For some, the buying and selling of broadcast media properties over the past 12 months has been nothing short of dismal. Aside from cash-rich non-profit broadcast ministries seeking FM properties they couldn’t get a decade ago, radio industry transactions have come in small trickles. The TV industry, on the other hand, has seen colossal mega-mergers involving companies such as The E.W. Scripps Co. and Gray Television.
Television industry transactions of late have also included deals involving unbuilt low-power TV stations. With a sign-on deadline of Tuesday, time is rapidly ticking for those seeking to spin these facilities and cash out. For those still in need of a facility fire-up, an automatic forfeit of the CP looms.
Then, there’s a group of LPTVs for sale that are a bit unique. How so? They don’t need to be built until 2023.
RBR+TVBR has learned that some 13 LPTV construction permits presently licensed to Mako Communications are for sale. Bob Heymann of the Chicago office of Media Services Group has been retained to handle any transaction involving a selection or all of the unbuilt properties.
The incentive for a potential suitor? There’s plenty of time to build them without any fear of seeing the construction permit automatically forfeited without any further affirmative cancellation by the FCC for failing to make its firm sign-on deadline.
That’s July 13 at 11:59pm local time. As Wednesday begins, permittees that have not completed construction of their facilities, and begun operating them, will lose the opportunity to use them. For those that do get these LPTVs up and running in the nick of time, they must file a license to cover application within 10 days. If not, they’ll also be subject to forfeiting their LPTV.
Two entities that have amassed a collection of unbuilt LPTV permits opted to sell them. One is HC2 Holdings, and its DTV America unit. The other is Landover 2, a company led by Laurence Zimmerman.
Not all stations face the Tuesday deadline, which also brings end-of-life dates for low-power facilities using guard band/duplex gap channels — channels 38, 44, 45 and 46. CP extension filings were being accepted by the FCC’s Media Bureau. But, those were due to the Commission no later than March 15. And, those are short-term extensions that push the sign-on date in 2022.
The Mako stations are different. In late 2020, the FCC granted Construction Permit Amendments to 13 Mako LPTV construction permits submitted earlier in the year for consideration.
How was this possible? While not entirely clear, it is believed to be the result of a simple “ask and ye shall receive” request that no other licensees desired to make.
Meanwhile, the 13 Mako CPs are unique for another reason: they were omitted from a September 2017 transaction that saw Mako Communications sell all of its operational LPTVs to HC2 Holdings. The deal was valued at $29 million.
In early 2021, the FCC approved regulations that will allow 5 MHz for anything a licensee wants to do with a LPTV facility. This opens up a wide array of possibilities, including edge computing and “White Space” broadband internet access for IoT uses.
Thus, the value for a LPTV is likely higher than ever before.
For Mako, a family-owned business based in Corpus Christi, Tex., this could bring tens of thousands of dollars for even one of the 13 CPs.
That could bring a financially satisfying conclusion to operations for a company that began acquiring, building, and maintaining Class A and low power television stations in 2000. At the time of the HC2 transaction, Mako operated stations in 11 of the top 20 U.S. television markets and in 16 of the top 50 markets.
According to Heymann, the 13 Construction Permits are priced at $35,000 each. Of the 13 CPs, the earliest expiry date is March 10, 2023. That is for a Salinas, Calif., property, serving the Monterey Bay region.
The latest expiry date is Sept. 8, 2023. That applies to a Key West, Fla., CP; the Florida Keys are within the Miami-Fort Lauderdale DMA.
Other markets include Palm Springs, Calif.; and Boise, Idaho, where Evoca and Edge Networks head Todd Achilles is building what some may describe as a “NEXTGEN TV era version of Wometco Home Theater,” with a SVOD/FAST Channel operation powered by ATSC 3.0 in development.
For those seeking opportunities with LPTVs, these properties may prove to be valued entities.
And, the CPs won’t disappear come Wednesday morning.
