Educational Media Foundation is buying a Cumulus FM in the Mobile market, and swapping a Mobile FM to Cumulus in a straight-up swap for another in the Nashville market.
When the dust clears, EMF will have added WDLT-FM Chickasaw AL and WRQQ-FM Belle Meade TN to its portfolio, and Cumulus will add WLVM-FM (the former WABB-FM) to its Mobile cluster.
Here’s how it all will work out. WDLT goes to EMF for $1.6M, broken down into an $80K escrow deposit, $220K cash at closing and a $1.3M note.
The parties did not place a value on the WRQQ-WLVM swap, but we can peg it in the neighborhood of $3.1M each – that’s what EMF paid Dittman for the Mobile station earlier this year.
Cumulus has a two-AM cluster in Mobile, and off course will still have one when this deal closes. Its other stations include WXGW-AM, WGOK-AM, WBLX-FM and WABD-FM.
Each party will be hanging on to call letters and other intellectual property, and each party will get early access to the stations being acquired via LMAs or network affiliation agreements.
EMF will get good coverage of Nashville with WRQQ and its C2, 97.1 MHz, 44,370 Watt signal with an HAAT of 517’.
Cumulus will wind up with the better Mobile signal – in fact, WLVM gets all the way to Pensacola to the east. It’s a full Class C on 97.5 MHz with 100 kW @ 1,552’.
WDLT-FM is less powerful, but gets all of Mobile. It’s a Class C2 on 98.3 MHz with 40 kW at 548’.
