TV Deals

HC2 Station Group, Inc., Max Media X LLC, and CMCG Puerto Rico LLC have agreed on the sale of two television stations in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

"America's Premier College for Mentored Undergraduate Research" has become the latest institution of higher learning to shift its student-run radio station to an online-only venture. It has agreed to sell its silent 1,050-watt noncommercial FM serving a small Ohio city to the west of Canton. Who's the buyer? It's the entity that now owns such stations as WPLJ in New York.

With the last broadcast transaction of the year the broadcast deal volume for 2020 passed the $1 billion line, closing with a total of $1.02 billion. That's an 87% drop from 2019, Volker Mörbitz of S&P Global Market Intelligence notes, clearly highlighting the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is, however, a volume 27% higher than that of 2010.

Kagan's Volker Moerbitz's assessment of the transactions landscape through June 30 is a striking one: the first half of 2021 registered a total deal volume that was less than the average monthly deal volume in any of the years between 2011 and 2019. If it weren't for the presence of brokers, how much worse would things have been?

With ATSC 3.0 bringing Broadcast Internet and NEXTGEN TV opportunities, the company led in tandem by Hilton Howell Jr. and Pat LaPlatney has actively been seeking to secure full-DMA over-the-air coverage of its stations through these LPTV deals. The FCC has two more transactions it will need to approve.

King Forward Inc. in recent months has been the seller of low-powered TV stations across the South. In June, the licensee was at it again. Now, the company led by John Kyle II has officially closed on the sale of four properties in the region, and two in the Hoosier State.

American Christian Television Services has reached an agreement that will see the sale of its low-power digital TV station licensed to the city of Defiance, Ohio. The buyer is an entity that brought the expansion of the "Indiana News Network" to more stations across the neighboring Hoosier State.

Brokers form Strategic Tower Advisors.

Norman Shapiro’s Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting Co. isn't just gaining a channel-sharing agreement for the Azteca América affiliate in Los Angeles. The company's TV-49 Inc. has just snagged a full-power TV station in the Gateway City from a not-for-profit entity that's been using it for religious programming. It's the top deal for RBR+TVBR's TRANSACTIONS TODAY for Tuesday, Sept. 12, which also sees Larry Fuss make a deal in the Deep South and Art Agnotti make an "artistic" move in Indiana.

In 1990, a low-power TV station designed to improve the signal coverage of a full-power station located to the north of Houston made its debut. Over the years, it has faithfully served as a simulcast partner for what is today Ion Media-owned KPXB-49 in the nation's eighth-largest DMA. Now, with the FCC's spectrum auction concluded and repacking underway, as well as the voluntary rollout of ATSC 3.0 next-gen digital TV broadcasts, Ion has decided it no longer needs the LPTV. 

In the Colorado ski resorts of Aspen and Snowmass is an entity doing business as "Aspen 82."  In the lone item up for discussion in TRANSACTIONS TODAY presented by RBR+TVBR, it has just acquired a dormant LPTV in one of those slope-filled cities.

In 1986, a family-owned television broadcasting company based in St. Paul, Minn., came to fruition. Over time, this operation would grow to 16 stations in markets as diverse as Tucson; Corpus Christi, Tex.; and San Luis Obispo, Calif. Thirty-two years later, Cordillera Communications is exiting TV station ownership. The buyers: One big publicly traded media company that just sold off its radio stations, and an Illinois-based player with a diverse portfolio of media properties. 

RBR+TVBR was first to report Thursday on Gray Television's decision to acquire a low-power TV station in Juneau, and translator KSCT-LP 5 in Sitka, Alaska. Details, including the sale price, are now available, as a Form 345 filing with the FCC was made following the seller's release confirming a sale had been consummated.

In the not-too-distant past, Channel 36 in Salem, Ore., and Channel 26 in Portland, Ore., were simulcast partners offering Christian-themed television programming to Oregon's most populous areas. Now, the facility serving the Pacific Northwest's second-largest DMA is being spun. Who it is going to begs the question of how it will now be used.

The Philip Falcone-led Sovryn Holdings has struck a deal that will see it add a digital Class A television station in a top DMA to its growing list of properties, pending FCC approval.