http://www.insidemusicmedia.com/merlin_to_dump_all-news_in_new_york_chica
Jerry Del Colliano thinks so. He has lots of acquaintences working in radio and is a fierce opponent of radio consolidation – in particular he thinks Lew Dickey of Cumulus is a total authoritarian ass, and Clear Chamnel is destroying radio. Many of my opinions about them are based on reading his newsletter (it used to be free). I eventually unsubscribed because of the daily repetition of “I hate Lew Dickey and Clear Channel”. Unlike Tom Taylor, he isn’t building an empire funded by radio industry establishment people, so he doesn’t have sacred cows he can’t afford to offend, which makes us kindred spirits, to a point.
About a year ago out of nowhere, Randy Michaels (the man most responsible for creating Clear Channel) showed up at Emmis, a publicly traded radio company drowning in debt, carrying a check for $150 million offering to buy 3 of the most important FM stations owned by Emmis. His plan was to create all news stations to compete with CBS radio under the name Merlin Media – also giving Emmis a piece of the action. He scared CBS enough that they flipped a music station in Chicago to make cash cow WBBM available on FM.
Merlin Media recently acquired a station in Philadelphia and people thought it would be a third all news FM station to compete with KYW-AM, but it turned out to be a news talk station carrying Beck and Hannity. Personnel changes started happening strongly suggesting the low ratings had Merlin rethinking its pla to challenge CBS.
Randy Michaels has a long history with Premiere radio, the syndicator of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Coast to Coast. It was his company Jacor that acquired Premiere in 1998 and then Jacor was folded into Clear Channel a few months later.
It’s becoming clear that Lew Dickey would like to dump Premiere’s programs from Cumulus stations (like Rush on WABC in New York) as fast as he can to “save money”, but not breaking existing contracts. I doubt Merlin would revert the stations to music, but I could see Merlin, Culumus and Premier cutting some deal to move Rush and Hannity from WABC and WLS to a Merlin run FM talk station, freeing the two stations to carry Huckabee. (Beck is not heard on either former ABC radio station – I strongly suspect that is due to Disney’s influence)
If you like really audacious speculation, how about Clear Channel exiting the Talk Syndication business entirely and selling Premiere to Merlin or creating a joint venture to split all the boycotts away from Bob Pittman’s company?