Did you catch the news that legendary urban station WAMO/Pittsburgh is being sold? Two Fridays ago it was announced that Sheridan Broadcasting Corp. has filed for a sale of WAMO-FM, WAMO-AM, and WPGR-AM to St. Joseph Missions for $8.9 million.

If your eyes didn’t just bug out, they should have, since the sale of three Pittsburgh stations at the price of half of one just a few years ago may be a true indicator of just how bad off the nation’s radio industry is.

So says longtime radio opinion maker Jerry Del Colliano. Last week on his Inside Music Media blog, he claims that a radio station fire sale may be underway. Large corporate owners, who have bottom-lined their stations so severely that not only have they destroyed their product, they are destroying their profitability (the aforementioned bottom-line.)

If you’ve glanced at the CNBC ticker recently, you’d find out that radio stocks are nearly worthless. The public corporate owner in Erie, Citadel Broadcasting, closed on Wednesday at .085 (less than a dime) per share, with a market cap at $22.61 million.

Del Colliano claims that corporate owners like Citadel will start “selling off ’sticks’” in order to bring in any kind of cash. If we take Jerry’s forecast of 3-4 times cashflow, a station like Classy 100/WXKC, which might cashflow $600 K, could allow you to pick that puppy up for $2.4 to $3 million!

Imagine a local investor with a few bucks burning a hole in his/her pocket taking a proven biller back to local control. He or she can rebuild its connection with the community, all for one-quarter of the entry fee of just a few years ago! Sure the ad market is tough right now, but a radio station that targets older adults still has relevance for years to come. Plus a radio station is an excellent launching platform for all kinds of social networking and alternative streams.

A radio geek can dream, can’t he?