For the third time in the young month of April 2015, a transaction application for a full power television station has been filed with the FCC. Earlier deals have been filed in Toccoa GA and Salt Lake City UT. This time the action is in Fresno CA. Broker: Kalil & Co. Inc. (seller).
The station is Channel 7 KAIL-DT.
The seller is Trans America Broadcasting Corporation, headed by President Gerardo Borrego.
The buyer is Aperio Communications LLC. Manager Joshua Castro signed off on the transfer application. Castro and others are members of 559 Broadcasting LLC, which holds a 30% stake in Aperio. The remaining 70% is held by HME Equity Partners LLC.
The price is $3,000,000 cash.
Trans America filed a Form 316 transfer of control application that was never actually consummated; likewise, a Form 315 application filed 4/3/14 to ultimately control the license of KAIL to IHR Educational Broadcasting, though granted 2/27/15, has not been consummated, nor is it expected to close.
The station’s primary affiliation is with MNT. It also carries CoziTV and H&I on digital side streams.
RBR+TVBR observation: We are learning that spectrum speculators are being selective in their acquisitions at this point, since nobody is really sure how deep bidding will go in certain markets, and how far prices will fall from the Greenhill 2 value estimates and the even more robust EOBC estimates.
Greenhill 1 estimates the maximum value of a full power Fresno station to be $30M with a $26M median price.
Greenhill 2, on the other hand, says bidding could work down from $190M tops and $160M median.
EOBC plugged the FCC formula into KAIL’s particulars and came up with a high-end opening price of $168M and change. Its own method, on the conservative side of what it thinks would be a fair opening bid, puts the value at a hair under $300M.
With a VHF Channel 7 location, this is one channel that will not require repacking. Whether it will be put up for auction is another matter.
