Newport Television - History

History

In September 2007, Newport agreed to sell KFTY and KVOS-TV to LK Station Group LLC for $26.6 million. The deal was set be completed in March 2008 but eventually collapsed due to LK's lender refusing to provide the funding; KFTY (now KEMO-TV) and KVOS have since been sold to other companies. As of October 10, 2007, Newport has agreed to sell KION-TV, KMUV-LP, K44DN, KKFX-CA, KCOY-TV to Cowles Publishing Company for $41 million. Newport's purchase of the Clear Channel stations and those being resold were granted conditional Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval, subject to divestitures of media properties owned by other affiliates of Providence Equity Partners in several other markets. The entire deal closed on March 14, 2008 after several stations, in addition to those being divested by Newport, were placed into trust companies.

In March 2012, Providence Equity Partners began to explore strategic alternatives for Newport Television, which may lead to a sale of the group. In July 2012, it was officially confirmed that Nexstar Broadcasting Group would acquire twelve of Newport's stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group would acquire six, and Cox Media Group would acquire four. As part of the same deal, Newport's CMS operations, branded as Inergize Digital, would go to Nexstar. This deal was followed eight days later by the announcement that WXXA-TV in Albany, New York would be sold to Shield Media, LLC, who would then enter into joint sales and shared services agreements with Young Broadcasting LLC's WTEN. Four other Newport stations were not part of either of the July 2012 deals, with the company continuing to pursue buyers for those stations; Nexstar would announce its acquisition of two of those stations, KGET-TV in Bakersfield, California and KGPE in Fresno, on November 5. On October 23, the FCC granted approval to the sale of the Jacksonville and Tulsa stations to Cox, plus the Albany station to Shield Media. This was followed the next day by the FCC approval of the July sale of the stations to Nexstar except for the two in Little Rock being sold to Mission Broadcasting, which were later approved on December 10. On November 19, the FCC granted approvals of the remaining stations from the July deal to Sinclair. On November 26, Newport announced that KMTR is being sold to Fisher Communications. Because Fisher already owns KVAL-TV, Fisher will assign the rights to acquire the FCC license to Roberts Media, LLC (a company wholly unrelated to the bankrupt Roberts Broadcasting), which Fisher will then enter into a Joint Sales and Shared Services Agreement with KVAL. Nineteen of the stations involved in the July sale was consummated on December 3, 2012. On the same day, Sinclair announced that they would acquire non-license assets of WHAM-TV, which the license will be transferred to Deerfield Media. On January 23, 2013, the FCC granted approvals of the Newport California stations to Nexstar; and on January 30, the FCC granted approval to the WHAM transaction to Sinclair. On April 24, 2013, the FCC granted its approval on Newport's final station, KMTR to Roberts Media. This was after an announcement that Fisher is being sold by Sinclair for $373 million, two weeks prior.