Radio Disney continues its selloff with the divestiture of 1260 WWMK Cleveland to St. Peter The Rock Media for $895,000.
St. Peter The Rock will flip WWMK to Catholic programming as “1260 The Rock“. There is some common ownership with “St. Gabriel Radio” 820 WVSG Columbus. Greg Guy of Patrick Communications served as media broker for the buyer. Bill Schutz of Schutz & Company represented the seller.
WIXY 12~Sixty!
What did the Mouse pay for that? Nurse Jeff and I are waiting for the hammer to fall on KMIK, Tempe. Mouse paid $5m…we think it’ll be tough to go over $1m in spite of 50Kw Day and Night. And did we mention it’s at 15~Eighty?
ABC paid $3.9 million for the Cleveland station in June 1998.
A tip of the fez for that info!
Doin’ the fuzzy math, Disney sold the station for 22 cents on the dollar. Buy high, sell low. YIKES!
This takes 1260 full-circle, in a way, as the station carried a Catholic format as WMIH prior to putting on the Mouse ears.
Divine Mercy ran into financial difficulties running WMIH as the format was mostly locally-originated (neither EWTN nor Starboard had full-time radio networks established back in 1997).
Looks like most of the Radio Disney outlets that have been sold-off have been sold to religious broadcasters.
Which says a lot about the viability of the AM band in general, especially among secular broadcasters.
The $895K price tag should tell you all you need to know about the AM dial in a market where only one AM signal (WTAM) reliably covers the entire metropolitan area and only three AM signals (WKNR, WTAM and WHK) carry non-religious formats.
Cleveland has been an FM-dominated market since the old WIXY 1260 faded away in the mid-70s.
I lost track–how many of the Disney stations have be sold so far? Is it Detroit, Houston, NYC and now Cleveland?
And WDYZ Orlando to Salem.