The feuding buyer and seller of radio station WNOV-AM may be calling it quits to their courtroom fisticuffs. Courier (publisher of the Milwaukee Courier newspaper) sold the station in 2008 to Radio Multi-Media Inc. of Los Angeles in a $1.5 million deal. Courier owners Jerrel, and Earnestine Jones got $850,000 in the first of two installments. The second installment never came, and now the Joneses are suing RMM. Jerrel Jones charges RMM reneged on a deal for Courier to keep running the station. RMM owner Rene Moore, meanwhile, says he and his firm were misled in the transaction. In recent years, WNOV was probably most memorable for broadcasting the “Word Warriors” program of former Ald. Michael McGee. (That’s the ’80s-era McGee, father to the other former alderman of the same name.) McGee’s often-incendiary broadcasts, such as one in which he reveled in the death of the mother of conservative WTMJ-AM talk show host Charlie Sykes, drew him the enmity of conservative bloggers and commentators and a following among young, angry, inner-city listeners. But McGee’s show has been off the air since before the sale, and with the recent end of the “Morning Magazine” on WMCS-AM, locally produced black talk and public affairs radio has shrunk dramatically. The lawsuit between Jones and Radio Multi-Media went to mediation in October, but that failed. Later that month, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy Dugan ordered Radio Multi-Media to give Courier employee Sandra Robinson access once a week, for 30 minutes, to station documents and logs. Dugan also ordered Courier to submit authorization for RMM to discuss the station’s past debts with music licensing organizations. And the judge turned down a Courier demand for the right to shut down WNOV’s transmitters on its own. Records show — as Courier’s own lawyer, Holden Brooks, put it in court — “the very peculiar nature of this transaction.” RMM got WNOV’s real estate but, technically, not its license at the time of the initial deal; FCC records still show Courier as the registered holder of the station’s federal license. Worse, almost since the deal closed, the two sides have been embroiled in a grinding battle. “This thing is a mess at the moment, and I really don’t feel that there’s positive communication going on between the parties to try and resolve this whatsoever,” Judge Dugan told lawyers in October. Even FCC records on the location of the station’s tower weren’t accurate, the judge noted: “Nobody seems to know what’s supposed to be going on with the operation of the radio station.” Both buyer and seller blamed each other for unpaid licensing fees that led ASCAP, one of the licensing agencies, to threaten a lawsuit. (Musicians register music with ASCAP or two other licensing agencies, which then require radio stations or others to pay annual fees in return for the right to broadcast the registered music.) The lapses and subsequent finger pointing further rankled Dugan. “I find it wholly incredible that both parties weren’t interested in making sure these amounts were being paid,” the judge said. “There’s clearly fault on both sides.” Even as the Courier-RMM lawsuit slouches toward resolution, RMM’s plans to revamp WNOV as an FM station have been lagging, industry insiders say. FCC records show RMM has applied to take over the license for an FM transmitter in Mequon on 102.5 from WRVM Inc., based in Suring, Wis. Sources say the plan is for WNOV to use that frequency so it can switch over from the AM to the FM band, but the effective date has been pushed back at least once. It’s possible that either the FCC or WRVM is the unnamed “third party” on whom the settlement of the Courier-RMM lawsuit depends. * Comment below, or write Pressroom at pressroom@milwaukeemagazine.com.
A Truce at WNOV?
The feuding buyer and seller of radio station WNOV-AM may be calling it quits to their courtroom fisticuffs.
