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Published on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 19:26
Merlin Media LLC, the new media company run by the controversial Randy Michaels, debuting earlier today by
purchasing three radio stations from Emmis Communications, also debuted its new website earlier today. The site
MerlinMediaLLC.com, displays the new company's logo, some press releases, as well as very familiar "guidelines" for those who wish to be employees of the company.
Familiar, in that they use some of the same wording as what was used in the Tribune Company's guidelines when Randy Michaels took over and the rules passed down to Clear Channel employees when Michaels was CEO of that media giant. The one glaring "rule" all of the guidelines for all of the companies have in common: "HAVE FUN."
Of course, having too much "fun" was one of the reasons Randy Michaels was
forcibly made to resign as CEO from both Tribune Company and Clear Channel. However, with Merlin Media, Michaels is now the principle owner and in full control.
The website was forced to add the LLC to its domain name, since a web design company out of Onalaska, WI, called Merlin Media Inc, owns the MerlinMedia.com domain. The new domain name was purchased for the website earlier this month by Randy Michaels.
In other digital news surrounding Merlin Media, the eagle-eyed Lance Venta of the industry website
Radio Insight discovered that Randy Michaels had purchased a few other domain, this time back in December, seemingly anticipating today's announcement and foreshadowing possible format flips for Chicago's WKQX-FM and New York's WRXP-FM, both of which were among stations Michaels' Merlin Media contracted to purchase today. Michaels' company Radioactive LLC purchased the domain names FMNews1011.com, which seemingly would work for WKQX-FM, and FMNNews1019.com, which would work for for WRXP-FM, although the domain has a mistaken extra letter N in it. Also purchased at the same time was FMNews939.com, which could work for KXOS-FM, Emmis Communications money losing station in Los Angeles, also rumored to be in the crosshairs of Merlin Media. Venta also mentions that three other domains -- 1011FMTalk.com, 1019FMTalk.com, and FMTalk1019.com -- were all purchased last week, this time with the purchaser's name kept anonymous. All of this seems to back up the rumors that Chicago's WKQX-FM and New York's WRXP-FM will be flipped to news/talk formats, soon after Merlin Media takes over operations for the stations,scheduled to happen the first weekend of August.
