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Makes good on promise to FCC to find minority buyers
Westinghouse/CBS last week fulfilled its promise to the FCC to sell its extra Chicago stations to minority broadcasters. WSCR(AM) will go to African-American broadcaster N. John Douglas, who already owns WNDZ(AM) Portage, Ind./Chicago.
As part of the deal, CBS Radio will move the station's money-making sports talk programing to WJJD(AM), now owned by Infinity Broadcasting Corp. CBS will take the call letters too, and WJJD will become wscR. WJJD has a straight talk format and is 27th in the market in billing, according to Duncan's Radio Market Guide. WScR is 22nd.
The CBS/Douglas deal (subject to FCC approval) allows CBS to meet the local radio-station ownership cap of eight stations in the nation's largest markets. Of the eight, there can be no more than five of a kind (AM or FM). CBS, after its planned merger with Infinity, would have owned six FMs and four AMs in Chicago, the nation's third-largest radio market.
CBS in July told the FCC that it would comply with the cap in Chicago by selling the extra stations to minority broadcasters. Last month, WYSY(FM) Aurora/Chicago was sold to Spanish Broadcasting Systems for about $35 million.
Douglas offered to buy both the FM and the AM in Chicago, says his broker, Ben LaRue of H.B. LaRue Media Brokers. CBS officials, however, were intent on selling to two different minorities, he says.
Douglas isn't worried about the loss of the format, LaRue says, because he "does his own thing anyway." Douglas is pioneering...