NEW YORK — For 22 years, Soohyung Kim has been investing in “special situations strategies.” This experience saw Soo serve as co-founder of Cyrus Capital Partners in the mid-2000s, following a six-year run as the co-founder of the fixed income business at Och-Ziff Capital Management.
Today, this Princeton University graduate serves as the founding partner of Standard General, and is the 12-year-old firm’s Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer.
Thanks to a transaction announced July 1, Soo is also now the Chairman of a newly formed entity that sees Standard use some of its $1.5 billion in available investment dollars by teaming up with Emmis Communications and his long-time friend, Jeff Smulyan.
Standard General is a New York-based investment firm that manages event-driven opportunity funds.
That’s verbatim language taken from the firm’s website.
It is the following statement that perhaps defines just where Emmis, founded by Smulyan in 1980, is heading.
We focus on companies with complex capital structures that are undergoing dramatic change or are faced with material events.
“Dramatic change” could be the best descriptor for where Emmis is heading, and how Soo is playing a major role in this transformation.
As RBR+TVBR reported Monday morning (7/1), Kim is the chief executive of Mediaco Holding, a new public company that will likely trade on Nasdaq. A partnership with Emmis, newly formed Mediaco will see Standard General take 76% ownership of the newly created company.
Pending FCC approval, Mediaco’s first two assets are none other than nation’s biggest radio stations superserving African Americans — WBLS-FM and WQHT-FM “Hot 97” in New York.
While Emmis will continue as a Indianapolis-centric media company comprised of Indianapolis Monthly and six stations (including for-sale WLIB-AM in New York and ESPN Radio-operated LMA partner WEPN-FM in New York), Mediaco will pair Smulyan and Soo in a new opportunity that was created by the Korean American investment veteran.
Soo is no stranger to broadcast media.
A glance at Standard General’s leadership team shows that Gail Steiner is a partner, chief compliance officer and the General Counsel.
Steiner served in a similar role at Young Broadcasting before joining Standard General in 2014.
Soo replaced Vincent Young as the head of Young in March 2011, shepherding the owner of such stations as KRON-4 in San Francisco out of bankruptcy.
As RBR+TVBR reported in August 2012, a conversion of warrants to shares placed Young Broadcasting in the hands of Standard General.
Then came an all-stock deal finalized in June 2013 that would see Young merge with Media General. Subsequently, in October 2014 Media General and LIN Media saw their merger plans get regulatory approval, awarding Soo a seat on the Media General board.
By early 2016, Media General’s ownership of KRON and the former Young stations would soon be coming to an end: Nexstar Media Group was buying Media General, with closing coming a full year later, in January 2017.
Soo was far from done.
With a big payday for him and interest in media ownership still in mind, he turned to an old colleague who survived the Young years.
For many years, Deborah McDermott was associated with the ABC affiliate serving Nashville, today owned by Nexstar. As GM of WKRN-2 under Young Broadcasting, McDermott would rise to President in 2004 and lead Young through its 2009 voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. By January 2013, she had risen to CEO.
McDermott then attracted attention for the May 2019 acquisition of two TV stations in Providence, R.I., and Lincoln, Neb., by Standard Media Group.
Now, so is Soo. While the Form 314 filings for the sale of WLNE-6 in Providence, R.I., and KLKN-8 in Lincoln, Neb., from Citadel Communications LLC reflected Standard as McDermott-led, it is Soohyung Kim who ultimately controls these stations.
While McDermott and Standard Media will be wholly separate from Mediaco, the two transactions — two months apart — show that Soo believes in broadcast media’s power in a universe where digital media is grabbing more and more consumer attention, and time, as seen in just-released Nielsen data.
Why now for Soo?
In an exclusive interview with RBR+TVBR, Emmis Chairman/CEO and newly named Mediaco CEO Jeff Smulyan explains, “I’ve known Soo for a while, and he wanted to have a company with two classes of stock.”
This, Smulyan says, gives him this opportunity. At the same time, Emmis will be a 24% minority shareholder — slightly different than its soon-to-end majority partnership with Sinclair Telecable for ownership of a group of radio stations in Austin, Tex.
That said, Emmis will be paid to manage WBLS and Hot 97.
“He wants to make this a major company,” Smulyan says of Soo’s desires for Mediaco, adding that he approached Smulyan about an opportunity together. “He just needed to be in an area where he felt we need to grow returns on the business. We’re getting a lot of cash, and [Soo is getting] a launching pad.”
While Emmis is getting its cake and eating it, as it will operate WBLS and Hot 97 as it does today, Mediaco is not expected to become a major holder of radio assets. Yes, Smulyan still believes radio is a vibrant medium. But, he notes, “We’d like to tackle some things in media and out of media with a little bit of faster growth.”
Emmis has already been moving in this direction, with dynamic pricing company Digonex positioned to be a major national revenue source for a much smaller and Indiana-centric media company. WLIB-AM remains for sale; Smulyan noted that one or two interested buyers remain in talks with Emmis and that Soo was not involved in any possible purchase of the station. The ESPN Radio LMA with WEPN-FM remains ongoing and is not expected to change prior to its contractual end.
But, Emmis on June 20 raised eyebrows as it announced it has invested in Sound That BRANDS, a Los Angeles-based podcasting studio launched by former programmer and consultant Dave Beasing. The company specializes in branded audio content for national advertisers.
The Emmis CEO said he’s been monitoring the early stages of global brands telling audio stories through branded podcasts that dramatically enhances loyalty and preference.
Mediaco could take a similar approach to building assets, while Emmis and the McDermott-led Standard Media Group do their respective thing.
This could result in an accurate 2013 prediction that Soo is among the next generation of top talent in the hedge fund universe.
And, it could lead to a reworking of a 2014 headline used by TVNewscheck to describe Soo:
The Most Important, Least Known Man In TV
Starting today, Soo may just be the most important, least known man in broadcast media.
