Viacom to Buy KJOI-FM, 2 Denver Radio Stations

For the third time in five years, the popular Los Angeles radio station KJOI-FM is changing hands, this time with a sale to Viacom International Inc., which owns nine other radio stations and recently announced plans to acquire two more in San Francisco.

In its announcement late Thursday, Viacom said it has agreed to acquire KJOI and two Denver stations owned by Command Communications for $101.5 million.

The companies did not disclose the value assigned to KJOI, which sold for $79 million in June, 1988, but Viacom President and Chief Executive Frank J. Biondi said it is in the range of $80 million to $90 million. At those prices, KJOI apparently retains its crown as the priciest FM-only station in the United States.

Viacom said it won’t change either the management or the format, which was altered just one month ago after 25 years of “easy listening” to soft vocals and light jazz. “We still would like to be the softest radio station on the dial . . . but what we’d like to do is update the programming,” KJOI Vice President and General Manager Robert D. Griffiths explained at the time.

Griffiths said Thursday that KJOI ranked fifth in the summer Arbitron ratings, but it is too soon to know how the changed format will perform.

In a telephone interview, Biondi indicated that Viacom is searching other California communities for radio properties. “We’re in the market in San Diego, and there may be others,” Biondi said.

The transaction, which requires approval by the Federal Communications Commission, will put Viacom in the nation’s top radio market of Los Angeles, as well as the fourth-largest market in Denver. The company already owns stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Chicago, Detroit and Seattle.

Under FCC rules, a company may own as many as 12 FM stations and 12 AM stations.

“Los Angeles is the hottest radio market in the country, no question about it,” said I. Martin Pompadur, chief executive of RP Cos., which owns stations in smaller cities.

“It is a wonderful market . . . because people spend a lot of time in their cars,” said H. Andrew Decker, managing director of Ocean Capital Fund, also a radio station owner.

Command Communications, formed in late 1988 by Carl C. Brazell Jr. and Robert F. X. Sillerman, is based in New York, as is Viacom.