The Bae family’s KM Radio of Pearson has elected to continue operating in the town of Pearson GA with it’s WPDW-LP, but is spinning WPNG-FM to Broadcast South LLC, making it part of a regional small-market radio group.
The buyer’s principals include John O. Higgs, Kerry Jan Moore, B. Gene Waldron, Brian Vaughn and Cindy Vaughn. They will come up with $600K for the station, including a $50K deposit, credit for up to $12K in accounts receivable, and the remainder in cash at closing. An LMA kicked off 9/4/09.
WPNG-FM is a CHR, and Broadcast South will pick up contracts with Dial Global for its library and other things, and with Premiere for Ryan Seacrest.
Pearson is located in an unrated portion of south central Georgia, and KM has agreed not to compete in its home county of Atkinson or in any other contiguous county for a period of five years. But that agreement does not put any strictures on its LPTV; indeed, it has signed a 20 year lease to keep WPDW-LP’s antenna on the tower it is selling to Broadcast South.
The station will form a superduopoly cluster using the signal overlap method with WDMG-AM Douglas, WDMG-FM Ambrose and WVOH-FM Hazlehurst. The latter station has a CP to upgrade from Class C3 to C2 and move to Nicholls GA.
Broadcast South gets a lot of use out of the WVOH calls. It operates a low power television station of its own, WVHO-LP and WVOH-AM, both in Hazlehurst. Other stations include WBHB-AM/WRDO-FM Fitzgerald City and WKZZ-FM Tifton.
