Anthony “Tony Q” Quartarone built his career on ownership twice before, first in Maryland, then in Delaware. Now he’s aiming for a third run. Quartarone has formed Q-Tone Media LLC, a new company built around acquiring and operating another radio station.
Quartarone’s path to ownership started after years on the programming side. His radio career began in 1981 as an intern at WXLO in New York City, which became Kiss 98.7 (WRKS) that same year, and he later worked in Philadelphia in the late 1980s, consulting for Q102 (WIOQ) and programming Power 99 (WUSL) during its run to the top of the market, according to independent industry accounts of his career.
He made the jump to ownership in 1989, buying WRKE in the Salisbury-Ocean City, Maryland market. According to the release, he shifted the station from a failed Adult Contemporary format to the market’s first Urban format, and the station moved from losing more than $15,000 a month to roughly $350,000 in annual cash flow within six months; those figures come from the company and have not been independently verified.
Quartarone held onto WRKE through 1997, when he added a second ownership stake in WJKS-FM and WFAI-AM in Wilmington, DE. He ran both properties simultaneously, branding them as twin “FMs” reachable on the same frequency along the Delaware-to-Maryland beach corridor, before selling the Maryland station and running Wilmington alone through 2014. The release states the Wilmington station generated roughly $2 million a year in cash flow during his ownership; that figure is also unverified.
Now, more than a decade after his last ownership stint ended, Quartarone is looking to buy again. The release does not name a target station or market, and does not specify a headquarters for Q-Tone Media LLC. It frames the new company as an opportunity for outside investors to back the purchase.
