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CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Federal Communications Commission has approved the sale of Tribune Media stations, including WJW Channel 8, a Cleveland Fox subsidiary, to Texas-based Nexstar Media Group. The vote of FCC commissioners, announced Monday, September 16, was raised to 3 votes to 2, unlike parties.
Department of Justice approval, also required, was announced on July 31. On September 4, FCC President Ajit Pai circulated an article approving the agreement for a vote by the other commissioners.
According to the statement released Monday by the FCC, the commission concluded that the deal would bring "several public benefit advantages to viewers of the current Tribune and Nexstar stations." For example, viewers would benefit from access increased their local channels at the Washington DC Press Office In addition, Nexstar has proven that it will invest the savings from the merger into its stations, including through ATSC 3.0, the next-generation television broadcast standard. "
But it is still not absolutely certain that Nexstar will retain Channel 8.
Fox Television, which belonged to Channel 8, did not hide its intention to take over the Cleveland Fox affiliate station. And Nexstar has not hidden its intention to keep Channel 8.
Discussions have been going on between companies for months. Fox lobbied Nexstar to separate from WJW and other stations. And Nexstar has already announced its intention to divest stations in certain markets for approval, but the company did not want Channel 8 to be one of those stations.
More details will be available when Nexstar announces the closing date of the sale, possibly as early as this week.
Channel 8 is one of 42 Tribune Media stations purchased by Nexstar Media Group as part of a transaction valued at $ 6.4 billion. The acquisition announced in early December will make Nexstar the largest owner of television channels in the country.
Tribune has owned Channel 8 since 2013. Nexstar, which has gradually built a media empire by buying small groups of stations, has offered $ 4.1 billion in cash for the purchase of Chicago-based Tribune Media Group stations. The figure of $ 6.4 billion includes the assumption of a Tribune Media debt.
The agreement will bring the total number of Nexstar stations to 216 in 118 markets, representing 39% of US homes with a television. It will be ahead of the Sinclair Broadcast group, based in Maryland, which tried unsuccessfully to obtain government approval for the purchase of Tribune stations. It will also offer Nexstar stations to eight of the ten largest television markets in the country, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
But Fox and Nexstar have been stuck in high-stakes negotiations over some of these stations.
Since Tribune had many Fox affiliates, Nexstar will now have many Fox affiliates, and Fox Television Stations has made it clear that it wants three of these stations in particular: WJW, KCPQ in Seattle and KDVR in Denver ( all cities with NFL). teams, at a time when Fox is putting more and more emphasis on the sport).
It has been widely reported that Fox, seeking to purchase from these stations, has only entered into one-year affiliation agreements with them. Affiliation agreements with local stations usually last five years or more. This meant that, in a game of call-my-bluff, Fox could have threatened to remove the affiliations, suggesting that it would be wiser to sell the stations to Fox.
But Monday morning, Nexstar announced the signing of a new affiliation agreement with Fox Broadcasting covering stations in 31 markets covering 8% of the country. This would indicate that Nexstar and Fox have reached an agreement on the stations desired by the two companies, but it can run several days or even weeks before the announcement of any agreement.
It also means that, whatever happens, Channel 8 will continue to broadcast Fox programs. But will it be from a Fox affiliated station owned by Nexstar or from a station owned and operated by Fox?
Department of Justice approval was conditional on the creation of Nexstar stations in several markets: Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa; Fort Smith, Arkansas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Hartford, Connecticut; Huntsville, Alabama; Indianapolis; Memphis, Tennessee; Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia; and Salt Salt Lake City. Significantly, Cleveland was not on the DOJ list.
Nexstar is attacked at Tribune stations when Sinclair's candidacy failed dramatically. Sinclair announced in May 2017 that she would buy Tribune stations for $ 3.9 billion. Approval of the purchase was expected by February 2018, but the process was blocked at the FCC.
No television channel in the Cleveland market has been bought and sold more than Channel 8, which was signed in December 1949. Storer Broadcasting, owner of the CBS subsidiary since 1954, was acquired by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1985. KKR sold to Gillett Communications in 1987, following the split of SCI Television to resume the stations following Gillett's bankruptcy.
New World Communications bought it in 1993. Fox bought New World and Channel 8 in 1997 and sold the Cleveland station on local television in 2008. This television channel sold it to Tribune in 2013 .
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