Birach buying bash continues

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For the third day in a row, Sima Birach has made dealmaker news. He’s picked up AM stations in Johnstown PA, Tulsa OK and Little Rock AR. Now comes word he’s the successful bidder for a pair of stations in Virginia’s Tidewater area, better known as the Norfolk-Virginia-Newport News market. The stations are WVAB-AM Virginia Beach & WBVA-AM Bayside. They were originally sold by Bankruptcy Trustee R. Clinton Stackhouse to Nancy A. Epperson’s Chesapeake-Portsmouth Broadcasting Corp. for 775K. That fell through (although her group continues to run the stations in an LMA). Broker Ray H. Rosenblum stepped in and helped run an auction resulting in a 275K bid from TL Communications (Terry Suggs aka Terry Love). An opportunity for higher bidders to step in was announced, and Birach answered the call, getting the duo for 345K cash. Epperson, who is married to Stuart Epperson, a key executive with Salem Communications, owns and operates three other AMs in the market.