Eller catches a Big Fish

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Anne Eller is the Anne of Anne’s Entertainment Vision Inc., and she is picking up her second AM station in unrated Greenwood SC in a deal with Big Fish Broadcasting. For Big Fish, it marks its second recent South Carolina AM divestiture.


Eller is getting WCRS-AM in a $300K deal with Big Fish, headed by J. Stanley Griffin. She’ll plunk down $50K into escrow and pay off the remainder via the promissory note route.

According to broker Todd Fowler of Fowler Media Consulting, the station will pair up with WLMA-AM, also licensed to Greenwood. Although currently in regulatory limbo at the FCC, Fowler says the station is operating under an STA, using syndicated Talk programming and local call-in fare featuring Eller herself.

WCRS-AM, which is temporarily off the air, will likely come back very shortly with more syndicated Talk and may well delve into Sports, possibly including local sports at the high school and college level.

Eller’s deal for WLMA was filed in April 2008, an LMA/acquisition deal valued at $75K. $23K of that deal was listed as debt settlement, and another $12K was earmarked to pay off fines.

Greenwood sort of reverses the old cliché “middle of nowhere.” Instead, it’s in the middle of somewhere – Columbia SC is about an hour to the east, Greenville SC is about an hour to the north and Augusta GA is about an hour to the south.

Meanwhile, Big Fish as also filed a $157.5K deal to sell WKSC-AM Kershaw SC to Lucy Radio Network LLC, headed by Dustin McClain and Susan Younghans. That deal will feature a similar compensation package, with a $15K escrow deposit turned over to the seller at closing, and a promissory note for the remainder.