Entercom has announced it has sold Rock 107.3 WAAF Westborough/Boston MA to Educational Media Foundation for $10.75 million.
EMF will begin operating WAAF via a Network Affiliation Agreement on Saturday, February 22 as it will join the company’s national “K-Love” Christian AC network. The Rock format will continue to operate on 104.1 WWBX-HD2 and 93.7 WEEI-HD2 and Radio.com following the sale.
The deal marks EMF’s entry into the Boston market. The Rock format has fallen on hard times in recent months as the move of morning host Greg Hill to Sports 93.7 WEEI in July eliminated the station’s featured attraction. The station registered a 0.8 share in each of the past two monthlies.
WAAF announced in November a 50th anniversary concert to be held in April. At the time they announced there would be additional 50th anniversary events to be announced but nothing else followed.
Entercom Communications Corp. (NYSE: ETM), a leading media and entertainment company and one of the two largest radio broadcasters in the United States, today announced a definitive agreement to sell 107.3 FM in Boston to Educational Media Foundation (EMF) for $10.75 million in cash.
Entercom will continue to air WAAF on its existing HD stations, 104.1 HD2 and 93.7 HD2 and on RADIO.COM.
EMF will begin programming 107.3 FM under a Network Affiliation Agreement beginning Saturday, February 22, 2020. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020.
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The borg claims yet another victim. And terrestrial radio is pushed slightly closer to death.
Actually the fact that EMF is such an enthusiastic acquirer is the biggest endorsement of terrestrial radio there has been in a long time.
The purchase price of $10.5M is, quite frankly, alarming. I know WAAF is effectively a Worcester signal, but still. A suburban signal in a top-10 market going at that rate?
Not at all. Its quite in-line with similar deals of the past few years when buying a station just for population count.
Correct, EMF buys stations with that value factored in, thus it sold as a Worcester-market station, and not a Boston one.
Still, this is not the same market where Entercom purchased 97.7 for $30M in 2006, and that was for a rimshot that doesn’t cover the entirety of Greater Boston. There has been a collapse in station value overall since the 2008 recession and it’s never recovered.
Note, by “market”, I mean the overall radio broadcasting landscape, not the Worcester or Boston market per se.
I agree with Lance.
Look at WLUP Chicago, WKQX Chicago, WDKL (formerly WPZR) in Detroit, WDMK in Detroit, and KFMB AM & FM in San Diego as comparables.
The Chicago stations have great coverage and probably reach triple the number of listeners with a 60+ dBu predicted signal as WAAF. They sold for $18 million to $22 million.
WDKL in Detroit went for about $12 million and probably reaches 50% more people with its 60 dBu than WAAF.
San Diego is a somewhat smaller market than Boston and intensely competitive; that pair of stations went for just $10 million total!
When one considers how miserable WAAF’s 60 dBu contour is as a Metro Boston station (actual reception performance is even worse than predicted in many azimuths), I’d argue $10.5 million is a very attractive price if you are Entercom as a seller.
If anything, EMF overpaid by a few million dollars. EMF can afford to overpay; they are flush with cash!
Now that I’ve given it additional thought, I now think the Chicago stations reach at least 4x as many people with a 60 dBu and the Detroit stations probably reach nearly 2x as many people (as opposed to 1.5x).
Bear in mind the Chicago stations were basically sold on a liquidation-style basis, so those two properties went for less than fair market value.
In the final analysis, that $10.5 million price tag for WAAF is actually a really good price from Entercom’s standpoint.
WLUP was sold because Cumulus wanted out of an unsustainable LMA that Dickey leadership put them in, and they got their wish. Randy Michaels turned around and offloaded WLUP for whatever EMF wanted. Didn’t matter to Randy how much he sold it for, he had four years of LMA checks by Cumulus for it and WKQX, so win-win for him.
While I can’t say whether it affected the actual purchase price, I do concur with the point that EMF probably isn’t buying WAAF solely because it’s a “Boston” station. The signal is (naturally) very strong around Worcester, and does get into southern New Hampshire–where K-Love might currently have no direct presence. (W260AS and WKMY appear to come closest.) Even if it doesn’t cover the full Boston metro well, it might also help fill in some coverage gaps with, say, WCCC and WLVO (the former WBRU). And, as long as the signal covers a lot of prospective listeners, EMF is probably happy.
WUBG/1570 (or more accurately, WUBG’s FM translator at 105.3, which is the only reason why EMF would lease an AM station to begin with) fills in a major weak spot for WAAF in Lynn and northeastern Boston. WLVO does the same to the southeast.