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Audacy Sells St. Louis Cluster

Wait a minute! Isn't this the same Hoffman company that just sold (over the past two years) its stations in Springfield and Bloomington, IL? If so, I wonder how long the St. Louis Audacy cluster should be expected to stay with this new owner.
 
End of an era. KMOX was one of the first affiliates of CBS and they bought the station not long after 1928. Of course Audacy has no emotional attachment to it. Bill Paley had a collection of mic flags in his office, and one of them was for KMOX. I think that collection is at the Paley Center in NYC.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a big sell off coming. There have been rumors about the Buffalo cluster for a while.
 
ted chittenden said:
Wait a minute! Isn't this the same Hoffman company that just sold (over the past two years) its stations in Springfield and Bloomington, IL? If so, I wonder how long the St. Louis Audacy cluster should be expected to stay with this new owner.
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Thats one helluva conclusion to jump to so quickly already
 
ted chittenden said:
Wait a minute! Isn't this the same Hoffman company that just sold (over the past two years) its stations in Springfield and Bloomington, IL? If so, I wonder how long the St. Louis Audacy cluster should be expected to stay with this new owner.
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No. That’s the Neuhoff family.

Only they know their true intentions, but I expect they will own these properties for quite awhile. They’re rumored to be interested in the Cardinals and own quite-a-bit of commercial real estate in metro STL. A member of the family also either owns or is acquiring a controlling interest in the Post Dispatch.
 
TheBigA said:
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a big sell off coming. There have been rumors about the Buffalo cluster for a while.
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If Hoffmann is interested in other Audacy properties, as I mentioned above, it owns a controlling interest in Lee Enterprises, which owns newspapers in Buffalo and Madison. Not sure if it would be enough to generate interest, but it also owns newspapers in areas around Milwaukee, like Kenosha and Racine.
 
This marks Hoffmann Media Group's debut into the radio space as it has previously only owned newspaper and digital news brands.

It's worth pointing out that certain prolific defenders of radio consolidation on this site constantly claim that more consolidation is necessary because no one else is buying stations. Today's news proves this is not true.
 
Kent said:
If Hoffmann is interested in other Audacy properties, as I mentioned above, it owns a controlling interest in Lee Enterprises, which owns newspapers in Buffalo and Madison. Not sure if it would be enough to generate interest, but it also owns newspapers in areas around Milwaukee, like Kenosha and Racine.
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Put in radio terms, Lee Enterprises is to newspapers as iHeart is to radio. They are slowly killing what's left of The Buffalo News. It's not printed in Buffalo, but trucked in from Cleveland. Staff has been decimated, printed editions are being reduced. To use David E's analogy, it's an oil well being depleted. Granted, newspapers are much farther along in the "death spiral" than radio.
 
A suggestion for @lanceventa if you're reading this...

I think St. Louis (market #25), and this topic in particular, are going to be getting a lot of attention in the near future. Would you consider moving it to the top "Markets/Regions" section so visitors don't have to dig through the Missouri state forum to find it? It might be a good candidate to replace Memphis (market #55) which doesn't seem to be getting much traffic recently.
 
An alarming number of smaller market stations owned by retirement age owners shut down for lack of a buyer...even worse for newspapers in smaller towns. I got an offer to buy a small town paper that was breaking even for $5,000 including the building (it was small, under 500 square feet) and all equipment. The owner made the offer because he was in his mid-70s and health was starting to fail. Never got a small town station for 20 cent on the dollar based on assets that was breaking even.
 
RadioGuy1864 said:
Put in radio terms, Lee Enterprises is to newspapers as iHeart is to radio. They are slowly killing what's left of The Buffalo News. It's not printed in Buffalo, but trucked in from Cleveland. Staff has been decimated, printed editions are being reduced. To use David E's analogy, it's an oil well being depleted. Granted, newspapers are much farther along in the "death spiral" than radio.
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A friend of mine lost his job in layoffs at Lee a few years ago. I know Lee and Gannett aren’t benign (the quality of my local paper has gone down since GateHouse/Gannett bought it), but I've heard both are Heaven compared to Alden. Almost seems like the Hoffman deal was to keep Alden from attempting a hostile takeover after a friendlier offer failed. Can’t remember where it comes from now, but the big printing press the Post Dispatch had practically forever shut down a few years ago. Despite being a McClatchey product, the KC Star is printed at the Des Moines Register's facility and trucked in. I wouldn’t be surprised if newspaper publishers swap product like the oil companies do.

Steel Nerves said:
Based on what I've seen of Hoffman's ambitions vs. accomplishments in Missouri Wine Country, I prefer Audacy.
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Now, you’re making me think I need to take a day trip to Augusta on a Saturday to see what it's about! It would have to be a weekend when Kara is off, though. I like to taste wine, but I don’t really like to drink it. She’s more the oenophile. Looks like the brewery in Augusta shut down again a couple years ago.

Theater of My Mind said:
Pure speculation. No one saw Hoffmann as a buyer until today and you don't know how many others like them may be out there.
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Hoffmann has indicated it will likely buy more stations. We don’t know what that means yet, though. Also, no, we don’t know how many potential buyers exist, but, if it were many, so many properties wouldn’t be going to religious broadcasters. You can go to just about any board on this site and see people griping about K-Love buying what would’ve been beachfront property as recently as 10 years ago. If ready buyers were plentiful, that wouldn’t happen. K-Love is a last resort buyer for most; it doesn’t pay cash flow multiples, and a cash flow multiple on a successful radio station is almost always a better deal than a price per head.
 


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