Greater Media to enter exclusive talks for WCRB

Greater Media Inc., which operates such FM radio stations as Magic 106.7 (WMJX) and WBOS (92.9), said yesterday it has agreed to enter exclusive negotiations to buy classical radio station WCRB (102.5) for an undisclosed price from Charles River Broadcasting Co.

An unsuccessful bidder said the station should fetch $90 million to $100 million, raising the possibility that WCRB will abandon classical music for a more profitable format.

Greater Media chief executive Peter H. Smyth declined to discuss price, possible format changes, or the future of WCRB's employees. He said he hopes to have by February an agreement to buy WCRB's signal and license.

WCRB's nearly 50 employees have been offered retention bonuses to stay on until a sale closes, said Mary Marshall, Charles River Broadcasting's chairwoman.

''Our hope is that some of them would be offered positions" with Greater Media, she said.

Greater Media owns five FM stations in Boston and would probably have to divest itself of a station to win approval from the Federal Communications Commission to purchase WCRB.

A company in a market this size can own a maximum of five FM stations, according to FCC rules.

The likely candidate for divestiture is the frequency used by country station WKLB-FM (99.5), because it has the weakest signal of Greater Media's stations, said Smyth, who declined to comment on whether he might switch WKLB's country format to WCRB's signal.

''This acquisition would give Greater Media's Boston cluster a significant signal upgrade," he said. ''WCRB has one of the best signals in the market."

Such an upgrade is ''critical," he said, as Greater Media expands into multicasting and high-definition radio, which allow the broadcast of multiple programs over a station's existing signal. Greater Media's other local stations include WROR (105.7) and WTKK (96.9).

Greater Media, of Braintree, is the parent company of 19 radio stations in Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, according to its website. The privately owned company does not disclose financial information.

Noting the difficulty of operating a small group of stations in an industry of giants such as Clear Channel Communications Inc., which has over 1,000 stations, Charles River Broadcasting disclosed plans in October to explore a sale of its five radio stations, tower properties, and real estate.

One unsuccessful WCRB bidder was Woody Tanger, chief executive of Marlin Broadcasting LLC, which owns a classical music station in Hartford.

With plans to keep WCRB's classical format, Tanger submitted a bid of $60.5 million, based on WCRB's annual revenue of about $8 million. It was rejected as too low. To pay the likely $90 million to $100 million that WCRB would fetch, he said, a new owner would have to switch to programming that generates more ad dollars.

New technology that allows multiple broadcasts over the same signal may enable Greater Media to air classical music on one channel while broadcasting another format on a separate channel. Smyth said he'll ''work hard" to try to find a way for broadcasting classical music.

Longtime WCRB listener Setta Arevian, a Brockton retiree, noted that before former owner Ted Jones died in 1991, he said he had established a trust designed to keep WCRB's classical music format for a century. But the trust expressed Jones's intention as a wish, not a command, Marshall said. Still, Arevian is disappointed about WCRB's proposed sale, even though, as Marshall noted, some local public radio stations air classical music as part of their programming.

''Boston is such a world-class city," Arevian said. ''We should have a full-time classical music station."

Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.