Thursday, July 06, 2017

What is WGN Radio Worth?

Tom Taylor's NOW column takes a crack at that this morning...

Chicago’s talk WGN/720 is worth an estimated $58.4 million in the Sinclair sale. That’s the way it pencils out to Kagan, teasing apart the $3.82 billion price for all those Tribune-owned TV stations plus the company’s sole radio property. Who knows how Sinclair values WGN, though? It’s a TV consolidator, and its only other radio properties (in Seattle) were strictly come-along assets when it bought Fisher Communications. With Tribune, Kagan says Sinclair gains WGN radio plus “the programming of one additional FM station.” (It’s not clear what that refers to, since Tribune already severed the LMA with the low power TV 87.7.) Sinclair kept Fisher’s Seattle radio properties in 2013 and presumably will retain WGN radio.