The competition between the Reader and its metropolitan rival weekly, City Pages, made better journals of both. The recent stories by Reader reporter John Yewell revealing the true costs of baseball stadiums and the potential for private financing were a stellar example of why we desperately need alternative weeklies to give us a perspective the dailies either can't or won't deliver. Rev 105 was not up for sale when the bid came in. But it had sealed its fate when it strengthened its signal and began to reach an audience sufficiently large to attract the interest of chains. No one owns one or two stations anymore.
Chains buy many stations to dominate market segments.
Some corporate decisionmaker far away from our community decided that the most profitable course was to buy the station and shut it down, thereby eliminating the competition for its hard rock, 18-34 year market segment. Rev 105 was profitable and its owners might have continued to go it alone. But independence is difficult these days in the radio business. As General Manager John Kuehne has said, chains can give advertisers a better rate and advertising is the life blood of commercial radio. Late last year the owner of the Twin Cities Reader put that paper up for sale.