The Herald has the story here, it’s a bad situation for the owner of four Cape stations. A preview of what’s to come in Boston?
Save WRKO
The Herald has the story here, it’s a bad situation for the owner of four Cape stations. A preview of what’s to come in Boston?
Save WRKO 
Boston Business Journal article (which I found linked to Cape Cod Times site) mentioned they owe $6.5 M to M&T bank (Baltimore) and $3.5 M to Charles River Broadcasting–who had sold them WFCC and WKPE in 2007.
I can see advertising drying up (economy/ wet summer, lack of tourism) but the amount of debt they have comp. to what they have on hand is staggering. If they can’t get the half million to keep running do the signals get turned off?
Maybe WGBH, supported by Listeners Like You (scratch that; _I_ don’t give them money 🙂 )
can buy one or two of the stations and put WCRB on there. The 99.5 signal is weak to the south.
A bit more from the Herald which says that there are no plans to sell the stations and they will keep running but they
need a half million dollars to re-structure; the debt of $10 million or so is partially due to the “debt service” including
the original purchase of two stations from Charles River Broadcasting. Add the declining ad market to that, according to
Michael Harrison, and you have a good idea of “the plight” local radio can face.
I guess Ernie Boch is pretty glad he unloaded his stations when he did.
I’m no financial wizard, but with “less than $50,000 in assets” and debts of over $10M, I can’t see why anybody would invest another cent. And they’re looking to borrow over 10 times their assets!
Is there any reason to think that they can repay that debt – even when the ad market picks back up?
It looks a lot like throwing good money after bad…