West Palm Beach FM sold

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Barry University has a deal to divest its West Palm Beach FM station, WXEL, sending it to a group affiliated with American Public Radio. The station will bring in over $4M to the school. An earlier attempt to sell the station, along with its television sister, never came to fruition.


The buyer, Classical South Florida Inc., has APR stalwart Bill Kling listed among its trustees – he also serves as Vice Chairman. Bob Nelson is Chairman, and Douglas Evans is President.

CRF will pay $4.05M for the station, plunking $50K into an escrow account, coming up with $3.8M more on closing day and paying the final $200K via promissory note. The contract is unusually specific when it comes to attributing the station price, saying that $273,028.77 is going for the station’s tangible assets, while $3,776,971.23 is going for intangibles.

This deal looks extremely good for Barry under today’s conditions. It had a deal a few years back to sell to WXEL Public Broadcasting for $5M, but that deal included both WXEL-FM and sister WXEL-TV. So despite the depreciated station trading market, Barry will sell the FM alone for over $4M and still have its TV. The earlier deal was filed with the FCC 5/8/06.

Although Barry U. is a Catholic institution, the station is primarily an NPR affiliate, and is expected to remain one, despite the obvious love of Classical music plainly stated in the name of the licensee. CSF already owns Classical WKCP-FM in Miami, and it is disseminated in West Palm Beach on an FM translator, W270AD.

It is expected that CSF will change the WXEL call letters to eliminate any confusion with the television station.

Photo Source: Palm Beach Post