In this week’s issue… Equity sells in Atlantic City – Evanov shuts down Canadian AM – NYSBA Hall of Famers named – Remembering Maine’s Snyder, BZ’s Coop – Tower down in Philly
By SCOTT FYBUSH
Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada
*It’s a rare headline these days: iHeart Media entering a new radio market with the acquisition of an entire station cluster. But it happened this past week in Atlantic City, NEW JERSEY, where the company is paying just $2 million to enter the market with the purchase of Equity Communications’ FM stations.
Gary Fisher’s company has been in selling mode lately, spinning off two of its FM signals to the south in Cape May County in recent months even as rumors swirled of a bigger deal. But few of those rumors locked in on iHeart as the buyer, in part because the company has been so reluctant to add stations in recent years.
In this case, however, Equity’s stations appear to represent a bargain that iHeart couldn’t pass up. The Atlantic City market is tightly linked to nearby Philadelphia, where the company is a dominant player with formats that closely match what it’s buying in Atlantic City.
That’s top-40 WAYV (95.1) and classic rock WZXL (100.7 Wildwood), both class B signals, along with two class A signals, adult R&B “Touch” WTTH (96.1 Margate City) and rhythmic CHR “Buzz” WZBZ (99.3 Pleasantville). The deal comes with only a few air personalities on WAYV and WZXL, making it easy to import iHeart’s own voices in what has become the company’s small-market model.
As for Fisher and Equity, the company is left with two stations after the iHeart sale: oldies WMID (1340) in Atlantic City and WCMC (1230) in Wildwood. There’s no word yet on what will become of those stations.
SPRING IS HERE…
And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!
If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!
This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.
And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future.
Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).
We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.
The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?)
Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too!