Deal will make businessmen, former GOP candidates, new owners of WDEV radio group
January 18, 2024 | By Lisa Scagliotti 
Radio station buyer Myers Mermel and owner Ashley Jane Squier of Radio Vermont Group share a congratulatory handshake at the WDEV studios on Thursday, Jan. 11, following their on-air announcement of the company's impending sale. Photo by Gordon Miller
From a fitting on-air radio announcement last week, listeners to WDEV learned that two Vermont businessmen, handpicked by Ken Squier months before his death in November, are now poised to take ownership of the nearly century-old independent broadcasting company based in Waterbury.
Late Thursday morning, Jan. 11, employees at the stations got the news first, in person at the WDEV offices on Stowe Street, the huddle with staff ending with a round of applause for the new team.
A crew from WCAX-TV was invited to capture what happened next – third-generation Radio Vermont Group owner Ashley Jane Squier headed into the broadcast booth accompanied by General Manager Steve Cormier and the two successful investors entrusted by her father to be the next leaders at the iconic Vermont radio enterprise whose Blush Hill broadcast towers have been a Waterbury landmark for decades.
While the buyers may be familiar faces in Vermont business and politics, neither has run a radio station before.
One is Scott Milne of Pomfret, the president of Milne Travel travel agency who has run for elected office in Vermont four times. Milne’s role in the new radio partnership is one of investor and supporter.
He famously came closest to winning a statewide election in 2014 when he was the Republican challenger to Gov. Peter Shumlin, a two-term Democrat at the time. Neither won 50% of the vote and the Vermont House of Representatives ultimately decided Shumlin to be the winner.
Milne also ran unsuccessfully for the Vermont House in 2006 and he was the GOP U.S. Senate nominee in 2016, losing to incumbent Patrick Leahy.
He most recently ran in 2020 for lieutenant governor, coming up short to Democrat Molly Gray. Milne’s family history in Vermont politics runs three generations deep as both of his parents and his paternal grandfather all served in the Vermont House.
Inside the WDEV broadcast booth, station owner Ashley Jane Squier (center) is joined on-air midday on Thursday, Jan. 11, by station Manager Steve Cormier (standing) and buyers Myers Mermel (seated left) and Scott Milne (seated right). The group told listeners of plans for the radio station group's new ownership. Photo by Kevin McCallum, Seven Days
The other half of the new Radio Vermont Group partnership is Myers Mermel of Manchester whose role will be owner-operator. A 1984 graduate of the University of Vermont, Mermel lives in Manchester.
Radio Vermont Group has signed a binding contract with Mermel & McLain Management LLC of Manchester. It expects to finalize the transfer of assets over the next few months after review and approval by the Federal Communications Commission. The parties did not share the purchase price in the deal.
WDEV is the company’s flagship AM 550/FM 96.1 station, but it also includes – and the sale covers – WLVB FM 93.9, WCVT FM 101.7, W243AT-FM 96.5 and W252CU-FM 98.3, and W273AM-FM 102.5. The stations’ broadcast area covers Central Vermont, the Burlington, and the Northeast Kingdom.
A new career path for Mermel
With the announcement, Mermel said he is putting his other business pursuits on hold to devote his full attention to WDEV and Radio Vermont. Mermel has had a career in investment banking and commercial real estate in New York. He moved to Vermont in 2015.
Like Milne, Mermel has once run for statewide office as a GOP candidate. In 2022, he was one of three contenders in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate to fill the seat formerly held by Leahy. He came in last, behind former U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan. Primary winner Gerald Malloy went on to run unsuccessfully against former U.S. Rep. Peter Welch who now holds the Senate seat.
After his run for office, Mermel had a brief stint as president and executive director of the Ethan Allen Institute, a conservative Vermont think tank. That ended in September.
The Radio Vermont Group towers on Blush Hill are a Waterbury landmark. Photo by Gordon Miller
Despite their backgrounds in partisan politics however, the pair say they will approach their new venture with the goal of continuing the radio station’s format and philosophy. Listeners in the months ahead can still expect to tune in to WDEV’s hallmark folksy, eclectic, popular Vermont programming like “Music to Go to the Dump By” and “The Trading Post” programs alongside live sports broadcasts of Vermont high school athletics, Boston big-league teams, and auto races at Thunder Road.
In the sale announcement both current and new leaders at Radio Vermont Group said that the station’s shows that focus on talk, opinion, public affairs and public information will continue to cover a wide swath of the spectrum of views – a tradition paramount to former owner Ken Squier and his father before him.
“We are thankful to the Squier family for their years of dedication to Vermont and to community radio. WDEV is the leading News/Talk/Sports station, and its community format builds social trust across our community,” Mermel said in the sale announcement. “It keeps Vermont, and all its people, knit together. We look forward to continuing and enhancing community radio at WDEV with the same emphasis on even-handed reporting and commentary – as well as humor – which has been its hallmark.”
Milne’s travel business has long been associated with WDEV. He said that experience drives home for him the role that independently owned broadcasting can have in its community. “I know how valuable radio can be to a small business’s chances of success,” Milne said. “Keeping Radio Vermont local and community-based will be good for our communities, good for Vermont families, and very good for Vermont’s economy. I am grateful to be playing a part in all of this.”
