{"id":9276,"date":"2014-01-04T16:40:03","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T21:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=9276"},"modified":"2014-01-05T01:55:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T06:55:59","slug":"cumulus-is-a-buyer-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=9276","title":{"rendered":"Cumulus is a buyer in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The huge mistake called Merlin Media &#8211; which talked a PE firm into buying radio stations to go head to head against CBS in the All News business &#8211; has turned over the keys to their last two stations.   Merlin Media was formed in 2011 as a joint venture of Emmis Communications and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtcr.com\/\">GTCR<\/a>, a Chicago based private equity firm.   The concept was from the brain of Randy Michaels, formerly of Tribune Corporation and Clear Channel and consisted of $198 million in cash and equity<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"cPpmkG5uqB\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/rbr.com\/merlin-media-is-now-an-owner\/\">Merlin Media is now an owner<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Merlin Media is now an owner&#8221; &#8212; Radio &amp; Television Business Report\" src=\"https:\/\/rbr.com\/merlin-media-is-now-an-owner\/embed\/#?secret=d1c0yjBleU#?secret=cPpmkG5uqB\" data-secret=\"cPpmkG5uqB\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>WLUP-FM and WIQI-FM have been leased (LMA) with an option to buy to Cumulus Media &#8211; terms have not yet been disclosed.   The current industry practice of all the big guys is to operate 4 or 5 radio stations from the same facility, sharing offices, production facilities, sales staff, etc&#8230; to reduce costs.   Since Cumulus only owns WLS AM\/FM in Chicago, this is consistent with their general operations approach and surely explains why Mr Dickey was in Chicago in December.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/news.radio-online.com\/cgi-bin\/rol.exe\/headline_id=b13828<br \/>\nhttp:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/chicago\/news\/2014\/01\/03\/cumulus-radio-to-acquire-merlin-medias-chicago.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The huge mistake called Merlin Media &#8211; which talked a PE firm into buying radio stations to go head to head against CBS in the All News business &#8211; has turned over the keys to their last two stations. Merlin &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=9276\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,112,103,138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio-biz","category-radio-news","category-station-sales-transfers","category-cumulus-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9288,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions\/9288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}