APM affiliate agrees to buy FM in Palm Beach

After trying for five years to sell its public TV/radio combo in Palm Beach, Fla., Barry University has unloaded the FM station separately. Classical South Florida, an offshoot of Minnesota-based American Public Media, will buy WXEL-FM for $3.85 million, offer jobs to its present staff and program the classical/news station separately from its all-classical Miami station, WKCP, the Palm Beach Post reports. “CSF plans to strengthen its classical music programming while continuing to provide NPR news and public affairs content to the region,” according to a joint CSF/Barry news release. The university north of Miami, which rescued the shaky WXEL in 1997, was talking with at least three prospective buyers last fall, but the Palm Beach school district decided to spend its loose change on schooling instead, and Barry hasn’t reached an agreement with either Miami’s WPBT or a Palm Beach nonprofit formed to acquire WXEL.