Brewster Company To Acquire Local Radio Stations - WQRC, WKPE And WOCN To Join Salt Air Broadcasting

BREWSTER – Brewster’s Salt Air Broadcasting company, already the owner of FM station WGTX (a classic rock station airing and streaming on both 106.5 and 102.3) and 1240 AM, has announced it will on Nov. 30 buy Cape Cod Broadcasting Media (CCB Media) of Hyannis, a transaction that will expand Salt Air’s operations to four FM stations and the one AM station. 

Salt Air will add from CCB Media WQRC 99.9, which plays today’s hits; WKPE 103.9, which broadcasts country music; and WOCN 104.7, which Salt Air owner and Brewster resident Gary Hanna said plays “adult contemporary” music. 

According to Hanna, who lives a short drive from his company’s 15 Bay State Court headquarters, all the stations reach the entire Cape and also extend into South Shore towns almost all the way to Boston. Hanna said the stations have a broad base of off-Cape listeners who chose to download the Salt Air app. People who summer on or visit the Cape can thus keep in touch, he said. 

“Each of the Salt Air and CCB stations have and will continue to have a streaming component,” Hanna said. “They use the app to continue to listen to us… So we are really in touch with that community.”

The variety of musical offerings is also important to Hanna and his leadership team, which includes general manager Jon Krongard of Brewster, vice president of sales Simon Bexon of Falmouth and program director Jerry McKenna of Provincetown.

“It’s a strategy to reach every demographic with something they like,” Hanna said. “We match [advertising] with what the customer wants to hear.”

There are a number of facets to the impending merger of the two radio companies, according to Hanna. One is that Salt Air intends to retain all of CCB’s on- and off-air personnel.

“We’ll be moving everything to our offices in Brewster, and bringing everybody along,” Hanna said. “They’ve got a very successful business, and we’re going to go in and run things the way they ran it.”

Once the purchase is complete, Hanna estimated the expanded Salt Air company will have between 15 and 20 employees.

Some things won’t change. For one, Hanna, now 60, is still living a dream that began decades ago where he grew up, in Framingham. Even before at age 17 he interned at Boston classic rock station Kiss 108FM. 

“I was the kid building little pirate FM radio stations out of my basement by the time I was 12 years old,” Hanna said. “It’s been a passion for me my entire life.”

After on-air radio jobs on the Cape (at one of the stations that is now part of the upcoming purchase) and in Hampton Beach, N.H., Hanna said he realized it would be hard to break into a major market and make a living as a DJ. He instead found music- and radio-adjacent work, including “the mobile DJ business” and running a DJ supply store before starting a company in “the background music business,” like Muzak, that he still owns. 

He eventually moved to the Cape, where he spent many a weekend as a teen, first to Hyannis and then Brewster. He jumped in April 2021 at the chance to buy radio station WGTX based in Truro, known as “Dunes,” moving it to Brewster and later adding a second frequency to cover the entire Cape. 

“For me that was my first venture into actual radio station ownership,” Hanna said. “It’s been fun ever since.”

Another thing Hanna said will not change after the CCB purchase is Salt Air’s focus on and support of its local communities. For instance, Hanna said he volunteers for Big Brother and Big Sister, while Salt Air runs annual food drives in November and “works a lot in the special needs community.”

“We’re planning on bringing all that passion to a much bigger audience,” he said.

On the air, while McKenna will dictate music programming, stations will have live DJs focusing on their communities, Hanna said. 

“DJs can talk about whatever they want and really focus on what matters to the local community,” he said

Hanna sees the Salt Air-CCB deal as bucking a trend.

“Everything on the Cape is being bought by venture capital,” he said. “For a business on the Cape to stay local I think is big, and especially in the radio industry, where everything is about consolidation and saving money and cutting costs on every corner.”

Also an important part of the deal is that it includes the website CapeCod.com. Hanna said CCB has done a solid job operating it, but the website has untapped possibilities to reach a wider audience. A Salt Air press release cites plans to transform the website “into the definitive digital hub for all things Cape Cod, offering comprehensive coverage of local news, food, dining, events, and tourism.” 

“CapeCod.com, I think, has great potential. It has a lot of hits, a lot of visitors,” Hanna said. “Besides being a local resource, that needs to be a source for every tourist wanting to come here.”

Other than love of radio, why is Hanna making a large move within the sector, including adding a nonprofit classical station while working on the merger? 

He said radio retains a strong appeal to consumers, especially when they’re on the road.

“People say radio is dying,” he said. “But 83 or 84 percent, depending on which survey you go by, of in-car [drivers] have reported listening. For advertisers, there’s still radio.”

He said Salt Air’s application is in the final phase before the FCC, a period for public comment, which Hanna believes will be favorable. 

“I’m confident of approval. I think we’ve done a great job of making the public know that we are local, and we plan on keeping it that way,” he said. “We’re dedicated to the local community.”