NEW YORK — On August 2, 2021, just shy of eight months after the company confirmed that it was “considering” a sale of all of its assets, Quincy Media, Inc. marked the end of an era. Its 24 broadcast television properties were officially sold, and now the property of Gray Television and Allen Media Group, respectively.
“This was a difficult decision for our Board of Directors and shareholders,” said Ralph Oakley, who led the licensee. By April 2022, Oakley was all but retired, as he was honored with a Broadcasters Foundation of America Leadership Award at its NAB Show breakfast event.
Oakley has just returned to broadcast TV station ownership. And, it is thanks to a deal engineered through a newly created entity that’s agreeing to purchase a station from the nation’s No. 1 owner of over-the-air properties.
WJMN-3 in Escanaba, Mich., which uses digital channel 32 to serve the Marquette DMA, is being spun by Nexstar to Sullivan’s Landing LLC.
Paperwork was finalized on March 29 and submitted to the FCC for regulatory approval late Wednesday (4/10).
Sullivan’s Landing is 100% owned by Oakley, who continues to reside in Quincy, Ill.
A $1.5 million purchase price has been agreed upon, with room for a price adjustment based on accounts receivable and bad debts.
Serving as Oakley’s legal counsel in this transaction is Liz Spainhour of Brooks Pierce.
Nexstar Media President Michael Biard signed off on the transaction for the company.
The timing of the deal could come under the microscope for many industry observers, as Nexstar’s C-Suite decides how to respond to a FCC Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture issued in March to the company alleging Nexstar and independently owned Mission Broadcasting ran afoul of the National Ownership Cap and engaged in a de facto transfer of control putting Nexstar in control of WPIX-11 in New York.
The March 21 NALF presented Nexstar with proposed fines totaling $1.2 million, and an edict — Mission must divest WPIX to an unrelated third party, or Mission must formally sell WPIX to Nexstar while Nexstar concurrently divests a sufficient number of other stations to reduce its national coverage footprint consistent with the National Ownership Cap.
Could the latter now be transpiring?
For Kevin Adell, who has been anxiously awaiting regulatory approval for the sale of his WADL-38 in Detroit to Mission Broadcasting for $75 million, the WJMN transaction could bring a glimmer of home to a situation he’s told RBR+TVBR in recent weeks is growing evermore grim.
‘UP’ AND OVER
With Oakley’s newly created Sullivan’s Landing poised to take on ownership of WJMN-3, he will not operate the station, presently a MyNetwork TV affiliate.
A Shared Services Agreement has been reached that puts WJMN in the operational control of Queen Bee’s Knees LLC. What’s that? It happens to be the licensee of WBUP-10 in Ishpeming, Mich., and WBKP-5 in Calumet, Mich.
You may recognize the station’s owner by their d/b/a name — Morgan Murphy Media.
For WJMN, the sale will see the end of master control and operations for the station based at Nexstar-owned WFRV-5 in Green Bay, Wisc.
Programming from MyNetwork TV and Nexstar-owned Antenna TV came in January 2022, when the CBS Television Network left the station after three decades. Today, the market’s CBS affiliate is WZMQ-19.2, owned by Lilly Broadcasting.
