time doing something as simple as peacefully sharing the available territory in the family station wagon. A task as complex as running a radio group in a flat economy would have been far beyond our diplomatic capabilities.
While we would never project our own failings as young siblings onto any other family, we suspect that the Seehafers have, for their own reasons, selected the appropriate path upon which these stations will journey into the future.
