Buyer emerges for a second Tupelo station

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SoldWeeks after the sale of WTVA-TV to Bob Prather’s Heartland Communications was announced, another deal has been struck, this time for WTVA’s former LMA partner WLOV-TV.


According to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, WLOV is being sold by Tupelo Broadcasting Inc. to Coastal Television Broadcasting Co.

Terms of the deal were not released. As a point of reference, the WTVA deal was valued at $18.7M.

WLOV is the local Fox affiliate.

The buyer and seller of WTVA, which carries both NBC and ABC via the magic of digital multicasting, were advised by the FCC that continuing its relationship with WLOV was not likely to fly. Time was said to have been granted to make other arrangement for the station, according to RBR-TVBR’s earlier report on the WTVA sale. Apparently not much time was needed.

For Coastal, the deal marks entry into its second market. It has a Fox affiliate serving Anchorage AK, and provides services for numerous other stations in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.

In a release, Coastal President/CEO Bill Fielder stated, “Coastal has a high level of commitment to the viewers and communities it serves and plans a seamless continuation of quality news, entertainment, and community service.”

RBR-TVBR observation: It’s going to be hard to report a television deal these days without taking a look at the FCC’s spectrum auction value projections.
In the case of Nielsen DMA #133 133 Columbus-Tupelo-West Point MS, we are not talking about a hot market. In fact, the maximum anticipated value is considerably less than the price being paid for WTVA.

The maximum anticipated value of an in-market full power television station is $13M, and the median value is just a bit less at $11M. Class As are anticipated to be worth $4M in either case.