Tribute Media sale Round Two

[CAwasinNJ]

A new deal has been made for what to do with the mostly TV assets of Tribune Media. The winner this time is Nexstar, owner of ABC4 and CW30 here.

www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/182161/nexstar-wins-bidding-for-tribune-media

Tribune owns Fox13. I'm no lawyer, but someone will probably need to be spun off due to ownership caps. I haven't seen anything about who that might be or who the buyer might be. If the regulators would allow Nexstar to keep both ABC4 and Fox13 and spin off CW30, that could be very interesting. I'm not so sure the regulators would like the same company to own two of the big four network affiliates. The uncertainty for anyone at 13 and 30 can't be fun. I'm pretty sure those at 4 are pretty safe though.

[levoix]

Dec 5, 2018 0:07:38 GMT -6 CAwasinNJ said:

I'm not so sure the regulators would like the same company to own two of the big four network affiliates. The uncertainty for anyone at 13 and 30 can't be fun. I'm pretty sure those at 4 are pretty safe though.

Duopolies are common these days- like "Hawaii News Now" with Honolulu's NBC and CBS affiliates combined, and even NBC/Telemundo stations sharing ownership in markets like L.A. I'm interested to see if Nexstar would sell KTVX, or scrap the news department and use KSTU's talent and branding on that station.

[CAwasinNJ]

Interesting point. I'm interested in why you would value KSTU over KTVX though.

[levoix]

I'm not sure what the ratings have been since Nexstar acquired the station, but with all the branding changes and the revolving door with talent, it tells me they haven't found something that works yet.