LHTC Media is acquiring Spectrum Radio Fairmont’s four stations in the Morgantown WV market.
LHTC will add Classic Rock “94 Rock” 94.3 WRLF Fairmont, Hot AC “Variety 100.9” WZST Westover, News/Talk 920 WMMN Fairmont, and News/Talk 1490 WTCS Fairmont for $700,000 as long as the cluster 2016 revenue is that amount, otherwise the price drops to $650,000. WZST currently serves as the flagship station for the Morgantown based West Virginia University Mountaineers.
LHTC owns “PA Talk” 910 WAVL Apollo, 1480 WCNS Latrobe and cable television systems in Western Pennsylvania.
This is to announce that a contract has been signed and an application has been filed with the FCC for the transfer of radio stations WRLF-FM, WZST- FM, WMMN-AM, and WTCS-AM, Morgantown-Clarksburg-Fairmont, West Virginia, from Spectrum Radio Fairmont, LLC to LHTC Media Inc. of West Virginia.
The Seller, Spectrum Radio Fairmont, LLC, is a West Virginia-based company. Spectrum Radio has no other broadcast interests.
The Buyer, LHTC Media Inc. of West Virginia, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Laurel Highland Total Communications, Inc. (“LH Total”) headed by Jim Kail. Another wholly owned subsidiary of LH Total, LHTC Media, Inc., owns radio stations in Apollo and Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
KALIL & CO., INC. is the exclusive broker for this transaction.
Les Talk
This is not good news. LHTC dropped oldies for talk on both of their PA AM stations. Should they drop the music on either 94.3 or 100.9 – it would give WV Radio Corp. an entire monopoly in the market. At least for musically formatted stations.
All four of these stations have not lived up to their potential in years. Before Variety landed the Mountaineers, much at the chagrin of the former rights holder, few in the market even knew the station existed. 94 Rock has always been shadowed by in market WCLG. Both AM’s have a very limited signal range. Interesting of note, WTCS was one of the only AM stations I have actually heard AM STEREO on, back when they ran satellite oldies.