I'M BAAAAACCCCKKKK!!

I'm Baaaaackk!!

I apologize for being away for a while...school has been occupying most of my time. Let me quickly summarize what is going on the world of radio as of late:

The most recent development is that of ESPN New York effectively acquiring a classic urban station by the name of 98.7 KISS FM. It was a very complicated deal where another urban station in town was also involved. 98.7 KISS FM's intellectual property rights were sold to WBLS, a station founded by the late civil rights leader Percy Sutton. Unfortunately, his family's company, Inner City Broadcasting (or ICBC Broadcast Holdings), is in deep bankruptcy and ready to go under. KISS FM's intellectual property rights were sold to WBLS's creditors under the name of YMF Media. ESPN comes in to play as they buy the 98.7 frequency from Emmis Communications, KISS FM's former owners, who is also coincidentally in major financial trouble.

Another development as of late is the formation of an all-news radio station in Atlanta, my hometown. Cumulus Media, a company owned and operated by the Dickey brothers, prominent Atlanta businessmen, is converting 106.7 Atlanta's Greatest Hits,  a station it bought through its merger with the bankrupt Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, to all-news. Cumulus is not very familiar with this format. So, many Atlanta media outlets are assisting Cumulus in this endeavour. For example, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, a business publication owned by the American City Business Journals division of Advance Publications, is providing business reports. WXIA (11Alive) is also assisting in the endeavour. The station is scheduled to launch its new format any day now.

*Update: The launch date is officially this coming Tuesday (May 29th), although a so-called "soft launch" is expected to happen some time this weekend.*

*Correction: It has been announced at the time of launch that the Fox owned-and-operated television station will be providing weather reports throughout each broadcast day. 11 Alive has yet to become involved in some way, shape, or form. I hope this clears some things up.*

As you might have heard, CBS Television Stations' flagship WCBS-TV is now one-half of a duopoly, two stations owned by a single company in one geographic area. CBS bought WLNY, an independent locally-owned television station on Long Island. Many plans having to do with this deal have been announced. For instance, the former Tribune Company-owned WPIX-TV General Manager, Betty Ellen Berlamino, has been named as the GM for this newly acquired station. Also, all news broadcasts as of now have been put on hold due to the acquisition. They will resume news broadcasting from the WCBS-TV studios at the CBS Broadcast Center, CBS's main production and distribution facility, some time in July. WLNY's former studio will still be used not as a broadcast facility, but as a public affairs show studio and a revamped Long Island bureau. *Update: CBS has officially launched the revamped Channel 10, as of July 2nd!! They debuted a morning show by the name of "The Couch" which features Z100's Carolina Bermudez as one of the anchors among others. Stay tuned for more!!*

This next story is close to my heart because I interned at these stations. The Long Island Radio Group, a division of Massachusetts-based Barnstable Broadcasting, back in March announced that they will be selling their four-station cluster to Connecticut-based Connoisseur Media. The deal was valued at 23 million dollars, according to radio-info.com. So far, none of those that I worked with were affected. *Update: Connoisseur Media has officially closed on the four Long Island stations formerly belonging to Al Kaneb's Barnstable Broadcasting.The deal was closed officially last week.*

That's all for now...these are only some of the big stories making news.

For more information, please feel free to email me at aaron.waisler@gmail.com or post on my forum page of this website. Some good websites to go to for more info on any of these or others are www.radio-info.com and www.allaccess.com. Thanks for reading and KEEP RADIO ALIVE!!