Here’s a deal that fans of 1970s album-oriented rock will appreciate.
A pair of FM radio stations based in the city where baseball legend Nolan Ryan graduated high school and began his storied pitching career have just traded hands.
One of the stations is WOLD.
We’ve got all of the details in RBR+TVBR‘s TRANSACTIONS TODAY for Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017.
CDM Broadcasting is selling its two FMs in Marion: WOLD-FM 102.5 and WZVA-FM 103.5.
Both are Class A facilities, covering an area of Southwestern Virginia that spans a largely rural area sandwiched between Johnson City, Tenn. and Bristol, Va., to the south, and Blacksburg, Va., home of Virginia Tech, to the north.
The buyer is T.E.C.O. Broadcasting, wholly owned by Thomas Copenhaver.
The broker-free transaction calls for payment via Promissory Note, valued at $651,039, back-dated to Feb. 1, 2017.
Copenhaver has no other broadcast interests.
The WOLD call letters have been associated with the FM station since 1968 — five years prior to Harry Chapin’s release of the single “W-O-L-D.” However, the song has nothing to do with the Virginia facility. Rather, Chapin’s 1973 chart hit was inspired by Jim Connors, the morning host at the former Top 40 WMEX-AM in Boston. Connors was the first air talent to play Chapin’s song “Taxi” on the radio, cementing his career as a pop artist before his untimely death of a heart attack and subsequent car crash on the Long Island Expressway, on July 16, 1981.
