Twelve full powered stations (11 FMs and 1 AM), eleven translators, two full-powered television stations, and three LPTVs under common oversight. If Sun Broadcasting and Fort Myers Broadcasting Company have their way, this will become reality in Southwest Florida.
The deals by Sun and FMBC to acquire Beasley Media Group’s Fort Myers cluster for a combined $18 million seek to utilize waivers to get around the current FCC ownership caps. Sun seeks waivers to own six FMs in the market, while FMBC wants to retain five FMs and one AM. The current ownership limits for the Fort Myers market is seven stations total and four on one band.
It has been an open secret in the Fort Myers market for decades that the line where one company begins and the other ends is blurred. The companies both operate out of the same facility under a Shared Service Agreement where Sun rents space in the “Broadcast Center” from FMBC and purchases engineering, IT, master control and administrative services.
Joe Schwartzel, who was the longtime General Manager of Fort Myers Broadcasting until retiring last year, also owned Sun and predecessor Meridian Broadcasting directly or through a trust until transferring it to his son Jim in 2011. The elder Schwartzel was described by the Fort Myers Rotary Club in 2008 as directly managing 12 radio stations with FMBC owners the McBride family described as “his partners”.
While their station websites have separate contact numbers for programming and sales, there is a shared number for promotions. It was Beasley in tandem with Renda Broadcasting that attempted to bring the matter to the FCC’s attention in 2016. In that case, which ultimately the FCC did not find a reason to act, Sun admitted that both companies shared employees but that they were paid separately. Yet in 2022 after Hurricane Ian, one of FMBC’s brands moved to a Sun frequency for a couple weeks.
This deal will place eleven full powered FMs, nearly that many translators, and a number of television signals that include the local affiliates for CBS, CW, Univision, Unimas, Estrella TV, and MyNetwork TV under shared service agreements at least until the ownership caps are removed. While there may not be at least direct control of all the brands directly, the breakdown of the sale at least shows that some discretion was done towards keeping certain brands under specific umbrellas ahead of time. Beasley’s Classic Rock “96.1 K-Rock” WRKX, CHR “B103.9” WXKB and “Podcast Radio” 96.5 W243BM/101.5 W268AH/105.1 W286AK will join Sun’s holdings giving it both Classic Rock brands in the market. The overlapping formats of Spanish CHR “Playa 99.3” WWCN and Soft AC “Sunny 106.3” WJPT are to join FMBC along with Sports “ESPN Southwest Florida” 770 WBCN/98.1 W251AL/104.3 W282BY.
The waiver requests included with each filing are full of politically motivated arguments that will get them approved by the FCC but do not hold up well. These are the arguments made by Fort Myers Broadcasting Company:
The proposed transaction will serve localism. FMBC is a local company with a demonstrated commitment to the community, as evidenced by its more than 75-year operating history in Fort Myers and its desire to continue its operations for years to come. FMBC’ s acquisition of the Beasley stations serves the public interest by bringing these stations under the stewardship of a local, family-owned businesses that exclusively serves the Fort Myers Market and strengthening FMBC’s locally focused operations for the future. FMBC has served the market since 1939 and has been owned by the McBride family since 1946. FMBC’s service to the Fort Myers community began with a single radio station, and grew to include television station WINK-TV, a CBS affiliate, as well as radio stations WINK(AM) and WINK-FM, in the mid-1950’s. FMBC has owned WINK-TV ever since, and though it no longer owns WINK(AM), it continues to operate WINK-FM and now owns two other FM stations in the market, WAVV in Naples Park and WTLQ in Punta Rassa.
Stations operating in the Fort Myers-Naples market face substantial financial and operational challenges due to repeated severe weather events, which make the costs and resources necessary for operation higher than in other markets. FMBC has had its own facilities severely damaged or destroyed by recent hurricanes. FMBC’s acquisition of the Beasley stations will promote localism because having more stations, facilities, redundancies, and efficiencies are critical to continue to operate and serve the Fort Myers Market reliably in these conditions.
