The Red Sox and WEEI-FM are "about to ink a deal to keep the games on the Entercom-owned station for another seven to eight years," according to Gayle Fee of the BOSTON HERALD. That could be in part due to CBS Chair, President & CEO Les Moonves' decision to "sell or spin off the company’s radio division." Sources said that WBZ-FM, which is owned by CBS, "also was chasing the broadcast rights, but when the parent company decided it might be getting out of the radio business," the station "dropped out." Sources said that the new WEEI deal is "worth less" than the 10-year, $200M deal between Entercom and the Red Sox that runs out after this season. Sources added that the station "will pay something in the neighborhood" of $15-16M a year. Fee notes the Red Sox deal has "long been an albatross around the station’s neck." However, WEEI otherwise "would have no rights" to any of the city's four major sports team’s broadcasts, as WBZ "has the Bruins, Celtics and Patriots" (BOSTON HERALD, 4/1).
SPLIT SCREEN: CBS Radio President Andre Fernandez in a memo Wednesday to employees “revealed that CBS Corp. is pursuing a plan to ‘split CBS Radio off via an IPO.’” BILLBOARD’s Gil Kaufman noted the news came just two weeks after Moonves "announced that CBS was investigating options for its radio group.” The memo read, “The result of this action is that we would become our own publicly traded company.” Breaking away from its parent company “could give CBS radio a ‘decided advantage in the industry’ thanks to the strength of its local radio stations and robust financials.” Fernandez told employees an IPO could present a “possibility of great professional growth” for the CBS Radio team (BILLBOARD.com, 3/31).
