Is WCRB up for sale?

[Scott Fybush]

Larry Weil wrote:

> I think that any purchasser would not be a party to said agreement.

It would seem, from a lot of what was being said around the time of the 
99.5/102.5 switch, that the "agreement" didn't turn out to be binding 
anyway. (And while IANAL, there's a case to be made that under FCC 
regulations, the seller of a station can't legally bind the purchaser to 
  any specific programming; furthermore, even if a court were to 
determine that the Jones trust barred the *sale* of WCRB if it would 
have led to the end of classical programming - which is at least 
possibly legal - there's no conceivable way that clause could have 
applied to 99.5. I think.)

I do agree with those who suspect that a Nassau sale of 99.5 would be 
the death knell for commercial classical in Boston. The format is at 
death's door on a national scale, with recent defections in Washington, 
LA and Milwaukee, among others.

The only operators still doing commercial classical in bigger markets 
are (with one big exception) not "corporate radio": a foundation owns 
KING-FM in Seattle, the city of Dallas owns WRR-FM, the Lutheran Church 
owns KFUO-FM in St. Louis, the NY Times operates WQXR as a classy (and 
not unprofitable) bit of PR, and Chicago's WFMT, while commercial, is 
operated by public TV station WTTW. The last corporate classical FM 
station I can think of in a sizable market is Bonneville's KDFC, San 
Francisco.

s