NoTV: Chi NPR Station to Merge with Sun-Times?

[Mark Jeffries]

Chicago Public Media, the owner of primary NPR affil WBEZ in Chicago, has announced that it has entered into a letter of intent with the long-troubled number 2 daily Sun-Times to "explore joining [together]" the two entities, which would turn the Sun-Times from its currently ownership by an investor group into a not-for-profit entity:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-wbez-sun-times-merger-nonprofit-news-20210930-uianzlimx5dxljt2xa5qfybcbq-story.html

WBEZ is currently consistently in the top 10 in the NIelsen ratings of Chicago radio stations, coming in seventh in the most recent book and the number two news-talk station behind Audacy's WBBM (reflecting a trend in many cities amongst NPR news-talk stations).  It also owns the urban alternative music format Vocalo on northwest Indiana's WBEW, WBEZ's HD-2 signal and a translator that reaches the North Side and downtown Chicago.

The Sun-Times, founded by the Field family as a left-leaning competitor to the Tribune in its most rabidly Republican days, has been through a lot of ownership changes since the Fields broke up their media holdings in 1982, most infamously owned by Rupert Murdoch for four years until he had to sell the paper to buy WFLD and the rest of the Metromedia stations to start Fox (and as the call letters may indicate, the Fields started WFLD).  Since then, it has gone through many owners and suffered the changing fortunes of print journalism arguably worse than the Tribune (not that the Trib has been that successful lately, considering that they were swallowed up earlier this year by notorious downsizer Alden Capital, with a lot of people taking buyouts or quitting).

It's interesting to note that when the Gothamist network of news websites shut down in 2017, NPR stations in NY, Washington and LA bought Gothamist, DCist and LAist respectively.  WBEZ didn't buy Chicagoist and it was bought by Chance the Rapper, who has done absolutely nothing to reopen the site since then.