Entercom to buy Boston's WILD-FM for $30 million
Entercom Communications Corp. , which owns four radio stations in the Boston market including sports powerhouse WEEI-AM , said yesterday it has agreed to buy the urban music station WILD-FM for $30 million and use its signal to simulcast the rock format of its WAAF-FM station, beginning as early as today.
Simulcasting will mean listeners in downtown Boston and the South Shore will get clearer reception of WAAF, whose core audience is men between 18 and 34, Entercom said.
But simulcasting will mean that WAAF will have to educate listeners that it will now be in two places on the radio dial.
Entercom of Pennsylvania, the nation's fourth-largest radio broadcaster, also disclosed plans to pay $262 million to buy radio stations in Texas , Ohio , Tennessee , and New York from CBS Corp.
Calls to WILD and WILD's seller, Radio One Inc., a Maryland broadcaster that primarily targets African-Americans, were not returned. While the transaction requires regulatory approvals, the deal allows Entercom to begin using WILD-FM's signal immediately.
Radio One operates two local stations with the WILD call letters. WILD-FM is mostly a music station. WILD-AM, with a news-talk format, was not part of the transaction.
According to WILD-FM's website, it features such performers as Beyonce and Luther Vandross and Tom Joyner's syndicated talk show. That format will disappear from the 97.7 position on the FM dial.
Listeners will then hear songs from Pearl Jam and Aerosmith on WAAF's frequency of 107.3 and on WILD's frequency, said Lee Kinberg , director of operations for Entercom Boston.
In radio industry language, a station with an urban music format is one that primarily appeals to a black audience. One station doing well with that format is WJMN-FM , or JAM'N, said vice president Mark Fratrik of BIA Financial Network , a Virginia company that tracks the radio industry.
Calls to JAM'N, owned by radio giant Clear Channel Communications , were not returned.
With the end of WILD-FM, JAM'N will be the only big local commercial station with an urban music format, Fratrik said. Demographics may partly explain why. If Greater Boston is defined as everything within about 40 miles of the city, 6.4 percent of the Greater Boston radio market is African-American, Fratrik said, compared with 26.4 percent for the Washington, D.C., radio market, which has three big urban FM music stations.
WILD-FM's disappearance will mean the local radio market will be deprived of a strong African-American voice, said Tessil Collins of Spectrum Broadcasting Corp., a Boston firm that creates content for digital media.
``It's such a shock that folks can come in from the outside and sell an institution," said Collins, referring to Radio One.
According to Entercom, WAAF's rock format has attracted strong ratings, but its transmission facility in Boylston provides limited signal coverage to downtown Boston and the South Shore.
``The WILD acquisition will dramatically enhance our signal coverage," said David J. Field, Entercom's chief executive, in a statement.
``WAAF is a big winner with the ability to cover more folks in the Greater Boston area," added Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio. ``WILD-FM and the urban format's a loser because Radio One just wasn't able to grow it."
According to editor Scott Fybush of the industry newsletter NorthEast Radio Watch , Entercom may have gotten a ``bargain" in paying only $30 million for WILD-FM.
Yesterday's deal reminded Fybush of a recent transaction that will involve a planned switching of frequencies between classical music station WCRB-FM and country station WKLB-FM. When the switch is completed, WKLB will be broadcast on WCRB's frequency, which is much stronger in Boston than the signal WKLB uses now.
``It's all about getting your signal to where your target audience is," Fybush said.
Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com. Globe correspondent Clea Simon contributed to this report. Material from Bloomberg News also was used. 
