It was only a little more than a year ago when Dean Goodman’s Palm Beach Broadcasting entered the West Palm Beach market with a deal for WRMF-FM. Now it’s going for a full house in the FM side with a $50M buy of the CBS five-station cluster.
The CBS FM quints are grandfathered – the market’s station total is only large enough to support four radio stations in the same service – so Goodman will in effect be buying three to keep and two to resell.
Goodman paid $16.5M for WRMF-FM in a deal filed with the FCC 3/10/11. The acquisition was not without its own tragic undertones – Goodman was originally going to buy the station in partnership with Carl Hirsch, but Mr. Hirsch passed away just before the deal was to be announced. Goodman elected to proceed on his own.
“It is extremely gratifying to add these excellent stations to our community-focused radio service in the Palm Beach market,” said Dean Goodman, CEO of Palm Beach Broadcasting. “Radio broadcasting is experiencing a renaissance in the digital age, and we are pleased to be a part of that effort.”
Here are the stations that are in the mix:
* Hirsh’s WRMF-FM is a Hot AC on 97.9 MHz, a full Class C with 100 kW @ 1,348’. It’s licensed to Palm Beach.
Coming from CBS:
* AC WEAT-FM, licensed to West Palm Beach, a C on 104.3 MHz with 100 kW @ 1,273’
* Country WIRK-FM, also of West Palm Beach, a C1 on 107.9 MHz with 100 kW @ 427’
* Urban AC WHFS-FM of Jupiter FL, a C3 on 106.3 with 19 kW @ 374’
* CHR WPBZ-FM Indiantown FL, a C1 on 103.1 MHz with 90 kW @ 974’
* Hip Hop/Rhythmic WMBX-FM Jensen Beach FL, a C1 on 102.3 MHz with 100 kW @ 974’
RBR-TVBR observation: CBS tightens its portfolio and Goodman becomes a force to be reckoned with on Florida’s Gold Coast. This is radio station trading the way we remember it!
West Palm Beach is nestled on Florida’s Atlantic Coast to the north of larger Miami and south of smaller Ft. Pierce. Of the six stations listed above, five cover varying degrees of territory in all three markets. The lone and obvious exception is WHFS, which is strictly local to West Palm, so we believe you can expect to see it on the shelf for spinning off. And if it were us, we might try spinning it in an Urban-flavored package with WMBX.
