As RBR+TVBR exclusively reported on Thursday (4/11), Ralph Oakley, who led the former Quincy Media, Inc., until its collection of television stations were sold to Gray Television and Allen Media Group, respectively, is returning to ownership and coming out of retirement.
A new LLC formed by Oakley is acquiring a Nexstar Media Group TV property. And, we now know who served as Nexstar’s broker of record in the transaction.
Look no further than Larry Patrick, the Managing Partner of Patrick Media Brokerage LLC.
Patrick tells RBR+TVBR via e-mail that the $1.5 million purchase of WJMN-3 in Escanaba, Mich., a MyNetwork TV affiliate that serves the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Marquette DMA, comes as a “follow-on” to a transaction engineered in late August 2023.
While Oakley-led Sullivan’s Landing LLC will serve as WJMN’s licensee, a shared services agreement is in place that will allow Morgan Murphy Media to run the station through its Queen Bee’s Knees LLC operation. This, in effect, puts WJMN alongside MMM-owned WBUP-10 in Ishpeming, Mich., and WBKP-5 in Calumet, Mich.
WBKP and WBUP were acquired by MMM as part of a transaction that also included WBKB-11 in Alpena, Mich., and eight radio properties serving Houghton and Iron River, Mich.
The company that sold the radio and TV stations to Morgan Murphy Media? The Marks Media Group.
That’s the entity that was led by the late Steve Marks, who died on May 11, 2022 at the age of 72.
MMM paid $13,375,000 for the radio and TV stations from Marks Media Group.
Meanwhile, WBKB made headlines one week ago with the news that it is eliminating its own newscasts as part of an agreement with Sinclair Inc. that actually expands the news coverage on the station by airing content from that company’s “UpNorthLive,” the news brand for WPBN-7 in Traverse City and full-time satellite WTOM-4 in Cheboygan.
