Cox Media Group to Sell Television Stations in Twelve Markets to Imagicomm Communications

[Rusty Muck 4374]

18 minutes ago, KentBrockman said:

Do you think Lincoln Financial Media, General Electric, and other diversified companies of the past knew how to run terrestrial TV stations? No. They put people in charge who knew what they were doing.

LMAO GE freaking ESTABLISHED RCA. They launched KOA-TV and WRGB back in the 1940s. They were heritage broadcasters and knew the industry.

 

18 minutes ago, KentBrockman said:

For the record, everyone here was skeptical when Standard General came on the scene until they heard Deb McDermott from Media General was going to be running it. Also, don't forget about the former Heartland Media (before Byron Allen gobbled it up) run by that former Gray CEO.

 

An OFFSHOOT company of INSP may be buying the stations, but who they put in power and the experience they have with local TV is what matters.

Uh huh. Deb McDermott and Soo Kim took MediaGeneral on a massive buying spree, tried to merge it into Meredith of all things, then offloaded it all to Nexstar. She’s churn-and-burn garbage and the worst of the lot.

 

Let’s be clear here. INSP is buying the stations via a holding company. This is again some Grade A Pollyanna stuff assuming they’ll be Just Another Broadcaster or That We Should Not Be Skeptical when, as @Weeters stated, Occam’s Razor needs to be invoked.

[sanewsguy 511]

16 minutes ago, Myron Falwell said:

LMAO GE freaking ESTABLISHED RCA. They launched KOA-TV and WRGB back in the 1940s. They were heritage broadcasters and knew the industry.

 

Uh huh. Deb McDermott and Soo Kim took MediaGeneral on a massive buying spree, tried to merge it into Meredith of all things, then offloaded it all to Nexstar. She’s churn-and-burn garbage and the worst of the lot.

 

Let’s be clear here. INSP is buying the stations via a holding company. This is again some Grade A Pollyanna stuff assuming they’ll be Just Another Broadcaster or That We Should Not Be Skeptical when, as @Weeters stated, Occam’s Razor needs to be invoked.

you are WAY too invested in this at this point

[Rusty Muck 4374]

6 minutes ago, sanewsguy said:

you are WAY too invested in this at this point

Correcting a obvious historical inaccuracy and stating the plain truth against all this Pollyanna garbage is “WAY too invested”. Uh huh.

 

bradybunchsurejan.gif

[sanewsguy 511]

1 minute ago, Myron Falwell said:

Correcting a obvious historical inaccuracy and stating the plain truth is “WAY too invested”. Uh huh.

 

bradybunchsurejan.gif

Not that. The fact you have been on here all day doubling down on your stance. I think we all get where you stand.

[Rusty Muck 4374]

6 minutes ago, sanewsguy said:

Not that. The fact you have been on here all day doubling down on your stance. I think we all get where you stand.

And with all due respect, I know your stance, too. I vehemently disagree with all of it.

[TVIntheDesert 183]

11 hours ago, Weeters said:

I'm inclined to agree with @Myron Falwell.

 

INSP has no clue how to run a terrestrial television station. It's not part of their current business model. They exist to broadcast a single "socially conservative" cable channel that's chock full of cheap westerns and the leftovers of the old PTL Satellite Network. What on EARTH would these people want with network affiliates? Occam's Razor leads us to the simplest answer: They don't, they want the spectrum.

 

They're going to get all their affiliations yanked the moment they tell the networks that they refuse to broadcast half of their programming over "moral objections" over LGBTQ matters or something. Most of their markets have "friendly" companies already there. Gray/Nexstar/Sinclair/etc will happily gobble up those affiliations, and the networks will defend it if the FCC starts making a deal about them having two or all three of the "Big Three" on one channel. "We had nowhere else to go!"

 

The business model of INSP is threatened by cord cutters, what better way to turn that around than by buying up a bunch of full power, OTA, small-market network affiliates, gutting them, and setting them up to pass through the cable channel ION-style?

