R.I.P.: Former Station Owner Louis Appell Jr.

Louis Appell Jr.

Retired radio owner and business man Louis Appell Jr. died Monday evening in York, PA.

He was 92-years-of-age.

At his company's peak, Appell led numerous subsidiary companies, including Susquehanna Communications, Susquehanna Real Estate and Susquehanna Media that totaled more than 3,600 employees, according to the York Dispatch.

The company, which was fifth-generation owned, sold most of its assets in 2005 and 2006, including a $1.2 billion sale of Susquehanna Radio's 33 stations and a $540 million sale of Susquehanna Communications, because no heirs were willing to take over.

He was also the former president and CEO of Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff, a pottery business that started in 1889. Appell was regarded as a major contributor to downtown York, as Downtown Inc named its lifetime achievement award after him and his wife, Jody.

The Susquehanna Radio Corporation was a media corporation which operated from 1941 to 2006 and was headquartered in York, Pennsylvania.

Some of the early Susquehanna radio properties included top 40 music stations WSBA 910 AM in York, WARM 590 AM in Scranton, WICE 1290 AM, now WRNI, in Providence, RI, and WHLO 640 AM in Akron, OH.   WQBA 1140 AM, a Spanish-language station in Miami was also part of the group.

Susquehanna's best-known acquisition was the 1989 purchase of San Francisco's KNBR 680 AM from NBC, the last radio station owned by the network and its shepherding of that station into one of the nation's more well known sports talk stations.

Over time, Susquehanna repositioned itself from a company based largely in the Northeast to one based largely in the Southern and Midwestern markets. The company was absorbed into Cumulus Media in 2006 when Louis Appell's children broke up Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff.