The ill-fated attempt of Multicultural Broadcasting to break into the television business is coming closer to a conclusion as its trustee spins television stations in Boston and San Francisco. According to brokerage firm Kalil & Co., the buyer is NRJ TV, a new entrant into the business headed by Ted Bartley.
The stations include KCNS-TV Channel 39 licensed to San Francisco, and WMFP-TV Channel 18, licensed to Lawrence MA. According to Kalil, both stations are currently independent.
Multicultural, which has long run a multi-ethnic radio group, attempted to do the same with a group of five television stations bought from E.W. Scripps in 2006 for $170M – a year which turned out to be almost perfectly wrong to be on the buyer’s side of the table.
The other stations were in Cleveland, Raleigh-Durham and New York.
They have been in a trust operated by Lee Shubert, and he is the seller of record on this transaction.
Still on the shelf for Shubert is the New York property, WSAH-TV licensed to Bridgeport CT.
In his earlier spin-offs, Shubert sesnt WOAC-TV, licensed to Canton OH and serving the Cleveland-Akron DMA, to Garth W. Koonce’s Radiant Life Ministries for $7M in a deal filed 4/20/09. Later the same year, on 10/30/09, the same buyer filed to acquire WRAY-TV Wilson NC, serving the Raleigh-Durham DMA, for $4.5M.
Terms for the current sale were not released.
