In just four years, Bill Christian and Mike Reed launched, from scratch, a group of television stations serving the Lafayette, Ind., market — the home of Purdue University.
They’d go on to acquire other TV stations, including a LPTV property in Manchester, Vt., while building up operations in Jonesboro, Ark., and the Tri-Cities of Tennessee.
Now, Christian and Reed are selling nearly all of their TV stations, along with the four radio stations they own, too. Kalil & Co. is the broker of record.
An agreement has been signed that will see Christian and Reed sell seven TV stations and four radio stations across five markets to Coastal Television Broadcasting Group.
That’s the Cumming, Ga., based entity led by Bill Fielder that is engaged in the operation and acquisition of television broadcasting stations located in mid-to-small sized markets. Coastal owns and operates the FOX affiliates in Anchorage; Casper and Cheyenne, Wyo., and Tupelo, Miss.
The Anchorage stations have been particularly newsworthy of late, due to a retransmission consent dispute with Liberty Broadband-owned MVPD GCI.
A series of filings made Thursday (7/29) at the FCC provide details as to how much Christian and Reed are pocketing from the transaction.
The biggest of the deals Christian and Reed engineered with Fielder’s group is valued at $36.9 million. This sees the sale through licensees such as Star City Broadcasting, SagamoreHill of Jackson, Waypoint Media, The News Hub and Jonesboro TV LLC of WNBJ-LD in Jackson, Miss.; KJNB-LD and KJNE-LD in Jonesboro, Ark; and WPBI-LD & WPBY-LD in Lafayette, In.
The spin to Coastal of the Lafayette, Ind., market radio stations WSHY-AM, WAZY-FM, WBPE-FM & WYCM-FM and FM translators W222AS and W282CJ is also included in this deal, as is the digital marketing agency Nulogic and the news production business NewsHub.
A $1,116,000 escrow deposit has been made by Coastal.
In the Twin Tiers of New York and Pennsylvania, through Vision Communications, WYDC-TV in Corning, N.Y., and W26BF in Elmira, W20BL-D in Bath, WJKP-LD in Corning, WECY-LD in Elmira, and W15EG-D in Corning are being sold for $9.5 million. A $340,000 escrow deposit has been made.
The third and final APA filed by Christian and Reed show the sale of WGBC-TV in Meridian, Miss., to Coastal for $2,501,788. A $62,000 escrow deposit has been made.
In total, nine “big four” network affiliates and five stations associated with either The CW Network or MyTV Network are being sold.
In prepared comments, Reed said, “We are so excited that we could bring new local service into these markets, while growing our legacy stations in Mississippi and New York. We jumped in feet first and provided new options for local news and programming and showed our commitment to our communities by providing local scholarship endowments to our universities. All of our stations eagerly embraced our mission of ‘Paying it Forward’ to our employees, our advertisers and our communities. We are excited that Coastal Television Broadcasting will continue and grow that tradition.”
Fielder added, “We are enthusiastic to announce the acquisitions of these television and radio stations, the NewsHub and Nulogic. All of these businesses have strong leadership, a strong tradition of community service and incredible teams driving them forward. I know I speak for all Coastal’s team when I say that we are proud that Mike Reed and Bill Christian have entrusted us with the stewardship of their businesses.”
Christian called the deal “a win-win for all involved.” He noted, “As the broadcasting industry consolidates, it is important for small broadcast companies to scale in size. Mike and I looked out at the landscape, and we felt these stations could best compete by combining with another group to maximize leverage. We are proud of what we have achieved and are grateful to all of our teams who have worked tirelessly to serve our communities, from finding lost dogs to giving life-saving information from tornadoes to COVID, while providing world class entertainment and sports programming.”
