Gray Completes Its Telemundo/Atlanta Buy

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Until its merger with Meredith Corporation, Atlanta-headquartered Gray Television didn’t own a broadcast TV station in its home market.


As of April 1, it now owns three over-the-air broadcast TV stations in The A.

Gray has closed on its acquisition of WKTB-CD, which brands itself as Telemundo Atlanta and features Korean-language programming on its digital multicast channels.

The transaction is valued at $30 million, and includes sister company Surge Digital Media, described by Gray as “a full-service, boutique digital agency” focused on multicultural, multilingual marketing and video production.

WKTB is a low-powered television station using UHF digital channel 23 and a PSIP of channel 47 from a transmitter to the northeast of central Atlanta, near Norcross. Nielsen ranks Atlanta as the No. 23 U.S. Hispanic market.

Co-owned by Susan Sim Oh and Coline Sim, Capital launched Atlanta’s Telemundo affiliate in 2009. Under their ownership, Telemundo Atlanta offers local news at 5:30pm, 6pm and 11pm.

Surge was launched three years ago. Since then, it has been lauded for its PPC/Paid Search offerings by the Atlanta Marketers Association. In particular, Surge developed a paid search campaign optimized for native language searches that reached bilingual audiences for an institution’s ESL program.

Concurrent with the closing, Sim Oh is now Gray’s VP of Strategy and Operations for its growing Telemundo Station Group. In this new role, she will guide strategy, multiplatform operations and expansion across the nation for the group, presently found in 12 of Gray’s markets. Seven of these markets are in Texas.

Oh report directly to Gray President and Co-CEO Pat LaPlatney.

Sim now holds the title of Director of Telemundo Atlanta Operations, through which he will
continue to oversee the operations of WKTB in conjunction with the station’s VP/GM, Maria Bastidas.