Allbritton Communications Company expects the sale of KATV, Channel 7, and six other television stations to be finalized this month.
The proposed sale to the Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. for $985 million was announced last July, but it encountered resistance from federal regulators, Allbritton general counsel Jerald Fritz said Monday.
In order to comply with regulatory rules, Baltimore-based Sinclair entered into an agreement to sell its rights to the WHTM (ABC) station in Harrisburg, Pa., to Media General Inc. after buying it from Allbritton and owning it for a "nanosecond," Fritz said.
Other Allbritton stations involved in the sale include: WJLA in Washington, D.C.; WBMA/WCFT/WJSU, Birmingham, Ala.; KTUL in Tulsa; WSET, Roanoke, Va.; and WCIV, Charleston, S.C. The three Birmingham stations, considered as one, simulcast local and network programming to the combined market, according to Sinclair.
Based in Arlington, Va., family-owned Allbritton will retain Politco, a political news organization, after it sells all of its television stations.
Stations in the two other overlap markets -- Charleston and Birmingham -- are affiliates of MyNetworkTV, which is a minor operation without a news function, and thus don't pose a regulatory challenge, Fritz said.
"Under rules that had existed for over a decade, what Sinclair had proposed was acceptable as filed [last year]," Fritz said.
However, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, wanted to take another look at the rules on someone owning more than one station in the same market.
The Justice Department likewise scrutinized the proposed sale as measured against the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.
Sinclair Chief Financial Officer Chris Ripley said Monday that the company sold a $550 million bond issue last week to enable the transaction, which he said was "done" financially.
The KATV building at Main and Fourth streets in Little Rock has been proposed as part of the campus of the Little Rock Technology Park. The fate of the KATV building soon will most likely be in the hands of Sinclair, Fritz said.
The initial idea is the raze the building, former home of Worthen Bank, though opposition has arisen to that plan. KATV General Manager Mark Rose said he had been conducting a search in various parts of the city to relocate the station, but that the decision most likely would be Sinclair's.
Meantime, the sale should mean nothing for the staff of KATV, Fritz said. Rose agreed, saying that discussions about that with Sinclair have been "benign." Rose said the station typically dominates the 37-county market emanating from Little Rock.
Efforts to talk with Sinclair about the future for the station were unsuccessful.
Rose said he, too, felt that the completion of the sale was "imminent."
Business on 07/15/2014