 

The BEST case scenario with these stations is they sell off the IP to another existing group.

 

INSP (and Weigel, which has been on an OTA buying spree for their diginets) know that linear TV skews toward an older audience. This might just be a start of a new trend of seeing these kinds of companies buy traditional affiliated TV outlets and turning them into something radically different, not unlike Educational Media Foundation has been doing in radio. We'll know once this reaches markets larger than Tulsa or Memphis. I'm quite surprised they didn't add Jacksonville to the sale, given how those stations tend to underperform.

[sanewsguy 511]

22 minutes ago, Myron Falwell said:

And with all due respect, I know your stance, too. I vehemently disagree with all of it.

I know you do. You’ve made that quite clear.

[Rusty Muck 4374]

4 minutes ago, sanewsguy said:

I know you do. You’ve made that quite clear.

And you’ve made it known you’re an absolutely pompous jerk and insufferable, I could say what I really want to but why bother feeding the troll not named Bill Tullis any further?

[carolinanews4 376]

Will a moderator please just shut down this thread. The forum standards of quality state users are to be held to a "work safe" standard, yet one poster is cussing in their responses. And now that same poster has reduced this conversation to name calling. It is pretty sad that people can't make their point without personally attacking someone who disagrees with them. This same thing happened last month on the Standard General / Tegna thread.

[Big Rollo Smokes 260]

1 hour ago, Myron Falwell said:

LMAO GE freaking ESTABLISHED RCA. They launched KOA-TV and WRGB back in the 1940s. They were heritage broadcasters and knew the industry. 

WRGB was the only TV station GE birthed. KOA-TV and it's radio counterparts were acquired in 1968, IIRC.

[Adam MadMan 285]

1 hour ago, carolinanews4 said:

Will a moderator please just shut down this thread. The forum standards of quality state users are to be held to a "work safe" standard, yet one poster is cussing in their responses. And now that same poster has reduced this conversation to name calling. It is pretty sad that people can't make their point without personally attacking someone who disagrees with them. This same thing happened last month on the Standard General / Tegna thread.

IKR? Kinda hard to make a civil conversation when people are going "blah blah stay positive" "blah blah you're naive" "blah blah give them a chance" "blah blah they don't deserve it" "blah blah calm down" "blah blah shut up you bleepity bleep nitwit".

 

This is what happens when religion and/or politics collide with business. Things get UGLY.

[GoldenShine9 1513]

We don't know how this will play out in the end.

[24994J 5577]

I'd like to think my fellow moderators would agree that there could certainly stand to be a cool-down period, here. I feel like most points of view have been voiced in this last very busy day, so we'd only be repeating ourselves. Let's put this thread on hold, for the time being, and when there are any new developments, message me or any other mod, and we'll reopen discussion.

 

Cool? Cool.

[Samantha 2895]

I am adding a link to one of the applications to this thread as they have hit the FCC.

 

The total purchase price is $488 million plus or minus working capital.

 

https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/views/public/assignmentDraftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076ff37fc69b3c017fe1ae7c523465&id=25076ff37fc69b3c017fe1ae7c523465&goBack=N

[CircleSeven 1955]

The FCC has greenlighted the Cox/Imagicomm transaction today.

 

[nycnewsjunkie 1441]

The deal has closed.

[TheSpeedKing 268]

Now leaving Cox with fewer stations, I guess this will give them additional leverage against the broadcasters which have filed to deny.

[tyrannical bastard 3951]

As a result of this deal, the ENTIRE former Northwest portfolio as well as hot potato WHBQ in Memphis have been sold off.  

 

CoxPollo basically bought Northwest to get a stronger retransmission deal, and the way that they're trying to get Tegna with Standard General is to expand this so-called retransmission superpower, correct?

 

And will Imagiconn have this same superpower to unleash upon the pay TV companies upon renewal time?