Saranac Lake NY will be the hometown of a new television station, and Twin Valley Television will be the company that will be there for its debut. The town is southwest of the Burlington VT-Plattsburgh NY market way upstate in New York. The buyer, headed by Jeff Loper and Harrison Uhl, will pay $1.001M for the station, which it is getting from Channel 61 Associates. $401K will be paid at closing, and each of the seller’s principals, Floyd Cox Jr. and Donald J. McHone, will receive a $300K promissory note. Both sellers stand to make an additional $100K in the event of a successful and profitable resale of the station. This will set up a de facto cross-ownership pairing. Loper’s Convergence Entertainment & Communications LLC has an LMA under which it operates another Saranac Lake facility, WDYC-FM.
RBR/TVBR observation: We’re seeing lots and lots of CP sales. The FCC has held a number of auctions in recent years. We don’t know if a lot of new entrants are wary of actually running a new broadcast enterprise in this economy, or if they simply failed to come up with the last round of financing to actually get their station built. But it’s definitely a trend.
This deal also underscores another truth of a stagnant economy. Deals can still get done even with the financial community bunkered out of sight, if you’re willing to use seller paper.
