General Electric purchased NBC's parent company, RCA, in early 1986.[11] With the purchase, GE announced intentions to sell off the entirety of NBC's radio group and RCA's non-broadcast holdings, the latter spun off to Bertelsmann and Thomson SA.[12] After a planned sale of the entire radio unit to Westinghouse Broadcasting in early 1987 fell through, Westwood One acquired the programming assets of the NBC Radio Network—including NBC's radio news service, The Source and Talknet—in a $50 million deal on July 20, 1987.[13][14][15]
The NBC-owned radio stations were sold to various buyers.[16] WMAQ was acquired by Westinghouse in November 1987.[7] WNBC and WYNY in New York City, WKQX in Chicago, WJIB in Boston and KYUU in San Francisco were sold to Emmis Communications for a combined $121.5 million (equivalent to $331 million in 2025) on February 18, 1988.[2] (As part of the deal, Emmis sold the licenses of their existing New York AM/FM combination, WFAN and WQHT,[17] and transferred the intellectual properties of both stations onto WNBC[18] and WYNY,[19] respectively.[20]) WKYS was sold to minority-controlled Albimar Communications on April 7, 1988, for $46.75 million (equivalent to $127 million in 2025).[5] KNBR was the final radio property sold, with Susquehanna Radio Corporation purchasing it for $20 million (equivalent to $51.9 million in 2025) in March 1989.[1]