A Class C AM serving a city in the Lone Star State, along with its FM translator, are being sold from a North Texas group to an East Texas entity.
The buyer is a broadcaster who has enjoyed an owner partnership for another licensee with nationally known political figure Mike Huckabee.
In one of the last Form 314 filings seen ahead of Thursday’s anticipated shutdown of the FCC due to a lack of Federal funds, North Texas Radio Group is selling Class C KEBE-AM 1400 in Jacksonville, Tex., and FM translator K284CT at 104.7 MHz.
The buyer is East Texas Results Media LLC, led by Managing Member Paul Coates.
The purchase price is $126,000; KEBE-FM is not involved in the transaction and will continue to use the tower it shares with KEBE-AM for a five-year period.
East Texas Results Media is the licensee of six other Texas stations, including Class C2 KLJT-FM 102.3 in Jacksonville, Tex., within the Tyler-Longview, Tex., market.
Additionally, Coates’ Bluff City Radio LLC is the licensee of four stations in Arkansas.
But, it is Coates’ involvement with radio stations in the resort community of Branson, Mo., that may be most noteworthy.
In fall 2017 word first surfaced that a company led by Coates and Mike Huckabee had agreed to convert a Lease Management Agreement (LMA) to outright ownership for their entity. The paperwork offering financial details of this long-awaited deal were finally filed with the FCC on May 10, 2018, putting the wheels in motion on the license transfer of a three FM/two AM (plus translators) cluster in Branson, Mo., to New Directions Broadcast Group subsidiary Ozark Mountain Media Group that also includes a local online news hub and TV offering The Vacation Channel.
Ozark Mountain is paying $6.5 million for the radio stations, with no deposit required.
In a separately filed transaction, KBNS-CD in Branson, Mo., the broadcast home for The Vacation Channel, was dealt to a New Directions subsidiary named Branson Tri-Lakes TV LLC. The purchase price for the low-power TV station is $1.2 million.
