BergnerCo.com

The Federal Communications Commission has approved the sale of Alpha Media’s five-station Tyler-Longview, TX cluster to Connoisseur Media, as part of the two companies’ merger, granting a waiver of its local radio ownership limits that allows the group to remain intact after the transfer. Without the waiver, Alpha would have been required to divest one FM before completing the deal, because the transaction triggered the loss of grandfathered status for its over-limit combination.

Audio Division Chief Albert Shuldiner noted the “unique circumstances” of the request in a decision released Wednesday, and concluded that granting a waiver “will not undermine” the purposes of the local radio ownership limits.

The fate of the Tyler-Longview, TX cluster came into play as part of the proposed merger of Alpha Media into Connoisseur Media. The multistep process announced in May proposes to create a company that will own 218 stations across 47 markets. Because there was no overlap between the two companies, the only market where ownership limits come into play is Tyler-Longview, TX, where Alpha Media currently holds a waiver to the local radio rule allowing it to operate five FMs in the market. Connoisseur had asked the FCC to allow it to keep that cluster intact.

How The Overage Happened

The over-limit situation did not stem from an Alpha buying spree but from a change in market definitions by BIA Advisory Services. In 2022, BIA reclassified the regional Mexican “La Invasora” simulcast of KOYE (96.7) and KTLH (107.9) into “home” to the Tyler-Longview market, bringing Alpha’s FM count there to five – one over the sub-cap limit of four in a market of 37 stations. Before the change, Alpha held only three FMs in Tyler-Longview.

If the FCC had rejected the request, Connoisseur had said it would have placed KTLH into the Rose Capital Texas Trust, a divestiture trust, to sell the station.

No Opposition

Connoisseur argued the waiver preserves the pre-transaction status quo and prevents harm to the public interest. It submitted a market analysis from Borrell Associates showing local radio advertising revenues in Tyler-Longview declined from $18.7 million in 2019 to an estimated $16.2 million in 2024, with a further 13.5% drop projected for radio through 2027. And letter from broker Michel Bergner said that in a forced divestiture, KTLH would “almost have to be given away” because it “has no cash flow, just a license.”

There was no opposition filed to Connoisseur’s request to keep all the stations.

The FCC notes that the Tyler-Longview market is already highly diverse: at least 18 other owners of full-service stations, 29 distinct formats, and several operators with multiple commercial FMs. And BIA data showed Alpha’s stations did not hold the largest share of local ad revenues in 2024; its top station ranked third, with less than 60% of the share of the market leader.

In allowing the cluster to remain intact, Shuldiner says there is no evidence that Alpha tried to circumvent ownership limits and said the structure of the market mitigated competitive concerns. “Based on the structure of the market, we do not believe that approving the transfer of the Tylor-Longview stations to [Connoisseur] will be anticompetitive nor otherwise frustrate the goals of the Local Radio Ownership Rule,” he writes.

Alpha’s other FMs in Tyler-Longview include country KYKX (105.7), classic country “104.1 The Ranch” KKUS, and adult hits “106.5 Jack FM” KOOI.