The parent company of Rocky Mountain PBS, Jazz-focused KUVO-FM in Denver and HD2 “Urban Alternative” offering “The Drop” is the latest noncommercial educational entity that has chosen to downsize after a Republican-led Congress effort crippled federal funds distributed through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
With Rocky Mountain Public Media President/CEO Amanda Mountain signing off on the deal, the sale of KRMZ-24 in Steamboat Springs, Colo., has been finalized.
The deal ends 19 years of full-power PBS service to the ski resort community, as RMPM had acquired KRMZ in 2007. Before that, it was a commercially licensed home of Telemundo programming.
Parting ways with what became the fifth Rocky Mountain PBS transmitter will bring RMPM $200,000.
Who is the buyer? SynCom Media Group Inc. is purchasing KRMZ and has made a $10,000 deposit to RMPM. The licensee is based in Westminster, Colo., and has been led by Christopher Blair since April 1993. He’s been associated with such Denver DMA stations as KHDT-LD.
There is no broker or finder associated with this transaction.
The sale of KRMZ comes after Santa Monica College, parent of KCRW in Southern California, filed paperwork with the FCC that disclosed it wishes to sell KERW-FM in Los Osos, Calif., to Dimes Media — assuming that company can obtain a waiver to overcome a local ownership limit that it is challenging based on signal contour and true market definition, in its view, of San Luis Obispo.
The sale of KERW comes as KCRW’s budget shortfall from the lack of federal funding put its robust initiatives in a quandary.
