James Earley sold WOTM-LP Montevallo AL to Michael Plaia’s WOTM LLC back in 2004. Now a new transaction application has been filed with the FCC naming Earley as a member of a prospective buyer of the station.
Montevallo is south of Birmingham, and the station serves about 200K households in that market thanks to carriage by Charter Cable.
In the earlier deal, Earley sold the station to Plaia for $2M, comprised of a $600K earnest money deposit, $600K cash at closing, about $325K in debt assumption and the granting of a 25% stake in the surviving company to Earley. The contract was dated 10/15/04.
The value of the station has headed south in the interim. Earley, joined by Tommy Combs and using licensee name ACN Sports, will pay $420K to reacquire the station. $130K of that amount will be in the form of debt assumption; $15K is allocated to repairs to the facility (regardless if they actually turn out to be somewhat greater or lesser than that amount); $75K will be paid in cash at closing and $200K will be paid via a new promissory note.
The station’s website gives this description of its programming:
We carry local high school football, basketball, baseball and wrestling. We have top quality, special interest programming such as “The Time of Your Life”, “Ethereal Grace”, “The People’s Law School”, “Kids Power” and “The Wheel of Deals.” We also exclusively carry The WeatherFirst Network, delivering local satellite, radar, current conditions and the extended forecast. Other featured programs are “The Hank Erwin Show”, “Archie Phillips”, and a large variety of religious programming from a number of local churches and ministries.
