It’s a done deal. After a couple months of haggling, Alpha Media has closed on the financing of $264 million to acquire control of 116 struggling radio stations that were accumulated by a man named Dean Goodman, under the name of Digity.
Alpha Media now claims to be the fourth largest radio company in America, which is true if you ignore EMF and look only at number of licenses.
In terms of advertising reach and revenue, Alpha is not. Their collection of stations are in small markets or “rimshot” stations on the suburban fringes of bigger cities. Radio owners that are probably bigger in Revenue (in addition to iHeart, Cumulus and Townsquare?) would include Entercom, Cox, CBS, Univision, Radio One, Salem, Saga, Beasley, Hubbard and Greater Media. Digity and Alpha are not required to disclose financial data (yet).
The deal was funded at LIBOR + 6% according to Tom Taylor. The belief is that once the group of stations are being managed by Larry Wilson’s company, an IPO will be done to satisfy the insatiable demand for small market radio stations. This is the second time around – the first was a similar company called Citadel, which Larry sold. Once Citadel decided it was ready to swallow ABC Radio, Citadel immediately failed and was acquired by our friends at Cumulus Media.
So Digity now exists only as a name on FCC licenses. Whether the licenses will be changed to Alpha Mecia isn’t yet clear. Looking from afar, Alpha seems much better managed than Digity, so it may have a chance to succeed.
The licensee changes came through from the FCC. Digity Five Eagles (5E) are unchanged
some of those stations I have listened to before, I like that list , it seems to work good.
I guess the ‘Canine Country’ is Canis familiaris related country music ?
Uncle bobs country music on Hilton Head is pretty good late at night
parrott
Someone noticed my silly country music classification system 😉
Canine includes Dog, Dawg, Wolf, and Coyote
Feline covers Cat, Kat and Tiger
Bovine is mostly bull
Avian covers eagles and Hawks
Other animals covers moose, bears, gators, beavers, deer and Bigfoot
Amphilibian is my favorite – everyone loves Froggy!
LOL Heck yeah, we all notice all this stuff you do Art !
Does ‘Fox’ news go under Canine ?
Have a good one
Parrott
Fox owns no radio stations and almost no stations carry the syndication, as it was on SiriusXM
There is disagreement among scientists whether foxes are dogs. Foxes have retractable claws like cats. Dogs and Foxes are cousins, but foxes are more like dogs than like cats
How does the wolf fit into the dog-fox continuum? I’d ask Robert Weston Smith, but he is no longer with us.
Wolf is a dog. That’s why you can breed dog wolf hybrids that are not sterile.
Current domesticated dogs are largely the product of selective breeding over several thousand years