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Is this the end for Nassau?

N

Ned Braden

Per All Access:

http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...u-broadcasting-asks-court-to-let-it-auction-o

NASSAU BROADCASTING PARTNERS has moved in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in DELAWARE to have the company's assets, including all of its stations, auctioned off.

[EDIT]

In reading between the lines, does this mean Nassu is officially going out of business?



[EDIT-Citation exceeds amount of permissible content under Fair Use and has been truncated. Link added by Radio-Info.com as a courtesy.]
 
Damn, $283.7 million is a lot of money! It's about the same as the Powerball jackpot.

The best way to get that kind of money quickly is to sell the stations. WPST is one of the most valuable stations in the cluster.
 
The guys in Philly are really enjoying this one as some hope for KYW to be on 94.5. As if Merlin, NJ 101.5, and the sports on FM isn't enough. ::)
 
Nick said:
The best way to get that kind of money quickly is to sell the stations. WPST is one of the most valuable stations in the cluster.
Click to expand...

I wonder whether there's any hope they can actually raise that money by auctioning those stations.

/c'mon powerball...
 
WPST will be the last station auctioned off if they can help it - when all is said and done, Nassau in NJ might end up just being WCHR 920, WNJE 1040, and WPST. All the other stations owned by them (with the exception of Allentown, Cape Cod and Maryland stations) are not worth holding on to.

Should be interesting to watch who gets what.
 
Turnpike Tuner said:
WPST will be the last station auctioned off if they can help it
Click to expand...

I don't think they can help it. $283 mil is a lot of money and WPST is probably worth more than any other station Nassau owns. I don't see how they get anywhere near that number if they don't sell off PST and their other valuable properties.
 
S said:
I don't think they can help it. $283 mil is a lot of money and WPST is probably worth more than any other station Nassau owns. I don't see how they get anywhere near that number if they don't sell off PST and their other valuable properties.
Click to expand...

Hence why I said "if." GM & Townsquare are the only ones with cash around here...MAYBE Press if they wanted to. $283 million is a nice chunk of change to pay off. All I know is that I wouldn't want to work at PST right about now...
 
Pee STreet is worth maybe $ 22 million. Add in another million for the two AMs.
That's it. Compare other prices in the market. It's not New York, Not Philadelphia, it's New Jersey.
 
You have to wonder if ESPN won't make a bid on WNJE in Flemington since it LMA's it, and might be able to get it cheaply. That's one station that doesn't have much potential value to anyone else.

Even if ESPN buys an FM station in the NYC market, the WNJE signal would be just about as valuable to them in terms of additional audience as it is now.

And being on 1040, ESPN might also have plans to someday take it dark, if it needs to do that as part of an engineering plan to expand the 1050 NYC signal to the west. Speculation is that WEPN-AM will become Spanish sports talk if its English format moves to FM.

As to the rest of the Nassau collection, it wouldn't be surprising to see Townsquare make a bid for the whole kit and caboodle, but at a low price. The financially troubled group of small and medium market stations is exactly the kind of operations Townsquare is building its business on. But other than WPST, and WODE in Easton, there don't seem to be any moderately standout stations that other group broadcasters would be clamoring to own, but there might be some special cases. In today's depressed market that $284-million seems like an awful lot of money. Lots of luck to them! But, when all is said and done the lenders will probably all be taking tax losses and haircuts.
 
In addition to WPST & WODE, the Maryland stations and the Cape Cod stations are worth something and are pretty stable. Everything else? Throw it up on eBay and see who bids on 'em.

I wonder if Press would grab WWYY to shut it down and maybe try and expand the reach of WWZY (if that's even feasible).
 
Although WWYY does cause issues with WWZY to the west, I think WWZY receives most of its signal issues from WXPK....Up here in Bergen County, WWZY mixes with WXPK the most (even into parts of Rockland County).
 
If eliminating WWYY could have helped WWZY, it would have been done when the stations were still co-owned.

Here's the problem: let's say you buy WWYY and return the license to the FCC. The only thing that does is to vacate the still-extant allocation for 107.1A as the first and only local service to Belvidere, NJ. The allocation stays on the FCC's books, must still be protected, and will show up again in the next commercial FM auction.

(Even if you could somehow make the Belvidere allocation go away, I'm pretty sure the spacing issues to Briarcliff Manor and WBLS and Boyertown and WKDN and WPUR wouldn't leave much wiggle room to improve WWZY.)
 
Scott Fybush said:
If eliminating WWYY could have helped WWZY, it would have been done when the stations were still co-owned.

Here's the problem: let's say you buy WWYY and return the license to the FCC. The only thing that does is to vacate the still-extant allocation for 107.1A as the first and only local service to Belvidere, NJ. The allocation stays on the FCC's books, must still be protected, and will show up again in the next commercial FM auction.

(Even if you could somehow make the Belvidere allocation go away, I'm pretty sure the spacing issues to Briarcliff Manor and WBLS and Boyertown and WKDN and WPUR wouldn't leave much wiggle room to improve WWZY.)
Click to expand...
Why would Press want to take WWYY dark? They could just simulcast WWZY on it
 
Stop it. WWYY is run out of the Easton/Allentown cluster. And, they have a recurring deal with the NY Yankees because WCBS doesn't reach that well into Allentown at night. They'll go as a cluster, or not at all.
 
They'll go as a cluster, or not at all.
Click to expand...

While it makes some sense to keep the current cluster together, there are other scenarios.

WWYY doesn't really cover the entire Easton/Bethlehem/Allentown market, but does cover Warren County NJ very well. If the price is right, WRNJ in Hackettstown might be wise to consider buying it back. After all, the owners of WRNJ put WWYY on the air, and are said to still own the transmitter site. They originally understood the potential of the Belvidere FM, got caught in the "Country Music Wars" with a big CAT from Easton, and then suddenly got an offer from an outfit that wanted to own four 107.1's surrounding NYC, and they decided to "take the loot and scoot." But times and circumstances have changed, and they might be able to buy the FM back at a bargain price and pick up where they left off.

From a business perspective, the FM is in the same market as RNJ, and would help that company keep its local market share as more RNJ listeners move over to FM and RNJ's FM translators. It would help guarantee a long-term future for WRNJ, and would increase that station's value.

Meanwhile, a bigger buyer may only be interested in WODE for its reach and growth potential, and if, as noted above, if ESPN is interested in buying its LMA WNJE in Flemington, which simulcasts WEPN in NYC, ESPN might also be interested in forming a sports cluster with WEEX in Easton, and WTKZ in Allentown which are ESPN affiliates. ESPN normally wouldn't want stations in that small a market, but this is a special situation that they are already involved in, and you just never know.

You have to remember that whomever is handling the sale of the Nassau stations has an obligation to get the most money for the creditors. They probably would prefer to sell the whole company as one unit, but if selling some of the stations one by one will bring in more dollars they will do that.

Unfortunately for employees who would want to keep the status quo, the one thing they really don't care about is preserving the current clusters, if individual station sales will ultimately bring in more bucks to pay back the people who are owed nearly $300-million. Still, in trying to reach that large a goal, other than WODE, the ABE cluster stations are probably no more important than pocket change likely to be tossed in to sweeten any deal for WODE, or kept out if somebody else has a particular interest in one or the other.
 
I think that whoever buys WODE should make it either Oldies/Classic Hits like CBS FM or OGL or make into a Hip Hop Station-give B-104 a run for their money. Make B-104 less Adult sounding. or even better make 107.1 WODE and 99.9 the Bone. Or make the Bone Alternative. Or 107.1 Hip Hop although I don't know how many trees in NJ and cows want to listen to hip hop music on 107.1
 
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