Scottish Radio made a multimillionaire of John Kerry Keane and gave other regional newspaper proprietors an indication of how much value was locked up in their business.
Now UTV's £31 million (€39.4 million) takeover of County Media in Cork shows just how valuable the high-listenership local radio stations are.
The sort of money paid by UTV for the three Cork stations and a local free newspaper must have some of the consortiums that bagged the more valuable local radio licences calling their corporate financiers to see how much they are worth.
When the cost of the County Media deal - £28.5 million plus £3 million debt - is taken into account, it ends up at £157 for every one of County Media's 199,000 listeners. After the Dublin stations, County Media was the jewel of the local radio industry, with a 50 per cent-plus share of the second biggest metropolitan radio market.
Even the presence of a big media group like UTV has not put off a whole batch of entrepreneurs and celebrities pitching for the Cork radio licence to be awarded by the Independent Radio and Television Commission in February. Barry O'Callaghan's Cork KiX FM consortium has already said it would invest £2.6 million in the new station if it gets the licence, while it can be assumed that the other bidders will also tell the commission that they have deep pockets.
Stations serving more rural markets with older listeners and fewer ABC1s certainly couldn't aspire to getting £157 for every listener they have. But local stations that take in some of the larger country towns and which have made sizeable gains in market share (usually at the expense of RTE) must be worth serious money if they were worth even half the £175 a head UTV paid to get into the Cork market.
What about Highland Radio in Donegal, which has the biggest market share of any local station in the country, with 66 per cent of listenership? Likewise, Radio Kerry's 49 per cent of the market in the Kingdom, including booming towns like Tralee? And what about North West Radio (55 per cent market share), Mid West Radio (49 per cent), WLR in Waterford with 47 per cent and Radio Kilkenny with 44 per cent?
How much is 98FM's 16 per cent of the Dublin market worth to Denis O'Brien if he ever felt the urge to sell? Rival Dermot Hanrahan and his partners must be sitting on a veritable goldmine, with FM104 holding 17 per cent of the Dublin market.
