UPDATE: Since this post was first published, additional details about WFNX's sale to Clear Channel have emerged. The Boston Globe has learned that WFNX's staff of nine full-time employees and 12 part-time employees has been cut to just three full-time employees and one part-time employee.

I’m not normally one to tune into commercial radio, but I still find this morning’s news sad: The Boston Phoenixis selling radio station WFNX to (yeah, you guessed it) Clear Channel.

All we’ve got for details at the moment is a memo sent to Phoenix staff that says the station’s financial woes have pushed the Phoenix to sell. Certainly Clear Channel will bring expenses down. Its cost-cutting techniques provide the illusion of a local radio station … but often that station is little more than a tower, a couple of computers and an endlessly looped playlist of the same old, same old.

WFNX may not be perfect, but it’s one of the only commercial radio stations that still has time dedicated to local music programming (Boston Accents). The station also launched the program One in Ten, which showcases issues relevant to the LGBT community. I mean, maybe FNX shouldn’t have lumped all of its local and diverse programming into the Sunday night slot, but still, here’s a station that at least tries to provide something of value to the Boston community.

Regardless, it’s a sad day for the commercial radio station I grew up on out in the Boston suburbs (thanks for all the Green Day songs, dudes). And it’s an even sadder day for the “adult” me to see an owner as invested in the local music scene as the Phoenix selling WFNX off to the empire that is Clear Channel. A station owner like the Phoenix is rare. There’s a community around this station. Already Facebook is filling up with comments like this one: “Clear Channel destroyed all radio in NY, and now they have come to destroy my beloved MA. Get ready to hear the same 5 ‘alternative’ songs over and over and over again.”

If you want to learn more about Clear Channel — the planet’s biggest radio conglomerate — check out our media ownership chart. You’ll find Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners (aka, the owners of Clear Channel) at the top of the list.