Shirk Sheds Interest In Maui’s Paniolo FM

0

The Hawaiian island of Maui is known for many things, including its own variation of the cowboy — the upcountry Paniolo. In towns such as Makawao, horses and farming still can be widely seen in the shadow of Haleakala.


This explains why one local operator provides Country programming via a 69kw Class C FM.

As of today, its majority owner will no longer hold attributable interest in the station, transferring his shares to the operator’s President. It’s an individual largely credited with bringing hip-hop to Indianapolis.

That would be the individual legally known as William S. Poorman, who resides in a bucolic upscale community in Indianapolis’ northern suburbs.

Poorman has been a 50% owner of KRYL-FM 106.5, licensed to Haiku on Maui’s north shore. This gave him majority control of the property, with Lydia Cavaness and George Hochman each holding 25% interest in “Y106.5,” which airs syndicated programming from the mainland.

On December 21, a Transfer of Control request was made with the FCC that would make Honolulu-based Hochman the 75% owner of KRYL, obtaining Poorman’s full interest in the station. Cavaness would remain a 25% owner.

The transaction is a stock purchase and sale agreement, and was agreed upon in mid-November. It details how Hochman Hawaii-Five Inc. purchased KRYL, formerly KUHI, from Big Island Broadcasting roughly a decade ago. The transaction saw the execution of a Promissory Note valued at $450,000, partially secured by a stock pledge agreement dated February 25, 2011.

This transaction releases Hochman from the stock pledge agreement, assigning his shares to Hochman — including those shares obtained by Poorman following the death of attributable interest holder William G. Mays.

Hochman operates his radio stations under the HHawaii Media banner, with properties on Oah’u, Kauai and Maui. The other Maui properties include Classic Hits KONI-FM 104.7, Rock KRKH-FM 97.3 “K-Rock,” and the recently relaunched KQMY-FM “Retro 102.1,” focused on 1980s music. KQMY recently relocated from 100.7 MHz in a facilities swap with KMKV-FM, Educational Media Foundation’s KLOVE member station for Maui.

William S. Poorman is not to be confused with Jim “Poorman” Trenton, who is considered the creator of the long-running LoveLine late-night talk program on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. Rather, William Poorman is better known as Bill Shirk, who owned the former WHHH-FM “Hoosier 96” in Indianapolis until 2000 and is credited with bringing a full-time hip-hop FM to the Circle City.

Bill Shirk in 1999, at the controls of Hoosier Hot 96, the year before he sold it and became a multimillionaire.

According to the Indianapolis Star, Poorman arrived in the market in 1972 with his purchase of WXLW-AM. He previously handled sales efforts for WERK-AM in Muncie, Ind., which his father owned, and used the air name Bill Shirk across his lengthy and noted career in Indiana broadcasting.

“Bill was different,” Emmis Communications founder Jeff Smulyan told the newspaper, recalling an early Shirk promotion, “‘WXLW has balls!’ They said that over and over. What it was, they were giving away autographed basketballs.”

 


RBR+TVBR’s Maui news bureau has concluded four years of operations, with coverage now offered from the Radio + Television Business Report headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., and from its West Coast Bureau in California.