The FCC has granted its first two waivers to surpass the current ownership caps with the approval of Beasley Media Group’s sale of its Fort Myers FL cluster to Sun Broadcasting and Fort Myers Broadcasting.
The first deal will see the Jim Schwartzel led Sun acquire Classic Rock “96 K-Rock” WRXK Bonita Springs, CHR “B103.9” WXKB Cape Coral and “Podcast Radio” 96.5 W243BM/101.5 W268AH/105.1 W286AK/WXKB-HD2 for $9 million. Sun already owns Conservative Talk “92.5 Fox News” WFSX-FM, “93.7 Trump Country” WHEL, Classic Rock “94.5 The Arrow” WARO, Hip Hop “Fly 98.5” WFFY, and Sports “Fox Sports SWFL” 94.1 W231DC/103.3 W277AP/105.9 W290DB in the Fort Myers market along with four television stations. A waiver grant was required as Sun will own six FMs in a market where the cap is currently seven stations total and four on one band.
The remainder of the Beasley cluster goes to Fort Myers Broadcasting Company for $9 million with FMBC adding Spanish CHR “Playa 99.3” WWCN, Soft AC “Sunny 106.3” WJPT and Sports “ESPN Southwest Florida” 770 WBCN/98.1 W251AL/104.3 W282BY to join with its AC 96.9 WINK-FM, Spanish CHR “97.7 Latino” WTLQ, Soft AC 101.1 WAVV, Spanish Tropical “Maxima 95.7/97.3” W239CL/W247CR/WTLQ-HD2, Regional Mexican “La Raza 107.9” W300EF/WAVV-HD2 and CBS affiliate WINK-TV.
The FCC concurrently approved Sun’s $40 million purchase of “Fox 4” WFTX-TV Cape Coral from Scripps.
Both companies operate from a shared facility. A shared services agreement in filed with the deals state that FMBC provides to Sun the following: studio and office space, data processing, accounting, reception, news programming, engineering, payroll and benefits processing, local commercial production, and and IT. Sun would maintain control of its management, programming, finances, editorial policies, personnel, facilities, and compliance with FCC rules and regulations.
At the time of the filings, the waiver requests stated that post acquisition Sun will hold 33.9% of the local radio revenue and FMBC with 28.3%. The other commercial clusters in the market are held by iHeartMedia and Renda Broadcasting.
Two other pending acquisitions have subsequently been filed with the FCC requesting waivers of the ownership caps in Connoisseur Media’s $10 million purchase of Bonneville’s San Francisco cluster that would give it nine FM’s in the market and Dimes Media’s $237,500 purchase of 101.3 KERW Los Osos-Baywood Park/San Luis Obispo CA to give it a fifth FM.
