On December 1, 2022, Evoca TV brought to light its biggest challenge to date as a unique pay-TV service relying on local NEXTGEN TV lighthouse and internet-delivered programming streamed to subscribers and integrated into a single user interface: funding woes.
By the end of the year, an attempt to raise enough capital to keep the lights on failed, and the business led by CEO Todd Achilles shut down. Now, the licensee that leased to Evoca its first low-power TV station is selling it.
SagamoreHill of Kansas City Licenses LLC, led by COO Matthew Davidge, is agreeing to acquire KEVA-LD 34 in Boise, Idaho, from Sawtooth Mountains Broadcast & Wireless Corp.
And, it is a bit of a bargain for SagamoreHill, as it is paying $50,000 for the facility that had been offering a group of encrypted signals to paying subscribers.
A $10,000 earnest money deposit has been made by SagamoreHill for KEVA, which made pioneering moves including the successful delivery of emergency information to video subscribers tuned to programming delivered over the internet — an “industry first.”
Alas, getting the dollars to build out the service proved to be an Achilles’ heel, if you will, as Evoca ceased operations in six states, saying goodbye to a consumer base of 8 million potential subscribers.
This left Sawtooth Mountains with a decision to make — operate it as a traditional LPTV facility, or sell it. The option was to spin it.
Commenting via e-mail to RBR+TVBR, Achilles said two factors drove Evoca’s decision to wind down Evoca — the Big Four networks’ “coordinated refusal to license content even when we offered them a premium,” and “the lack of growth capital given the Fed’s rate increases.”
Achilles continues, “The Evoca team executed well across many dimensions and developed an innovative new hybrid broadcast service based on ATSC 3.0. Where we could license independent content, we were growing as fast as we could build set-top boxes, with churn under 2%. But it would have been a niche business, at best, without fair and reasonable access to mainstream Big Four content.”
Serving as the broker for Sawtooth Mountains in this transaction is Sterling BCG LLC.
Once the transaction is complete, KEVA will formally be housed under the same group of stations as four low-power TV properties in Lawrence, Kansas; Columbia, Mo.; and in Springfield and St. Elmo, Ill.
SagamoreHill will be gaining its first Boise property with KEVA, where The E.W. Scripps Co. (KIVI-6); Sinclair Inc. (KBOI-2); TEGNA (KTVB-7); and Marquee Broadcasting-owned FOX affiliate KNIN-9 (operated by Scripps) are the main players in the local TV marketplace.
