Trustee Lee W. Shubert filed in early February to sell a pair of stations that were part of the ill-fated attempt of radio-oriented Multicultural Broadcasting to take its business model to television. Now broker Kalil & Co. says the deal for a station in San Francisco and another in Boston has been concluded.
The stations include KCNS-TV Channel 39 licensed to San Francisco, and WMFP-TV Channel 18, licensed to Lawrence MA. According to Kalil, both stations are currently independent.
They were two of a group of five television stations Multicultural bought from E.W. Scripps in 2006 for $170M – a move and more particularly a price tag that were as poorly timed as one could hope for, occurring at the peak of station pricing and just before the economy in general and the advertising business in particular went into free fall.
The buyer is NRJ TV, a new entrant into the business headed by Ted Bartley.
KCNS went for $15M cash, and WMFP went for $5M cash, bringing the total value of the deal to $20M.
