Posted on Monday, November 6, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
There will be one fewer corporate owner in Atlanta radio starting November 17 when Entercom merges with CBS Radio on the presumption all remaining hurdles will be cleared.
This means CBS, which owns urban station V-103, black news/talk WAOK-AM and sports talk 92.9/The Game, will be working together with Entercom, which owns top 40 station Star 94.1.
At corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania, Entercom management will effectively run the show with CFO David Feld at the helm.
But Rick Caffey, who has been running V-103 and WAOK for more than two decades with CBS, will oversee the entire group in Atlanta. Mike Fowler, who runs Star, will stay on as head of sales for Entercom Atlanta and will have some programming oversight over Star and the Game. (Fowler worked at ESPN out of Chicago from 2010 to 2015. Previously, he worked at Q100 in Atlanta.)
The stations will remain at their current locations for now. V-103, WAOK and the Game are based out of Colony Square in Midtown. Star 94.1's studios are off I-75 and 285 not far from the Weather Channel headquarters. (It's the same building that used to house Eagle 106.7 and Kicks 101.5.)
Feld told Inside Radio he is confident the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission will clear the merger by mid November. Entercom shareholders are scheduled to vote on the merger Nov. 15 but there is no expectation of problems there. (Entercom had to spin off some stations in other markets to clear the path.)
The merger was first announced in early February. The combined company will be in 23 of the 25 largest markets.
Atlanta's radio market will soon be dominated by just five companies: Cox, IHeartMedia, Cumulus, Entercom and Salem.
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