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Vicente upgrades to a Greenville sixpack

Al Vicente's Archway Broadcasting Group has a second deal in the Greenville-New Bern-Jacksonville market. Its $3M acquisition of WCZI-FM and WGPM-FM from New East Communications will bring its total presence in the far-flung market to six stations. The seller belongs to Henry Hinton and Harry Land. Archway will enter into a consulting agreement with Hinton.

It previous deal was with Eastern Carolina Broadcasting. Archway spend $6.5M and got WRHT-FM, WCBZ-FM, WNBR-FM and WZBR-FM (RBR Daily Morning Epaper, 9/4).

RBR Observation:

This is a far-flung market and these two pups are not blessed with the kind of power it takes to get from one end to the other. Neither managed to score in the spring Arbitron book. However, neither is all that far from the market's Greenville hub, leading us to believe that an Arbitron presence is an achievable goal. Look for Vicente to gradually build up this cluster.

Archway's financial backing comes from Quetzal/J.P. Morgan, which also has an attributable interest in Pierre Sutton's Inner City Broadcasting.