Facing the dilemma of buy or get bought in the rapidly consolidating radio business, Wall”s Press Communications last week sold three of its radio holdings to Millennium Radio of Amherst, New York for $110 million. The three stations are WKXW-FM, better known by its street name of New Jersey 101.5, its AM sister, WBUD, and WBSS-FM, which carries New Jersey 101.5 in far southern New Jersey.

The deal was Millennium”s second in four months in New Jersey. In March it bought Atlantic City”s WFPG-FM, WFPG-AM and WPUR-FM for $19.4 million. Charlie Banta, president of Mercury Capital Partners, one of the owners of Millennium, said he has no plans to change the talk-radio format. Said he: “We did not pay a lot of money just so we could change it. It”s a unique station with a very unusual, but appropriate, concept for New Jersey.”

New Jersey 101.5 has been the biggest New Jersey media success story of the past 15 years. In 1989 the Asbury Park Press, which in 1979 had passed up a chance to buy the sleepy station for $1.1 million, bought it for $8 million and changed the format from rock to New Jersey talk. The station led the tax revolt that drove Governor Jim Florio from office in 1993 and became a powerful, and often controversial, voice of New Jersey. Love it or hate it, everyone, particularly in Trenton, listened to it. The station waved the New Jersey flag with its slogan, “Not New York; not Philadelphia. Proud to be New Jersey.” (BUSINESS NEWS president George Taber has been the station”s business commentator since 1992.)

In 1997, when the Asbury Park Press was sold to Gannett, a group of inside investors bought the radio and television properties in a complex leveraged buyout, for about $60 million. The deal included not only New Jersey 101.5 but also Florida stations, which were later sold at a good profit.

The radio business has been going through a dramatic consolidation since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which rewrote the rules on ownership of radio and television stations. While before no company could own more than one AM and one FM station in a market, the limit now is eight. Stations have since been sold at unheard of prices, as companies bought up markets to get economies of scale and reap extraordinary profits. Today radio stations are being sold for a staggering 10-12 times annual revenues. Other media properties sell for only about one-to-three times annual revenues.

Press Communications has been trying to buy radio stations, but the game had become too rich for its private owners. So they decided to sell the popular station for top dollar, when they had the opportunity to get it.

So what”s next for New Jersey radio? Millennium is expected to buy still more New Jersey stations and become a major market force, while Press Communications now has the cash to buy more stations. It still owns two New Jersey stations, and industry insiders say it might be in the market to buy some Jersey Shore stations currently owned by Nassau Broadcasting Partners. That company operates 17 stations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but has been having financial troubles, including a failed initial public stock offering last year. Stay tuned.

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