Goodbye Delmarva Broadcasting, hello Forever Media

Some of Delaware’s biggest radio stations, including WSTW and WDEL, became the property of the Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Forever Media this week.

According to the Delaware Business Times, Delmarva Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania company Steinman Communications, sold for $18.5 million. That’s nine stations for maybe $2 million each (though some are certainly more valuable than others), compared to Beasley Broadcasting’s $42 million acquisition for Wilmington’s WJBR-FM alone in 2006.

Forever Media is dominant in central and western Pennsylvania, with dozens of stations including nine “Froggy” branded stations in markets like Pittsburgh, State College and York; six “Rocky” classic rock stations; and a handful of ESPN stations, including the newly acquired ESPN Delaware.

No plans to rebrand any of the former Delmarva Broadcasting stations have been announced.

WDEL may be the most unusual of Forever’s stations, in that it’s not so much a radio station as an evolving multimedia brand, as its Assistant News Director Amy Cherry explained at a recent Tapp Network event. While no information has been released about the future of the Delmarva stations (other than nothing is expected to change), bringing the WDEL model into Forever’s stable of mostly old-school popular music stations could indicate that the company is looking to maintain relevance for its properties.

The stations now owned by Forever are:

• 93.7 WSTW
• News/Talk 1150/101.7 WDEL
• 103.7 WXCY
• Classic Hits “97.1 The Wave” WAVD
• News/Talk “Delaware 105.9” WXDE
• Classic Hits “Cool 101.3” WNCL
• Hot AC “Eagle 97.7” WAFL
• ESPN Delaware 930 WYUS/102.1 W271CX
• Christian “Faith 1510” WFAI