The latest station acquisition from Gray Television does not figure to be a budget buster, but it could be an excellent add-on to what it already owns in the Laredo TX market.
The station the group is acquiring is KNEX-LP, licensed to Laredo.
The seller is Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo LLC, headed by Brian Brady.
Gray is headed by Hilton H. Howell.
The price – wait for it — is $25,000 cash.
Gray owns Channel 8 KGNS in the market. It’s a triple threat – its primary affiliation is with NBC, but it also carries ABC and Telemundo via digital side channels.
The station operates on Channel 55, and has a CP to go digital on Channel 14. Laredo is at the very top of the contour for the analog station; the digital facility will be nicely centered over the city.
RBR+TVBR observation: During its last quarterly conference call Gray said it was in the television business for the long haul and does not expect to be active in the incentive auction. It noted that it’s small-market focus is not lending itself to very many tempting preauction value estimates.
That is certainly the case in Laredo. Greenhill 1 puts maximum value of an auctioned station at $9M, with the media for all others full powers and Class As at $5M.
It is not the sort of estimate from which Scrooge McDuck daydreams are made.
Gray has a nice thing going here, with two major networks and Telemundo, a great asset in this heavily-Hispanic market near the Mexican border. We figure the company will put this low power station to use to get maximum value out of its local program assets.
