Backyard Broadcasting was a radio broadcasting company that primarily owned radio stations in medium-sized, small and rural markets in the United States. The company was owned by the private equity firms
Boston Ventures Management and
Pacific Corporate Group
Pacific Corporate Group is a global alternative investment management and advisory company headquartered in La Jolla, California. PCG, together with affiliates and subsidiaries (together, the "affiliates") currently manage over $17 billion in a ...
and was headed by Barry Drake, the former head of
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...
and later trustee of the
Aloha Station Trust and
Ocean Station Trust to be divested by
iHeartMedia
iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...
. Backyard Broadcasting, founded in 2002 from the remains of the earlier
Sabre Communications, is based in
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the ...
:
Backyard Broadcasting began divesting its properties in the early 2010s. The company sold its radio stations in Sioux Falls South Dakota to Midwest Communications in November 2012. In April 2013, it was announced that newly formed
Woof Boom Radio was purchasing the Indiana stations. ''Woof Boom Radio'' is a pun on
WFBM (AM)/
WFBM-FM/
WFBM-TV, long-time Indianapolis stations that Woof Boom Radio founder Jerry “J” Chapman started at, and his father managed for three decades. Shortly thereafter,
Community Broadcasters, LLC
Community Broadcasters, LLC is a Watertown, New York based radio holding group that owns radio stations in its own market and surrounding areas. It was founded by media executives Bruce Mittman and Jim Leven, and started out in 2006 by buying st ...
announced it would buy the company's assets in the
Southern Tier of
New York (eventually spinning those stations off to Seven Mountains Media in 2019), leaving the company with only one station cluster in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in, and the county seat of, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States. It recorded a population of 27,754 at the 2020 Census. It is the principal city of the Williamsport Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a popula ...
. The Williamsport cluster was sold to Daniel Farr, then to Van A. Michael in 2019, both of whom have used variants of the Backyard Broadcasting name.
References
{{reflist
External links
Official website
Defunct radio broadcasting companies of the United States
Backyard Broadcasting stations