Ex-pol Mark Foley fails in WRMF ownership bid; Station sold to WPB media exec Dean Goodman

Goodman (left) with partner Carl Hirsch, who died hours before the deal for WRMF. The photo was taken at Saturday's Cleveland Clinic gala in Mar-a-Lago
WRMF-97.9 FM, a one-time leading radio station in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast that fell on hard times, was sold late yesterday to a partnership led by former Paxson Communications executive Dean Goodman, a resident of West Palm Beach’s Trump Plaza.
The purchase price for the station that once hosted the area’s top radio talent was $16.5 million, according to a statement released by General Manager Elizabeth Hamma.
The money barely covers seller Great Hill Partners‘ note on the property. The Boston-based Great Hill bought WRMF from Jim Hilliard in 2002 for a record $70 million.
Former U. S. Rep. Mark Foley, who resigned from the House in 2006 after a text-messaging scandal, was among WRMF’s current suitors, but he couldn’t gather enough capital down the stretch.
“I’m a little disappointed,” Foley said late Monday. “But Dean Goodman is a great radio professional who can make WRMF great again.”
The WRMF purchase, incidentally, was to include Goodman’s best friend and another former radio station owner, Palm Beacher Carl Hirsch. Hirsch, who ran radio stations in Cleveland and the Midwest, suffered a fatal heart attack while at dinner at Palm Beach’s Cafe Boulud Monday, hours before the WRMF paperwork was signed. (A wake for Hirsch has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday at Cafe Sapori in West Palm Beach)
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