Ashley Jane Squier, who lives in Waterbury with her husband and race car driver Robbie Crouch, said she saw her role in the family business as temporary. Her career is in education – she teaches as a literacy specialist at the Montessori School of Central Vermont in Barre. In overseeing the Radio Vermont Group transition, Squier said she wanted the company’s longstanding mission to remain as “serving our community by providing relevant information and a forum for all voices to be heard.”
In July 2021, Radio Vermont Group commemorated WDEV's 90th anniversary with a street party outside its station offices on Stowe Street in Waterbury. Photo by Gordon Miller
History recounted and honored
The Jan. 11 announcement came less than two months after Ken Squier’s death on Nov. 15 at age 88 but as daughter Ashley Jane – who inherited the role as company leader – explained, the deal was coming together in 2023 and her father was very involved.
“While these past couple months have been a sad time for our family, we are gratified to have found Vermonters to step up and continue the rich tradition of our treasured radio stations,” she said. “During the last months of his life, my father Ken Squier was involved in our search for a buyer who would continue the independent radio legacy our family has built at WDEV and its sister stations for over 92 years. Beginning with my grandfather Lloyd Squier in 1931, the Squier family has been honored to serve Vermonters’ families and communities. We now feel confident that the stations will be in good hands to hold true to their legacy.”
The deal to sell to Mermel and Milne was reached before Ken Squier’s passing with the help of longtime business associate Glen Wright who died just a month after Squier on Dec. 15.
Former Radio Vermont Group owner Ken Squier (center) banters with longtime friend and veteran broadcaster Brian Harwood (right) outside the WDEV studios during the station's 90th anniversary celebration in July 2021. Photo by Gordon Miller
In the 20-minute live broadcast laying out the new plans for the stations, Squier took time to recount the company’s history. She recalled her grandfather Lloyd Squier, who worked at the station since its founding in 1931 by Waterbury Record owner Harry Whitehill. The elder Squier and partner Bill Ricker inherited the business when Whitehill died in 1935 and Squier continued after Ricker died in World War II.
“The famous story that dad told so many times was that [Whitehill] said to my grandfather Lloyd, ‘I think more people can hear than can read. We better look into this radio business,’” she recounted.
Lloyd Squier ran the business until his death in 1979, passing it on to his son Ken Squier. Ashley Jane remarked on how her grandfather and father logged 44 years apiece in their role as station owner.
The sale to Mermel and Milne was not the first time Ken Squier looked to pass on his lifelong business. In September 2017, Squier announced that he would sell Radio Vermont to local investors led by Cormier, but that bid ultimately failed to come together.
After the news broke last week, Cormier said he was pleased with how things have played out. Saying he intends to stay on in his role, he said he has no reason to believe the new team will make any significant changes to the 22-member staff.
He spoke highly of Mermel and Milne calling Mermel a “due-diligence guy” who does his homework. “I’m staying. They said all the right things,” Cormier said. “I trust Ashley and Glen Wright who worked on this deal. They both felt this would be good for the company. I’m going to trust their judgment.”
Steve Cormier (with the microphone) greets WDEV station owner Ken Squier at the Amtrak station in Waterbury when train service resumed in July 2021 after a pandemic pause. Photo by Gordon Miller
Cormier said Mermel shared with the staff that he’s had experience with business associates in the radio industry in New York, so he’s familiar with the financial challenges ahead. “Is it going to be the same? Probably not. But you can tell that Myers wants to pay the proper respect and due for the Squier family,” he said. “And I feel good that Scott [Milne] is part of this. Ken wanted a Vermonter. We got two. I feel good.”
Cormier said the sale will not include the two buildings on Stowe Street in Waterbury where the radio station offices are located as well as several other businesses. As part of the deal, Merman and Milne have signed a 10-year lease, however. “They have committed to be in this building for a decade,” he said.
The staff meeting ended with a standing ovation for the new owners, Cormier said, adding that he wished his former boss, Ken Squier, could have seen the announcement through. “This was the love of his life,” he said.
A ‘day of hopefulness’
July 2021: The WDEV storefront window tells its stories in portraits of past and present radio hosts. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Ashley Jane Squier acknowledged that listeners and the public will be curious to see what direction the new owners take with Radio Vermont Group and that not everyone will be satisfied with every decision to come.
“Change is hard,” she said. “What I know is that Myers and Scott are looking to run this radio station with a lot of sameness but of course there will be changes just as there were all through the years of dad and grandpa’s time here… I hope and I ask for Vermonters to stay with us, to stay listening, to accept that some changes you will probably love, some you will not love but there’s still enough to love, and some things will stay the same.”
She noted that her father considered listeners “the real investors in this radio station.” Good radio in her father’s estimation, she said, “meant relevant radio, essential information, and opinions that we might not share but are important to listen to were integral to what our listeners needed and expected from us.”
As she signed off, she offered notes of optimism and closure, acknowledging both her predecessors and successors. “We just need to move forward because life goes on,” she said. “So, this is a day of hopefulness for me and joy, and I thank you all for listening.”
SIDEBAR: You can read a transcript here of the 20-min. on-air announcement of the WDEV sale, broadcast live on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, at 12:35 p.m.
Find the station’s news release and an audio recording of the on-air announcement interview online at WDEVradio.com.