Locally Owned Radio Stations, Including “99.9 HANK-FM”, Sells to Adams Radio

Locally Owned Radio Stations, Including “99.9 HANK-FM”, Sells to Adams Radio

Adams Radio has announced the acquisition of Red Hills Broadcasting’s four stations in Tallahassee FL.

The stations involved in the deal are Variety Hits “99.9 Hank-FM” WANK Lafayette, Country “103.1 The Wolf” WWOF Tallahassee, CHR “Hot 104.9” WHTF Havana, and AAA/Classic Rock “106.1 The Sound” WQTL Tallahassee. No terms have been announced.

Red Hills Broadcasting has agreed to sell its radio cluster in Tallahassee, Florida to Adams Radio of Tallahassee, LLC. Bill Fanning of MVP Capital, LLC was the broker in the transaction. The acquisition includes: WHTF – FM, Havana, Florida; WWOF – FM, Tallahassee, Florida; WQTL – FM, Tallahassee, Florida and WANK – FM, Lafayette, Florida.

Ron Stone, President and CEO of Adams said “We are thrilled for Adams Radio to be the next steward of these amazing stations that Hank Kestenbaum has spent over 20 years building and even more excited about the future of the stations under Hank’s continued management alongside Adams Radio.”

This is the fifth market for Adams Radio Group. Adams owns and operates clusters in Las Cruces, NM, Fort Wayne, IN, suburban Chicago (Northwest Indiana) and Salisbury-Ocean City, MD.

Hank Kestenbaum, President of Red Hills Broadcasting, added: “I want to congratulate Ron Stone and his team at Adams Radio on buying four great Tallahassee radio stations. Every day I’m privileged to work with a dedicated and talented group of people at serving our community with entertaining live and local radio. I look forward to leading these stations and this team into a new era of success, service and prosperity under Adam’s ownership.”

4 Responses to "Locally Owned Radio Stations, Including “99.9 HANK-FM”, Sells to Adams Radio"

  1. I was thrilled when these stations remained local once purchased by Red Hills. I appreciate the local formats and find their music mix unique. It’s nothing like the radio group pros will ever do because their entire business model is based on making all their stations sound alike. Hank has done a good job with the sound. They need to kick up the ad revenue though .. and that will be the main focus of the new owners. Kiss those sweetheart ad deals goodbye!
    Locally involved media is a luxury none of the corporate gurus give a rats a** about.

  2. Would love to hear at least one smooth jazz channel. No words and just music is sometimes just what the doctor ordered.

    1. Mr. Curious – I’m no techie guy by any standards, but if you go to Pandora.com and give their free listening service a try, you can make your own smooth jazz station and listen on a laptop computer or smart phone for hours. Smooth jazz hasn’t caught on in Tally, although we really enjoyed it the 25-plus years we lived in Orlando. Pandora.com is the next best thing.
      As an example of my “non-techie” nature, I carry an old flip-phone. Tried a smart phone once and hated it – two dozen features I had zero interest in using. So if I can make use of Pandora, it must be a pretty simple thing.
      Apologies if you already knew about Pandora – I’m pretty far behind the Western World in this whole technology-internet thing.

  3. Sure hope the stations are allowed to keep their present character as “local” Tallahassee radio stations. I can go to any city in the U.S. and hear cookie-cutter Cumulus and Clear Channel stations that are all the same from town to town. Tallahassee is one of the few places where “locally owned radio” still existed. If Adams Radio liked the stations and their balance sheets enough to buy them, hopefully they’ll be smart enough to let them be themselves.

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