By Ted Shen
After feeding the animals, Sonia makes her rounds, checking in with her lieutenants and peering into the station’s large, dusty record and CD library. “To tell you the truth, the station pretty much runs itself,” she says with a cheerful smile. But she insists that it gives her enormous pleasure just to come to work, putting in long hours and only rarely taking a vacation.
Minkow says the act opened the floodgates for buyouts and megamergers, because companies could now own as many stations as they wanted nationwide. By mid-1998 the top five national chains each owned at least 150 stations. Hundreds of small owners have gladly sold out, in many cases getting stratospheric returns for what had been paltry initial investments. According to the Wall Street Journal, so many radio stations changed hands last year that the transactions were valued at more than $15 billion–up from $3.6 billion in 1995. In 1997 Dallas-based Evergreen Media acquired Chancellor Broadcasting, which by then owned 51 stations nationwide, as well as ten radio stations from Viacom. The resulting conglomerate, Chancellor Media, now trails only Infinity Broadcasting, the radio unit of CBS Corporation; in 1998 Infinity had 181 stations and revenues of about $1.9 billion. But Chancellor recently announced that it’s going to acquire Capstar, which should make it number one.
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In Chicago, the third largest advertising market in the country, Infinity and Chancellor are the powerhouses. But neither is likely to be interested in either WNIB or WFMT. “They are out because they’re up to their limit [Infinity has eight stations and Chancellor five FM stations],” Minkow explains. “However, there are dozens of other candidates, including the number-three chain [in terms of revenue], Jacor, Emmis Broadcasting Corporation, Walt Disney’s ABC radio unit, and others that want a presence in Chicago.” He also says one can’t rule out privately held companies such as Bonneville International (which is controlled by the Mormon Church); it bought WPNT FM and WLUP FM from Chancellor in 1997 for about $161 million. “So it’s safe to speculate,” says Minkow, “that ‘NIB can command well in excess of $70 million. And the same can be said for ‘FMT.”
There was no money because there were few advertisers. Gershon says, “Most advertisers went to where the audience was–on the AM spectrum. Oh, we had a couple of sponsors, like Kroch’s & Brentano’s or a record store.”
Florian believes that audiences prefer the mainstream music WNIB programs. “I never thought the folks at ‘FMT cared about what the public wanted,” she says. “They were elitist, and I always believed that once our station had a wider coverage area we’d beat them in the ratings. I could never imagine playing Honegger’s Joan of Arc at three o’clock in the afternoon.”
WFMT had become an institution as much identified with the city as the Cubs. Its listeners were noted for their fervid loyalty; its public-minded news and interview and drama shows won an enviable number of prestigious broadcast awards, including five Peabodys and a cabinet full of Major Armstrongs and DuPonts–all top awards for excellence in programming–between 1961 and 1986, the height of its renown. Just as important, WFMT scored impressively in the ratings, for a classical station, and its audience was coveted by advertisers from Northern Trust Bank to Mercedes-Benz that were pitching tony products and services.
