An attorney who previously represented former Dallas sports talk radio hosts Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp says he had tried to engage iHeartMedia in talks to buy or lease 97.1 ‘The Freak’ before it shut down last week.
Attorney Philip Kingston, a former Dallas City Council representative, posted the following on his X account:
“I guess I’m allowed to talk about this now. I have been trying to engage [iHeartRadio] since October to sell The Freak or at least lease us the signal. I was working for a group of investors. I know the [General Council] but he, a lawyer, refused to return my calls.
“We had multiple Freak employees approach corporate about the idea, and on multiple occasions were promised an audience with these solons of radio. Never got a single meeting. For the last year, it has been obvious that the problem was that iHeart didn’t spend enough money to really launch the station. Now they spent a lot – I estimate at least $3.5 million – to get absolutely nothing, but they didn’t really commit. They needed at least one more big show to get to the ad sales they needed.
“I know [Mike] Rhyner is blaming poor management, and I know that their salespeople are used to national advertising that you can’t sell with a local talk format, but management was just not the problem. It was lack of investment. With a little more talent and another year, The Freak could have been a $10 million per year station…”
A post replied to Kingston’s asking if it is “still l possible for you to buy another frequency, retain all these guys, add the other show you are talking about and resurrect this thing quickly to build it into exactly what you are talking about?”
Kingston replied, “Lots of people talking about lots of things this week. I should probably shut up for a bit.”
Kingston represented McDowell and Kemp last year when they had a contract dispute with The Ticket owner Cumulus Media (and previous station owner Susquehanna Radio) over wanting to do a podcast outside of their sports talk radio hosting duties.
BSM will monitor the situation and keep you updated when more information becomes available about where the hosts from ‘The Freak’ may end up.