Being prone to severe weather means you need to own more stations to operate?
The proposed transaction will serve competition. The proposed transaction will permit FMBC to devote the resources and investments necessary to continue to compete in an increasingly challenging market – both due to the severe weather unique to the Fort Myers Market and to the broader challenges facing radio broadcasters, particularly locally owned companies like FMBC. Moreover, these benefits can be obtained while preserving and promoting robust competition in the market. The Fort Myers Market includes thirty-five (35) full power commercial and non-commercial AM and FM radio stations that offer Fort Myers Market listeners a broad selection of radio formats. Even when considering radio operations alone, the market is highly competitive and will remain so post-transaction. The proposed transaction would remove Beasley, the largest competitor in the market according to recent BIA revenue estimates, and preserve four (4) similarly sized competitors. FMBC would be the second largest owner by revenue, and no operator would control the market.
Moreover, FMBC and other local broadcasters face competition far beyond other local broadcast radio stations. Services like SiriusXM, Pandora, and Spotify compete for audiences with local broadcasters like FMBC. The proposed transaction will support FMBC’s ability to remain competitive with both strong local radio competitors and with online and satellite services as well.
Less competition is better because we’re removing the top billing cluster in the market. In the provided revenue projections from BIA included in the waiver request, Beasley currently accounts for 25.8% of the estimated commercial radio revenue in the Fort Myers market. Their argument is that the deal will “preserve four similarly sized competitors” and that “no operator would control the market.”
In reality, Sun with 33.9% and FMBC with 28.3% will have a combined 62.2% of the revenue post-transaction with iHeart and Renda well behind.
Sun’s waiver request to own six FMs in the market digs in deeper. Sun argues that the market cap “ignores satellite and online competition to radio stations, Sun and other local broadcasters can’t afford to do so. Put succinctly, services like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, You Tube, and SiriusXM Radio – services that didn’t exist when the radio subcaps were adopted – provide substantial competition in Sun’s efforts to build audiences for its stations that it can sell to local advertisers.” Yet, that argument has failed for decades in getting previous FCC administrations or Congress from changing the limits on what a company can own in a market.
Sun also insists that it “has no plans to change the formats of WRXK-FM or WXKB-FM to formats offered by other stations in the market”. But at FMBC, no such argument is made. With WINK-FM, WAVV and WJPT all doing various forms of Adult Contemporary one is likely too many. WWCN and WTLQ are currently doing similar forms of Tropical heavy Spanish CHR. But that shouldn’t even matter to the FCC, which does not regulate formats even if removing those brands will eliminate competition and options for those listeners.
The remaining commercial competitors in Fort Myers will be Renda Broadcasting and iHeartMedia with eight stations combined targeting the market (albeit two of Renda’s focusing mostly on Naples in the southern half). Moving one of the Beasley signals to go after the combo of Renda Variety Hits “102.9 Bob-FM” WJGO and iHeartMedia 1980s Hits “95.3 The Beach” WOLZ would seem likely. Doing something Gold based to flank WHEL against Renda’s “101.9 Gator Country” WWGR and iHeart’s “Cat Country 107.1” WCKT might make sense. As would a Rhythmic Throwbacks brand to flank WFFY against iHeart’s “105.5 The Beat” WBTT, which ranks fifth overall in the market.
In the June 2025 Nielsen Audio ratings, Fort Myers Broadcasting Company stations combined for a 15.9 share, Sun Broadcasting a 15.4 share, Beasley a 12.4 share, iHeartMedia a 9.9 share, and Renda an 8.7 share. If you place the five Beasley stations with their expected new owner, FMBC rises to a 23.2 share and Sun to a 20.5 share.
So two very related groups controlling 62% of the revenue and 43.7% of the total listening in a market is good for competition, how exactly?
