The deal in the Burlington VT-Plattsburgh NY DMA sending a Fox/CW affiliate to Nexstar Broadcasting Group and an ABC affiliate to partner licensee Mission Broadcasting has made it to the finish line.
Filed with the FCC in November of last year, the deal sends WFFF-TV to Nexstar and WVNY-TV to Mission for a combined $16.9M. Mission will own the legal assets of WVNY and will be party to an SSA/JSA under which Nexstar provides various sales, administrative and other services. The JSA will send 70% of all advertising revenue to Mission, and the SSA directs Mission to pay a base service fee of $20K monthly to Nexstar.
The seller was Smith Media for WFFF, and Smith’s partner company, Lambert Broadcasting of Burlington, for WVNY.
Commented Nexstar’s Perry A. Sook, “This transaction is consistent with our acquisition criteria as it further diversifies our operations, expands our scale, creates another new duopoly market and is financially accretive. Since mid-2012, Nexstar has expanded to 72 from 55 the number of television stations that it owns, operates or provides services to and in doing so, we’ve grown our duopoly markets to 26 from 20. The eighteen recently acquired stations will be additive to our operating results throughout 2013 and we continue to evaluate additional station acquisition opportunities that will allow the Company to leverage its intellectual capital and operating management disciplines.”
