Lexington-based Nebraska Rural Radio Association has completed the purchase of seven stations from Nebraska-based Legacy Communications. The $1.75 Million deal expands the Rural Radio Network reach throughout the state and locks up a critical market in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Tim Marshall took over as CEO/General Manager on January 1 and he tells Radio Ink that the expansion helps continue the NRRA mission to serve the agricultural community in Nebraska, but also helps the organization diversify.
Radio Ink: Tell us about this deal.
Marshall: In Scottsbluff, we already own two stations, and the Legacy Communications stations that we purchased had six. Because of the FCC rules, we can only own six in that market. So what we ended up doing is we turned an AM station back and then we sold an FM station to Spirit Broadcasting. So that puts us at six in Scottsbluff which is actually the biggest market that we’re in in Nebraska.
In Scottsbluff, we have KOLT-AM. Actually, that was a station we were going to spin off, but what we did is we flipped call letters with KOAQ-AM. We kept KOLT because they are pretty iconic call letters. So along with KOLT, we now own KMOR-FM, KETT-FM, KOZY-FM, KHYY-FM in Scottsbluff. They go along with the stations we all already own in Scottsbluff KNEB-AM/KNEB-FM.
Radio Ink: So now you basically own Scottsbluff?
Marshall: That puts us in a pretty good position out there to have all of the commercial stations in Scottsbluff. It enables us to control the area because with that many stations being sold, if someone else came in and put in the effort that could have hurt our KNEB-AM/FM combo in the market.
The Holdrege station KUVR-AM is not that big of a signal, it’s and AM with an FM translator. The home for Rural Radio Network is in Lexington, and Holdrege is about 25 miles away. It was great to pick up Holdrege; their hometown station was almost going away and we are all about keeping those hometown stations going in Nebraska.
Radio Ink: Are there going to be changes with the new stations?
Marshall: We didn’t get a lot of people over with this purchase, but the good part is we already have a lot of people in our building in Scottsbluff. We eventually want to do all the music on the stations we picked up in Scottsbluff, take off the syndication, and put live voices on ourselves. Also a lot of these stations give us a chance to put our Ag Network programming on, helping us broaden our Rural Radio Network.
Radio Ink: Does something like this, to start a new year, make you optimistic about 2020?
Marshall: These acquisitions help us diversify more by adding some more music stations. We need to diversify to make sure we can cover the consumer/retail sector and of course the ag sector in Nebraska. This gives us the opportunity to reach an audience that may not be listening on our full-service AM stations.
Most of the stations we own that program music are Country music formats. This purchase helps us add different formats. In Scottsbluff, KMOR-FM is a Classic Rock format and KOZY-FM is more of a Top 40, Hits format. Now stations like that are probably not going to get our ag programming, but we can put on some of the consumer stuff from the ag side that would make sense. So we are branching out with this purchase. We already have the country side covered in those markets, so this gives us the formats to reach a different audience.
