Continuing to work the News/Talk station list, there were problems with Qantum Radio in South Carolina. Poking around brought up a recent news story of a complex 3 way station swap. Qantum is giving its stations to Clear Channel (14? 29?) in exchange for WALK AM/FM – and then selling those two stations to another owner, putting themselves out of business. This feels like a forced sale by a lender.
The FCC just approved the deal, but the money and paperwork hasn’t yet “closed” – sometimes deals fall through after the FCC approval.
Assuming this does close, a large bunch of stations and related streams will move. Clear Channel will likely change some station formats. It could be weeks or months before the new stations emerge online, but Clear Channel has lots of practice at buying and integrating stations.
Danger here is that in a few weeks – after I’ve applied all of the changes – a volunteer blindly following TuneIn.com might start reverting all of my changes back to say that the stations are owned by qantum. I would request that before you make changes to station formats or website URLs – please click the red history link in the station editor and see if I made changes in the recent past. Assume that I know what I am doing. I have been doing this for 10 years, and I am and have been the industry expert on this data.
You really ARE a vast warehouse of knowledge where the radio broadcast industry is concerned. I got my 3rd class commercial license, then my 2nd class, and finally studied enough to get my first class ticket a few years before the FCC did away with the 1st class license and went to the General Class RTO Commercial license which gave you the right to buy a coffee for $3 and scrub toilets – it did not carry the weight and prestige that the once respected and revered 1st class ticket provided after hours and hours studying all the various details required to hang you shingle at some dopey TV or radio station. They ushered in solid state transmitters that rarely went bad, didn’t drift, and were repaired by Easter-egging modules from the factory. Only antennas and transmission lines were left as a challenge – how boring, and that made us old fogies obsolete… . You are filled with all kinds of political, business, and market oriented details – stuff of “FCC lore” and stories no one would believe, but are all true, I suspect. Sounds like you have run a few station in your day (or more than a few).
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Nope. Never working in Radio.
The closest I came was – I spent a few hours in the transmitter building of WHKY in Hickory North Carolina admiring the emergency studio and humongous vacuum tubes (in the early 1970s). My father was friends with the on-duty engineer. Several of his friends back in Pittsburgh had worked as Radio engineers or worked for RCA which made equipment there.
The closest I ever came to radio was I spent one afternoon “helping” my college’s brand-new radio station – by rewriting wire copy. i very clearly remember it was the day that Gary Gilmore was executed in Utah by firing squad. I don’t think they liked the drama that I left in the story (“the shots rang out – bang bang”). And that was my last invitation To work for the radio station
WALK AM/FM – the stations being given up by Clear Channel – have been languishing in the aloha divestiture trust since 2009, with the promise that Clear Channel would sell them as soon reasonably prudent. The stations are close enough to New York City that Clear Channel must count time against the ownership limits for New York City, although they are not really New York City radio stations – they’re way out on Long Island
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WALK&service=FM&status=L&hours=U