
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 28, 1991                   TAG: 9103280055
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES/ BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

OWNERS SEEK APPROVAL TO SELL FAILED BUSINESS RADIO STATION

Roanoke-Based Commonwealth Media Corp. is seeking federal permission to sell its defunct business news and information radio station, WBNI, to Perception Media Group, officials said Wednesday.

The new owners plan to air "family radio," a "Christian-type, generic inspirational format" interspersed with sports programming, said Ben Peyton, pastor at Calvary Tabernacle and majority partner in Perception Media.

Peyton declined to say how much he and his partners had agreed to pay for WBNI, a daytime station at 910 on the AM dial. Commonwealth Media, a group of Roanoke businessmen headed by real estate executive Michael Waldvogel, paid $300,000 for the station in July 1986.

Commonwealth Media decided last spring to drop the urban contemporary music format in favor of business news because it had failed to attract enough advertisers to keep the station viable, Waldvogel said then. In the process, the owners dropped the station's WTOY call letters, which later were picked up by Salem station WSAY.

Peyton was a longtime consultant for WTOY and functioned as general manager without the title. He said Commonwealth Media offered him the top job there, but he declined it to concentrate on his ministry.

"This [station] is not going to be an extension of my church," he said. "This is going to be a valley radio station."

Despite the previous failures to attract advertisers, Peyton thinks a "family" station will prove successful in the Roanoke Valley when it hits the airwaves this summer.

by CNB