Adam Nathanson's Mapleton Communications will be paying 22.5M to get Citadel's three-AM, four FM cluster in Spokane WA. The deal also includes a non-competition agreement which has an interesting clause, and contains further implications which may be felt some distance to the west in the City by the Bay. As for the non-competition, Citadel has agreed that it will not contest the Spokane audience with Mapleton, other than the fact that it reserves the right to make its ABC Radio Network fare available to any station which wishes to carry it. Few radio groups need include anything like this in a contract, and it would have been an unnecessary bit of language for Citadel not so long ago.
And here's the San Francisco connection. Among the stations Mapleton is getting is KGA-AM Spokane. It will be able to reduce KGA's nighttime power and upgrade KPIG-AM, which serves San Francisco from its perch in Piedmont CA, from its current 230 watts. Citadel stands to make a little extra cash if this happens. It will get one dollar for every additional pair of ears KPIG is able to reach following such an upgrade, up to a ceiling of 1.5M. Mapleton uses the 2000 Census to estimate the station's current nighttime reach at 224K individuals.
