WBZ-AM Allston backup is no more

[Dave Doherty]

It's a "lease-back" arrangement: 

 - I own something of value, and you want to buy it. I sell it to you for a fixed sum today, and I lease it from you in perpetuity.

The upside for the broadcaster is that they get a big cash payment and/or several years of cash income, shed the responsibility for tower maintenance, and shed the FCC/FAA responsibilities for tower lighting and painting.

The downside is that the tower they owned is now a guaranteed cost center. 

Not that there wouldn't have been costs along the way, but the buyer would have to pay for catastrophes.

In the American Tower Corp (ATC) model, ATC owns the tower, antennas, transmission lines, and combiner. All you have to do is pay for installation services like tuning the combiner, and plug your transmitter into the combiner. From then on, you just pay a monthly fee. It's transmission as a service.

-d




-----Original Message-----
From: Boston-Radio-Interest [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@lists.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of Scott Fybush
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2020 6:52 PM
To: Shawn Mamros <mamros@mit.edu>
Cc: Boston Radio Group <boston-radio-interest@lists.bostonradio.org>
Subject: Re: WBZ-AM Allston backup is no more

A couple of years ago, iHeart sold its tower portfolio to Vertical Bridge, which is now one of the big national players in the tower rental business, alongside American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA.

On Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 9:27 PM Shawn Mamros <mamros@mit.edu> wrote:

> Scott wrote:
> >I doubt they'll invest in a new off-site AM backup. Those are 
> >becoming exceedingly rare, and especially now that iHeart doesn't own 
> >its own tower sites, it becomes harder (or at least more expensive) 
> >for them to, say, diplex a 10 kW WBZ signal into one WRKO tower.
>
> I may have missed this, but... who owns the towers in Hull now, if 
> iHeart doesn't?
>
> -Shawn
>