David - this thread had ONE POST in it! Was it really necessary to quote the lone post in it? My God, man...
(quoting just to get Joe's knickers in a twist...
Here's the deal: Disney now believes (correctly, I think) that the business of providing live audio about sports will outlive the business of transmitting RF from tall towers. By not owning 98.7, Disney/ESPN doesn't have to concern itself with maintaining a public file, negotiating for a replacement master antenna at Empire, monitoring modulation levels, or any of the minutiae of operating a broadcast station. Once the audio leaves its studio at 125 West End Avenue, it's Emmis' problem. The deal was, IIRC, a 10-year contract. ESPN will be on 98.7 through 2021, period, and if for some reason broadcast FM still matters at that point, Disney can negotiate an extension or buy something else - and if it doesn't, it walks away and that's that.
Emmis, for its part, still takes in something like $75 million for its role in the deal, so it gets most of the benefits it would have received from actually selling the 98.7 license, and if the 98.7 license is still worth something come 2021, it still has the license, too.
1050 is just weird. The WEPN engineers in New York maintain the RF plant, but all the programming actually routes through ESPN Deportes Radio in Miami, which is also where much of the "local" programming originates. If a buyer came along offering a reasonable amount of money, I suspect Disney would gladly part with 1050.
As for 1560, it's operated entirely separate of ESPN/WEPN. There's a nominal main studio and sales office at ABC HQ on W. 66th Street, which is also where the public file lives, but otherwise it's just an engineer maintaining the transmitter out in Maspeth. The remaining Disney AMs are legacy operations; when Radio Disney started, there wasn't really streaming audio and there certainly weren't smartphone apps. Disney was never on AM radio because it believed passionately in AM radio. It was on AM radio because that was the cheapest way to achieve maximum distribution in the mid-1990s.
There's probably no other broadcaster out there right now that's as savvy about the distinction between content and distribution platform as Disney. The arrangement with Emmis is just one example of that.