Double deal with moving parts in Chico-Redding DMA

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DealFasten your seatbelts for this one folks, it’s a humdinger. GOCOM Broadcasting Corporation, a television operator heretofore with assets only in Illinois, is buying one station in Chico CA, and the non-license assets of another. Meanwhile, the seller of station one is getting the parts of station two GOCOM is legally barred from acquiring.


Strapped in yet? OK, here we go.

In the first part of the deal, GOCOM, headed by Richard L. Gorman, James H. Doyle and Katherine Gorman, is acquiring CBS 12 KHSL Chico. The seller is Catamount Broadcasting of Chico-Redding Inc., headed by Theodore T. Horton Jr. The deal also includes a trio of translators located in Westwood, Lakeshore and Paradise CA.

The price is $5.45M cash. An LMA began 11/14/12 under terms of which Catamount receives rent in the form of 37% of the station’s broadcast cash flow.

GOCOM also picks up an LMA with NBC 24 KNVN-TV, which it will amend to replace Catamount with itself as the brokering entity.

And that’s where the second part of the deal begins.

KNVN is also being sold, and in fact, the first buyer listed on the transaction application is the aforementioned Theodore T. Horton Jr. He will pay $350K cash for the station’s license. The KNVN deal includes one translator located in Oroville.

The station’s tangible and intangible assets are going to GOCOM for $1.2M, bringing the total value of the KNVN sale to $1.55M, GOCOM’s total expenditure to $6.65M and the total value of the entire set of deals to $7M flat.

The seller of KNVN is Evans Broadcasting of Chico LLC, headed by Janice A. Evans.
The two stations have already been operated in tandem in an LMA as we mentioned.

Among other shared items, they share a local news broadcast.

The stations will be replacing the GOCOM’s holdings, not adding to them. The trio, which includes Fox WRSP, Fox WCCU and CW WBUI in the Champaign-Springfield-Decatur DMA, were sold to Sinclair Broadcast Group for $25.6M which Sinclair says closed 12/31/12.