Update: The license transfers of the assets owned by Ed Stolz from bankruptcy trustee Michael Carmel to the winners of the auction held in October have begun to be filed with the FCC.
Friends of KEXP has filed its $3.75 million purchase of 92.7 KREV Alameda/San Francisco that will bring the programming of AAA 90.3 KEXP Seattle to the Bay Area. The filing follows KREV’s filing for expedited processing to move its operations to the Mount Sutro tower by the time its lease expires at its current site on December 31.
VCY America files its purchase of 104.3 KFRH North Las Vegas NV and the Palm Springs CA trio of 97.7 KRCK Mecca and translators 95.5 K238AK and 98.1 K251BX Palm Desert for $2,445,952.88. The earlier breakdown from the court filing lists the purchase price by station as $1,954,219.16 for KFRH, $298,281.73 for KRCK, $111,169.53 for K238AK and $82,282.46 for K251BX. VCY has already filed to modify KFRH and KRCK to non-commercial at closing.
Original Report 10/27: The United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada has conducted its auction for the assets owned by Ed Stolz.
The winning bids totaled $6,345,952.88 exceeding the stalking-horse bid of $4.5 million made by VCY America for all but one of the assets. The organization originally had a deal with former trustee Larry Patrick to purchase KFRH, KRCK-FM and KREV for $6 million. After Stolz temporarily regained control of the licenses and had the original deal terminated, VCY made the same $4.5 million offer as part of a deal to drop its $627,366 claim against Stolz’ company.
VCY did not come up empty handed as the Christian network was the highest bidder for four of the licenses. VCY’s winning bids were $1,954,219.16 for 104.3 KFRH North Las Vegas NV, $298,281.73 for 97.7 KRCK Mecca/Palm Springs CA, $82,282.46 for 98.1 K251BX Palm Desert CA and $111,169.53 for 95.5 K238AK Palm Desert CA.
Friends of KEXP, which operates AAA 90.3 KEXP Seattle look to be in line to return that format to the Bay Area as their bid of $3.75 million was the high for 92.7 KREV Alameda.
Melinda Vega, Kurt Nilson, and Don Davis’s AutoPilot FM, which has been operating KFRH and KREV with Hip Hop formats as “Hustle“, were the winning bidders for Silent 790 KBET Winchester/103.1 K276GX Las Vegas with a $150,000 submission.
Now that the auction has concluded, the winning bidders have until November 7 to designate which leases and contracts they will assume or reject. The judge will grant final approval of the auction winners on November 14.
Wow, this is a big deal, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a noncom AAA station try to do this in two markets. Politically speaking, San Francisco is in line with Seattle, and this could definitely give KPNW a distinct advantage, but will be interesting to see how they can serve two markets with a very Seattle centric format at KEXP. It seems to be popular enough worldwide, though to justify another market. Regardless, cool to see a noncom AAA in San Francisco, even though KEXP, is not a traditional, AAA, but the demographics of San Francisco W there is still a older population, are starting to lean younger, who knows! Worth a shot, I guess, and is definitely worth observing as a AAA programmer and analyst.