There'll be no horse-drawn coach like that available for fairy-tale weddings at Disney World, but ABC Radio will be the 2.5 billion bucks bride a week from today as Bob Iger gives the Disney daughter to Farid Suleman. Yes, the original price tag was put at 2.7 billion, but Disney recalculated it at 2.5 after agreeing to some changes in the terms.
Don't look for a lot of changes, except that CEO Suleman and COO Judy Ellis will now be running a fine group of top 10 market stations, something both have done before – but not at Citadel. Suleman had plenty of experience with the biggest markets in many years at Infinity/CBS and Ellis was Market Manager for Emmis in NYC. The deal also includes the ABC Radio Networks, which is not new territory for Suleman either, since he was once CEO of Westwood One.
RBR observation: We had expected all along that John Hare would exit when this deal closes, so we are surprised to see reports elsewhere of his "surprise" retirement. There's been no official announcement yet either way, but did anyone really expect him to join Citadel? When a big radio group is acquired by someone else, the person who has been a radio group head almost never stays around for a job reporting to someone else as group head.
