A deal to buy certain assets of KRNV-TV Reno has closed just about instantaneously because of what Sinclair is not buying – the station’s license. The upshot is that the company will own one station there but will have a hand in the operation of three.
Sinclair paid $26M for the NBC affiliate, which will nevertheless continue to be officially owned by seller Intermountain West.
Normally, any deal for an FCC-licensed facility requires regulatory approval by the Commission, but since the station license is not part of the deal and remains the property of Intermountain, the FCC’s stamp of approval is not required.
Sinclair already owns Fox KRXI-TV in the market, and has an SSA with Deerfield’s MNT KAME.
Sinclair said one result of the deal will be termination of a news-sharing arrangement between KRXI and its San Francisco CA Fox outlet, in favor of a local newscast.
Marci Ryvicker of Wells Fargo gave the deal a thumbs up. She said, “We really like this deal for two reasons: i) it is evidence that SBGI can continue to make accretive acquisitions through station tuck-ins, and ii) the very attractive buyer’s multiple, leading us to believe that deals can continue to be done at highly accretive levels (a positive for NXST and LIN in particular).”
