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Cumulus looking into selling 250 tower sites

There's a lot of this going on now. Entercom sold the tower site for WBBM Chicago last year. I'm sure they're looking at other heritage AM sites around the country. Cumulus already sold the sites in LA and DC. iHeart did a package deal with Vertical Bridge several years ago. These tower companies are better suited to merchandising these towers for other uses such a cell phones and other local communication. They also can assess land values and if parts of the property can be sold or leased, while keeping the tower operational. In my view there is no down side to this.
 
DonMatsen said:
"Looking to?" What took Cumulus so long? With their financial issues, they should have been on this for a while now.
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The iHeart deal was for $400 million, and they own 3 times as many stations. Given that the two most valuable sites have already been sold, I'd say this deal will be worth less than $100 million. Yes it's a lot of money, but less than what they got for just the LA and DC sites.
 
TheBigA said:
The iHeart deal was for $400 million, and they own 3 times as many stations. Given that the two most valuable sites have already been sold, I'd say this deal will be worth less than $100 million. Yes it's a lot of money, but less than what they got for just the LA and DC sites.
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Sure but, keep in mind, they won't have to deal with the maintenance and problems anymore. Pay the rent, concentrate on the stations. There must be some tax benefits also.
 
DonMatsen said:
Sure but, keep in mind, they won't have to deal with the maintenance and problems anymore. Pay the rent, concentrate on the stations. There must be some tax benefits also.
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Not so fast. I'm sure the individual station or stations will be responsible for the matching ATU to the tower or towers in a directional AM. For AM stations they still need to provide a phasor for a directional operation. Maybe even the diplexer for AM stations sharing the tower or towers. I also know of some AM stations that don't own the tower but own the building. There is always going to be transmitter maintenance of your an AM or FM transmitter and associated equipment at the transmitter site.

Some FM stations own the Antenna and Coax on the tower they lease. For combined FM operations there are still issues. The master antenna that burned up on West Tiger mountain, west of Seattle Washington is just now starting the final repair/replacement and that burned up over a year ago. Stations are still responsible for STL antennas and the coax at some sites. So this notion of selling the tower site and never thinking about maintenance is BS. Stations will still have to reduce power or switch to an alternate rented site if the main tower/antenna needs to be climbed, inspected or repaired.

True they may not need to maintain the actual tower, but there is more to broadcasting than just a vertical metal structure when it comes to transmitting the signal. Sell your site and it gets monetized, things look good, then a couple of years latter your asked to go off the air so they can climb through the antenna to mount a cell antenna. It's not always smooth sailing once you sell your tower and never think about transmitter site maintenance.

There may be some benefits but there are also trade offs. True the tower site seller may not have to pay the property taxes any more and there may be some tax benefits for the station now paying rent. There will always be transmitter site maintenance and up keep.
 
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