Andrulonis Media

"Colonial Radio Group" redirects here. It is not to be confused with the current Colonial Radio Group of Williamsport, owners of WEJS and WLYC, which spun off from this company in 2010 and is now owned by Todd Bartley.

Andrulonis Media, LLC is a multimedia marketing firm that owns several radio stations in the United States. It is controlled by the Andrulonis family and currently has stations based in the Grand Strand of South Carolina and Cumberland County in North Carolina, as well as the western Twin Tiers of New York and Pennsylvania.

In 2016, CEO Jeff Androulonis called East Carolina University's national anthem protest a "shameful" disrespect of the U.S. military and, in counterprotest and in concurrence with the company's advertisers, dropped a planned broadcast of the team's game against the University of South Florida from WFAY.^[1]

The company began operations in Pennsylvania as "Colonial Media Group." It first invested in the Twin Tiers radio market in 2008. The company strategy was to take rimshot signals in farther-flung boroughs such as Kane and Coudersport and move them to towns adjacent to the area's largest city in Olean, hoping to gain market share from the two main broadcasters in the area, Backyard Broadcasting (then owners of WPIG, the dominant station in the region, now owned by Seven Mountains Media) and Pembrook Pines Media Group (whose stations are now owned by Sound Communications). From 2011 to 2013, Colonial operated a local television station in Olean.^[2] In 2018, Andrulonis announced the sale of the last of those stations to Rick Freeman, a Scranton-based businessman previously in the newspaper industry. Andrulonis and agreed to sell the stations to Freeman in a transaction consisting of 10% cash (to consummate a time-brokerage agreement until the sale consummates) and 90% cryptocurrency, the first time cryptocurrency has ever been used in a broadcast license transaction; he stated that "it was time" for him to give up the stations to someone else more interested in building them.^[3]^[4] The terms of the sale required Freeman to cover any shortfall in cash if the cryptocurrency lost value, and he was unable to do so after cryptocurrencies entered a bear market in 2018. Colonial then sold one of the stations to Family Life Network, a regional Christian broadcaster, in December.^[5] Although Family Life Network has not acknowledged the purchase as of March 2019, Andrulonis no longer lists the station in question as their own.

In March 2019, Colonial Media and Entertainment changed its name to Andrulonis Media. With the change, the company shuttered its New York operations and began operating its two remaining stations there via voice-tracking from the Carolinas.