A group of radio stations serving the Albany, Ga., market has been transferred to a West Virginia LLC led jointly by Rick Lambert and Bob Spencer (pictured).
The deal will see the departure from the market of a company that famously parted ways with such storied stations as WRQX-FM in Washington, D.C.; WPLJ in New York and KLOS in Los Angeles in recent months.
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Lambert and Spencer are 50/50 partners in First Media Services, which made headlines in September 2018 for its purchase of Alpha Media‘s Bluefield, W. Va., station group for $1.85 million.
Now, First Media is expanding its holdings to Georgia by agreeing to purchase four FMs, an AM and an FM translator from Cumulus Media for $450,000.
The deal will bring to First Media the following stations:
- Class D News/Talk WALG-AM 1590 in Albany and silent FM translator W257ED at 99.3 MHz in Albany. WALG-AM uses 1 tower.
- Class A WQVE-FM 101.7 in Albany
- Class C1 WKAK-FM 104.5 in Albany
- Class C3 WJAD-FM 103.5 in Leesburg, Ga.
- Class C3 WEGC-FM 107.7 in Sasser, Ga.
A 10% escrow deposit has been made to Cumulus and is being held by Fifth Third Bank.
Eddie Esserman of Media Services Group served as the broker in this transaction, representing Cumulus. Acting as First Media’s broker is Jorgenson Broadcast Brokerage.
Cumulus’ legal counsel for this deal is William Rowland of Jones Day while the attorney representing First Media is John Garziglia of Womble Bond Dickinson.
Albany, Ga., is one of two markets that were identified prior to Cumulus’ Chapter 11 restructuring as non-core to the company.
The other is Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Pulaski-Radford, Va., in the heart of Appalachia. Those stations were acquired by George Reed-led Monticello Media in September 2018.
