Terry London’s relatively young broadcast television group currently has five full-power stations and one low-power in four Texas markets. Now it has a deal that will get it into one of the state’s prime pieces of real estate – Dallas-Fort Worth. The station is KTAQ Greenville TX.
London is picking up the station as licensee KTAQ License Company LLC, and he’s getting it from similarly named KTAQ of Dallas LLC. The seller is actually Platinum Equity LLC, headed by Tom Gores.
The price is $18M, including a $900K escrow deposit, $13.1M in cash at closing and a $4M promissory note.
We suspect that Platinum is pleased with the current price tag. It picked up the station as a troubled property from Simons Broadcasting Debtor-in-Possession due to its position as lender in a contract dated 7/23/10. The deal then was valued at $9M, which was all considered to be a credit bid placed on the basis of $10M note of 5/30/07 in Platinum’s favor.
KTAQ is an indy, and according to the contract, it is on all relevant MVPD systems in the area that have a subscriber base of 5K or greater.
London’s other properties, all of which are in Texas, include Tyler-Longview stations KCEB Longview and KYTX Nacogdoches, Waco-Bryan-Temple stations KCEN and KAGS-LD, Beaumont-Port Arthur station KBMT Beaumont and KIII Corpus Christi.
