As the sale of three stations to Emmis became official, Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan told Radio Ink he wanted to flip to talk years ago. "It's always hard to be a seller. If you love this business, it's hard to sell. The fact we could keep a significant interest is helpful. We love the idea of this format. If our capital structure had been different we would have done that format a while ago. We believe in the format. We believe in Randy and Walter's ability to execute it, we have no doubt about it."
The sale of WKQX-FM (Chicago), WLUP-FM (Chicago) and WRXP-FM (NY) from Emmis to Merlin Media (GTCR and Randy Michaels) is now official. Emmis gets about $120 million in cash from the sale of the stations, net of transaction expenses, and owns $28.7 million of preferred equity and 20.6% of the common equity interests in Merlin Media. The net cash proceeds were used to repay approximately 38% of the company's term loans under its senior credit facility. Merlin has been in LMA mode since July 15, 2011.
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