Four Radio Stations Bought

Nassau Purchases Are Part Of Northeast Expansion

By Omar Sacirbey

Valley News Staff Writer

West Lebanon -- The Vox Radio Group has sold all four of its Upper Valley radio stations to Nassau Broadcasting Holdings Inc., a Princeton, N.J.-based company that in recent months has made an aggressive push into northeastern radio markets.

The move by West Lebanon-based Vox leaves the Upper Valley with only a handful of locally owned radio stations, although industry observers said they expect Nassau to retain station employees and not change formats.

Vox signed a purchase agreement with Nassau on March 12 and announced the deal to employees three days later, according to Jeffrey Shapiro, managing partner at Vox. The Federal Communications Commission still must approve the deal, but that should be a formality Shapiro said.

Repeated phone calls to Nassau were not returned.

As part of the deal, Nassau will get classic rock station Q106 (WHDQ), which broadcasts out of Claremont as well as Bob Country (WWSH), Oldies 104 (WWOD), and AM sports station The Score (WNHV and WTSV), all of which broadcast out of West Lebanon.

Q106 is a 50,000-watt station whose signal has about a 50-mile reach, while Oldies 104 is a 25,000-watt station with a 35-mile reach, according to Shapiro. Bob Country is a 6,000-watt station reaching about 25 miles, while The Score is a 1,000-watt station reaching about 10 miles.

Under the March 12 deal, Nassau also agreed to purchase three stations from Vox that broadcast from the Montpelier and Barre, Vt., area -- contemporary music station WORK FM, country music station Froggy 100.9 and AM talk station WSNO. While under a deal struck in February, Nassau bought three of four Vox stations that served the Concord-Manchester-Laconia markets: country station Outlaw 102.3, contemporary hits station WJYY, and classic rock station I93. The only Concord station not to go to Nassau was news and talk outlet WTPL.

Vox's four Upper Valley stations employ about 25 people, while its Concord and Montpelier stations have about 20 and 15 workers, respectively.

“Basically, we got a deal that was hard to refuse,” said Shapiro, explaining Vox's decision to sell the stations. He declined to disclose the terms of the deal, but the New Jersey Broadcasters Association reported on its Web site that the 10 Vox stations cost Nassau $22 million.

Northeast Broadcasting Co. owns The Point radio stations based in Burlington and broadcasts locally from WRJT in White River Junction. Tim Hoehn, sales director for Northeast, called Vox's four Upper Valley stations “the diamond” of its 30-station network. Shapiro estimated that the four stations accounted for 20 percent of Vox's revenue.

Major Northeast Expansion

Those purchases are just the latest in Nassau's Northeast spending spree.

In February, the Concord Monitor reported that Nassau's filings with the FCC show that it is spending $17 million for the six New Hampshire stations -- three from the Sconnix Broadcasting Co. based in Vienna, Va., and three from Tele-media Co. in Pleasant Gap, Pa. -- that it agreed to buy in January. Together, the six stations that Nassau purchased in January serve an area with approximately 1.575 million people, Nassau said in a press statement.

In December, Nassau announced it would acquire six FM stations in southern coastal Maine from Mariner Broadcasting and five stations -- three FM and two AM -- in Portland from Radio Partners of Maine. Those stations reportedly cost Nassau more than $30 million. Including its latest acquisitions, Nassau now owns about 40 stations in New England, suburban New York, Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania.

The sales leave Vox with still more than 20 stations, primarily covering Rutland and Mt. Snow, Vt.; Brattleboro, Vt., Bellows Falls, Vt., and Keene, N.H.; Northampton, Mass., and Greenfield, Mass.; and several areas in upstate New York.

No Plans To Change Formats

Shapiro said Nassau had no plans to change formats at the stations or to layoff workers. But the company would make personnel decisions based on employee performance, and there are no guarantees against layoffs, he said. “The feedback we have is they will keep everything,” Shapiro said. “I'm sure the new owner will give them every opportunity to perform and succeed for him like they did for us.”

At least one Vox worker, DJ Chris Garrett, who hosts a morning program, The Bob Wake-Up Club on Bob Country, said he believed Nassau would keep him and other Vox employees. Garrett joined Vox in May after Clear Channel, the biggest radio station owner in the country ,with about 1,225 stations, laid him off two months earlier from a local classic rock station. Garrett had been with the station for seven years, but was laid off two years after Clear Channel -- which owns eight Upper Valley stations -- bought the station in 2001.

“Nassau is not that big of a company like Clear Channel that can bring in any Tom, Dick or Harry to do the show,” Garrett said. “I have confidence that Nassau will keep the local staff around instead of bringing somebody up from New Jersey. I think this is a company that wants to keep things local.”

Closer to its home base, Nassau has built a reputation as a company that invests heavily in its programming and promotion, and treats its employees well, said Phil Roberts, president of the New Jersey Broadcasters Association. “If they're good, they'll probably be asked to stay, and they’ll probably get a raise,” Roberts said.

It was unclear how Nassau's entry into the Upper Valley radio market would affect other radio stations in the area.

‘Business as Usual' At Other Stations

“For us, it's business as usual,” said Tim Plante, Clear Channel's Upper Valley marketing manager.

“I have no negative or positive comments (about the acquisition). It's part of what the industry is today. It's a natural occurrence,” said Bob Vinikoor, the president of Koor Communications, which owns WNTK-FM and WNTK-AM in New London and WNBX-AM in Springfield, Vt. “As long as they stay local, they'll be successful.”

Station managers from Dartmouth College-owned WDCR FM and WFRD AM could not be reached for comment.

Nassau traces its roots back to 1963 when Princeton University graduate and Princeton, N.J., resident Herbert Hobler first put WHWH AM on the air with local news, information and music. In 1974, Hobler purchased WTOA FM from the Trenton (N.J.) Times. In 1986, both stations were sold to a local entrepreneur, Louis Mercatanti, who is still Nassau's chief executive officer today.

According to Hoover's Online, a business information Web site, Mercatanti owns about a quarter of Nassau. The vast majority of the company is owned by Spectrum Equity Investors, a capital management firm with $3 billion in assets. Spectrum, with offices in Boston and Menlo Park, Calif., has investments in about 150 businesses.

In 2000, the Nassau filed for an initial public stock offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but withdrew it that same year as the stock bubble burst.

According to a July 10, 2000, prospectus that it filed with the SEC, Nassau was unprofitable and didn't expect to make money for a time to come.

“We have sustained substantial net losses since our inception and have never generated positive operating income. We incurred net losses of approximately $6.7 million in 1997, $4.0 million in 1998, $4.6 million in 1999 and $1.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2000. We expect to continue to incur net losses while we pursue our strategy of growing our business,” the prospectus said.

“We intend to continue to expand our presence in demographically attractive suburban areas surrounding major metropolitan markets, primarily in the Northeast. We target markets that have lower radio market revenue relative to total retail sales as compared to the national average and/or where radio has historically captured only a small portion of total local advertising expenditure. We seek to acquire stations that enable us to further strengthen our presence in existing markets or to create leadership positions in new, complementary markets,” according to the filing.