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Beasley buys Greater Media

Oh, my God! I say that Greater Media get rid of all its Boston stations and spin 'em off to local owners. I can make sure I can buy one of 'em. Maybe I can buy WBOS and re-pair it with WUNR!
 
freqlost said:
Good or bad for Boston ?
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Probably not too good. Greater Media's HQ is in Braintree, and it's doubtful the combined company is going to need two headquarters.

On the radio side, I'm sure they can find an extra studio in 55 Morrissey to stuff WRCA into. 55 Morrissey was built with a spare studio unit were the company to ever acquire an extra station. That extra studio was merged with the WSJZ studio years back to create an appropriate talk studio for WTKK. Given 96.9's transition out of talk, not sure what that part of the building looks like these days.
 
It's hard to say. Beasley is a good company, but it definitely likes to do things its way. Of course, Greater Media has been making lots of cuts throughout the company over the last few weeks. They were likely because it was about to merge, and Beasley was probably aware of what was going on.

The biggest instability will be Charlotte. Beasley will be over the limit there.
 
Yes, assuming it doesn't sell it to pare down its cluster there. It will have to drop one AM and two FM's in Charlotte.
 
WBQT 96.9 had been talk as WTKK from 1999 until a couple yrs ago. In 2007 they wound up dumping Imus after the Rutgers comments. On his Entercom-syndicated (at the time) network, Howie Carr jokingly called them WTKKK. By summer of that year, Howie tried to jump to Greater and WTKK but a judge ruled he couldn't. No idea what the station would have been like had it happened. (WTKK already had a page on its site lined up; Jay Severin joked to Michael Graham, "Shall we say, Drive My Carr?"'; and promotional "Carr bars" (chocolate bars) were ordered. Howie later gave these away at public appearances.

Howie used to joke about malfunctions at WRKO etc by saying "Entercom happens". One time I had Michele McPhee on
WTKK (though am not the hugest fan of her) and when something wouldn't play, she chuckled and said, "Greater Media happens..."
 
Easiest way for Beasley to solve its over-the limit issue in Charlotte would be to flip Greater Media's stations there (WBT-A/F and WLNK.)
 
john garrett said:
When did Entercom syndicate Imus? I was not aware that that they ever syndicated IMUS?
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Syndicate .... no

When Entercom got WEEI AM in the CBS over the limit sale when American Radio Systems was acquired by CBS in IIRC late 1998, WEEI AM was running Imus in the Morning, and had been since 1993.

So for a few months Entercom ran Imus on 850 until they brought in whatever it was they brought in...

And if someone wants to fact check, Imus was on 590 for about a year before ARS bought Back Bay Broadcasting and moved WEEI from 590 to 850 in August of 1994 (flushing WHDH down the crapper, Thanks Jeff for the great send off of a Heritage Call)

Disclaimer: I am old and tired, the brain cells are not what they once were, I may be wrong on one or more of the opinions stated above. If so please disregard.
 
I forgot who was syndicating Imus before,maybe Westwood One,but his NYC flagship had been WFAN.Later he was on WABC and I think Cumulus syndicates him now.Still on some New England stations.Maybe 790 Prov. (Cumulus owned) and 1490, formerly 970,Portland ME. Anyway in the 90s he was on WEEI and they may have followed him with syndie Fabulous Sports Babe until she was replaced by John Dennis and Gerry Callahan in late mornings. Then Jason Wolfe decided to dump Imus and move D&C to morning drive.

WTKK 96.9 picked up Imus just before their flip to talk in the fall of 1999.Yes actually they were still WSJZ for a time with "Imus in the Morning,Smooth Jazz all day".What I was talking about was in 07.
 
newsbot2 said:
Easiest way for Beasley to solve its over-the limit issue in Charlotte would be to flip Greater Media's stations there (WBT-A/F and WLNK.)
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The Link (WLNK) has Bob & Sheri syndicated to roughly 40-45 stations around the country including 3 stations up in Maine. I used to listen to them years back when I had a job where I was in an area that carried their show. Would Beasley just up and dump them?
 
There seems to be a lot of smoke indicating Beasley will simply keep its existing cluster and sell the Greater Media stations in Charlotte. Unless it's worried about DOJ implications, that doesn't make much sense to me. Of course, I'm also not the one who just spent $240 million on radio stations. So, take that for what it's worth!
 
Kent said:
There seems to be a lot of smoke indicating Beasley will simply keep its existing cluster and sell the Greater Media stations in Charlotte. Unless it's worried about DOJ implications, that doesn't make much sense to me. Of course, I'm also not the one who just spent $240 million on radio stations. So, take that for what it's worth!
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They have no choice but to spin off something in Charlotte.

Between the stuff they got from CBS in the swap not too long ago, and now this buy, they are over the FCC ownership and probably % of ad revenue for the market.

No big deal....

When CBS bought ARS, they had to put some stations into trust pending a sale to a willing buyer.

It has happened in other places.

To my knowledge, Charlotte is the only market where there is an issue, and Beasley will do what they have to do in order to stay below the station count cap and percentage of market revenue restrictions.

They will get WBCN, an extended band AM with syndicated conservative talk... I bet that goes for short money when they spin it off.

I wonder if they will bring the calls back to Boston before letting the property go?

the one thing that sucks is all the people that have been axed not only in the Boston cluster, but across the whole Greater Media landscape.

Now I have always had a lot of respect for Peter Smyth, but he has taken GM off the rails as of late IMHO.

have you heard his interview from Radio-Ink?

what a crock of crap...

https://soundcloud.com/radio_ink/peter-smyth-interview-july-2016
 
I'd rather keep the Charlotte discussion to a minimum on the Boston board, but, if you have the opportunity to add WBT and WLNK to your Charlotte portfolio, the most logical stations to dump are WBT-FM 99.3 and WKQC 104.7 (unless the DOJ steps in). WKQC is the worst of the signals in the current Beasley portfolio, and you don't need two Hot AC's.
 
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