Wednesday, January 19, 2011

BREAKING NEWS: Major Sales in Dayton AND Cincinnati

All you-know-what has broken loose in the media world, with two shoes dropping within just hours.

WNKU Buying in Middletown, Portsmouth: Let's start from the lower end of the dial, where 89.7 WNKU-FM/Highland Heights will expand to a regional network beginning February 1.

That's because the AAA format station will buy WPAY-FM 104.1/Portsmouth, Ohio and WPFB-AM 910 and WPFB-FM 105.9, both licensed to Middletown, Ohio, for 6.75 million dollars. WNKU will begin to operate the two FM's on February 1.

However, it's expected that WNKU will then turn around and sell off the AM, plus its translator, W233BG 94.5/Port Union, Ohio, together to offset the purchase price of the two FM's.

This sale would solve WNKU's problems in Butler County, and give them a shot at reaching areas from Piqua, OH to Charleston, West Virginia.

Bonneville Selling Out of Cincinnati: The other shoe dropped just about 90 minutes later, and involves Bonneville Broadcasting's entire Cincinnati cluster.

They're getting out of town, selling WREW-FM 94.9/Fairfield, WYGY-FM 97.3/Fort Thomas, WKRQ-FM 101.9/Cincinnati and WUBE-FM 105.1/Cincinnati (also known as Rewind 94.9, 97.3 The Wolf, Q102 and B105) to Hubbard Broadcasting, as reported by multiple outlets including Radio-Info.com. That's part of a 505 million dollar deal that also includes Bonneville's Chicago, St. Louis and Washington, DC stations.

It's unclear just yet if that'll result in any changes to the stations, but you can bet we'll be following this closely.

Guess we can't call the building on Reading Road that the four stations are housed in "Bonneville Mountain" anymore.

"Mount Hubbard", anyone?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How 'bout "Hubbard Hill"?

J. Moses said...

"Hubbard Hill"... I like the sound of that!