KPWR-FM Owner Makes Bid to Buy Rival Channel KKBT

The Baka Boyz back working for their old KPWR-FM (105.9) bosses they split from just a few months ago? John London and his “House Party” morning show back on 92.3, which he just left too?

Those are two likely elements of an unusual scenario developing as a result of one of the latest mergers of broadcasting giants, which could find two popular stations swapping dial spots and L.A.’s top two urban stations carrying out their intense rivalry under one owner.

Emmis Communications, which owns KPWR (known as Power 106), has made an aggressive bid to buy rival KKBT-FM (92.3), which was being shopped as part of the fallout of the purchase of KKBT owner AMFM Broadcasting by Texas-based Clear Channel--the nation’s largest radio owner.

Clear Channel, with the Department of Justice certain to scrutinize the effects of the consolidation on the broadcast landscape, had wanted to sell KKBT (known as the Beat) and AMFM’s “Mega” oldies station, KCMG-FM (100.3), to minority-owned groups such as Maryland-based Radio One.

So after non-minority Emmis’ bid apparently was far and away the largest in the initial round, Clear Channel--also reluctant to sell the far-reaching signal of 92.3 to a serious competitor--announced that what it actually was looking to sell was not the Beat’s frequency, but the “intellectual property” of its format and trademarks, along with the inferior 100.3 signal.

Clear Channel presumably would then move the “Mega” format and personnel--to which London was shifted after a decade on the Beat to make room for Lover & Dre--to the 92.3 dial position. (Clear Channel/AMFM executives were not available to discuss the situation.)

That did not deter Emmis. “Our original bid was for 92.3, but then they notified us by fax that it was the 100.3 frequency and the Beat’s format,” says Rick Cummings, Emmis vice president of programming. “That was a change, but we bid on that now.”

With the deadline for bids reportedly Friday, and Clear Channel hoping to have an agreement by year’s end, it appears likely that Emmis will take the Beat format and install it at 100.3. Included in that are the morning team of Ed Lover & Dr. Dre, who came from New York in the fall, and the Baka Boyz, who took over afternoons after bolting Power at the same time.

For Emmis, that would mean the odd, but no longer unheard of, situation of having two stations with more or less the same format in the same market: Power and the Beat. L.A. already has a similar arrangement with its top news stations, KFWB-AM (980) and KNX-AM (1070), which have been step-siblings under CBS since 1996.

“In a market like L.A., you have to pay so much for a full-signal station that taking it out of its position, if it’s profitable, is out of the question,” Cummings says. “And KKBT is a very successful station. I can’t imagine that anyone else who buys it would blow it up and do something else.”

Meanwhile, for Radio One, this has been a rare chance to make a serious bid for a top station in a top market.

“This is an incredible opportunity for a company like ours,” says Radio One chief operating officer Mary Katherine Sneed. “It would be tough to get another [such opportunity]. . . . I don’t think there’s any other reason [besides Justice Department mandates] that Clear Channel is looking for minority owners. It’s never happened before.”