The seven station swap announced on Thursday evening between Entercom and Radio-One reads out to me like many major deals between two professional sports franchises. One team is looking to add additional pieces for a playoff push, while the other is receiving prospects.

For Entercom the deal allows the company to fill-out their clusters in three markets. Radio One gets pieces in Charlotte that can either be kept at near status quo, used to better structure their core formats, or be used to deal for other pieces. Let’s take a look on a market by market basis.

Philadelphia

Entercom needed to get News 1060 KYW on FM. While they could’ve used their low-rated 96.5 signal, the addition of WPHI’s class A signal will do the trick in the city itself and help in-car listening through most of the market.

For Radio One, WPHI was their lowest rated of the three signally challenged FMs in the market. Since entering Philadelphia with the purchase of 103.9 in 1997 they’ve tried moving different formats between the signals but never could consistently beat iHeartMedia Hip Hop “Power 99” WUSL as it currently leads “Hip Hop 103.9” by a 3.4 to 1.2 share margin. The company still retains Adult R&B 100.3 WRNB and R&B Oldies “Classix 107.9” WPPZ in the market.

St. Louis

Through now three deals in three years Entercom has built out a strong cluster in St. Louis. The company entered the market with News/Talk 1120 KMOX, Hot AC “Y98” KYKY and AC 102.5 KEZK in the CBS Radio merger, then added 96.3 KNOU and Conservative Talk “97.1 Talk” KFTK-FM when it and Hubbard each purchased half of Emmis’ St. Louis cluster. Now it adds the intellectual property of Adult R&B “95.5 The Lou” WFUN-FM to move to 96.3 KNOU and Hip Hop “Hot 104.1” WHHL.

The deal leaves only three major players in St. Louis with Entercom, Hubbard and iHeartMedia controlling all of the top 20 rated commercial signals. Adding WFUN-FM increases the cluster’s female wall with KEZK and KYKY. Adding WHHL allows it to replace CHR “Now 96.3” KNOU as the younger skewing station in the cluster.

Radio One also gets to keep the clearances for its suite of syndicated programming despite exiting the market.

Washington DC

Entercom already owns Sports “106.7 The Fan” WJFK, why would it want “The Team 980/95.9” WTEM? The Washington Football Team.

With WJFK having an existing hole in its afternoon lineup from the firing of Chad Dukes last week, it may not be long before we see the programming of the two stations combined.

Charlotte

Like in St. Louis, the deal brings the number of large groups operating in the market down to three with Radio One, Beasley and iHeartMedia. Radio One currently owns Hip Hop “92.7 The Block” WQNC, Gospel “Praise 100.9” WPZS and Adult R&B “105.3 R&B” WOSF and will now add Entercom’s Sports 610/102.5 WFNZ, News/Talk 1110 WBT/99.3 WBT-FM and Hot AC “107.9 The Link“.

While Radio One has had a few Sports stations like the outgoing WTEM, the company has never operated a News/Talk outlet (they did have the shortlived All-News “News 92” KROI Houston) and has limited experience with pop formats like WLNK. The acquisition here can be looked at in a few ways.

1) Is Radio One seeking to broaden its holdings in a core market and move away from focusing specifically on Black audiences with limited exceptions as CEO Alfred Liggins stated in the press release?

2) Does Radio One realign the signals to better fit their core brands? Like Philadelphia, WQNC’s Hip Hop format has never been able to truly hurt Beasley’s “Power 98” WPEG with the latter leading 4.2 to 1.1 right now. Does WQNC get the boost to the much stronger 107.9 signal at the expense of destroying the 4.5 share of WLNK?

3) Is there another deal in the works to send WBT/WFNZ/WLNK to another company for assets that are truer to Radio One and its parent Urban1’s core businesses?

Until we see Radio One’s full plans for the combined Charlotte cluster its hard to fully gauge this deal.

What’s Next

We know there will be at least one other deal coming. Radio One now has a standalone 95.5 in St. Louis with no format after the swap. Neither Hubbard or iHeartMedia can add an additional FM in the market leaving the likely buyer coming from the likes of Educational Media Foundation which has not yet entered St. Louis or Gateway Creative Media, owners of existing Christian AC “99.1 Joy-FM” KLJY, seeking to keep EMF out.

It isn’t hard to imagine an EMF deal with either company that could be expanded to other markets, but we’re not going to give them any ideas.