Norman Shapiro‘s Weigel Broadcasting has just signed off on the purchase of three over-the-air broadcast television facilities serving the nation’s second-largest television market.
The seller: An entity that among its properties were low-powered TV stations using VHF Channel 6 to serve radio listeners with audio at 87.7 MHz.
Digital low-power facilities KHTV-CD and KSFV-CD in Los Angeles are being acquired by Weigel through its TV-49 Inc. subsidiary.
They’re being spun by Venture Technologies Group, the Paul Koplin-led enterprise.
KHTV uses digital channel 22 and has a PSIP of Channel 6, and it benefits from a transmitter atop Mount Harvard, giving it excellent coverage of the L.A. basin. It is accompanied by an Inland Empire-targeted facility in KSFV. That station is on digital and PSIP channel 27, and is a Jewelry Television affiliate with a tower located on Box Springs Mountain, overlooking the city of Riverside.
Combined, the stations cover a large portion of the Los Angeles DMA.
And, they’re being purchased by Weigel for $7 million.
A $350,000 escrow deposit has been made to VTG.
The sale of KHTV and KSFV comes at the same time Koplin-controlled Coachella Communications has agreed to spin KPOM-CD in Ontario, Calif., to TV-49.
Separate paperwork for the KPOM sale was filed with the Commission for its approval.
KPOM uses digital channel 27 and has a PSIP of Channel 14. And, it shares its transmitter with KSFV. As such, Weigel will have two signals serving the Inland Empire upon closing.
How valuable is KPOM? The LPTV is worth $7 million, bringing the combined total for the three facilities to $14 million.
A $350,000 escrow deposit for KPOM was also made by Koplin.
These purchases coincide with the divestment by VTG of a low-power TV station just within the Washington, D.C., DMA, licensed to Woodstock, Va. That transaction, valued at $3 million, was filed separately as it is controlled by a different Koplin-led entity.
