Vice Media Group, popular for websites such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday to engineer its sale to a group of lenders, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures. Vice said that the lender consortium, which includes Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital, will provide about $225 million in the form of a credit bid for substantially all of the company’s assets and also assume significant liabilities at closing.
The move came after it missed a $140 million interest payment last month. Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL. The company said in a release Tuesday night that it expects to continue to operate during the bankruptcy process and that coverage of games should not be affected.
The association says the pandemic-related show cancellations are behind the need to reorganize. It says it plans to go ahead with its two events planned for next year in the Bahamas and Hungary.
MobiTV, a key video technology vendor to T-Mobile, Cable One and myriad small cable companies, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to FTI Consulting, a firm brought on by the Emeryville, Calif. company to oversee the restructuring process, MobiTV has obtained $15.5 million in debtor-in-possession financing to keep the lights on, the employees paid and its cloud-based video systems up and running.
The owner of Fox affiliates KLJB Davenport, Iowa; KPEJ Odessa, Texas; and KMSS Shreveport, La., earlier this year sued Nexstar over SSA deals.
RHI Entertainment Inc. announced Tuesday that its pre-packaged reorganization plan — which was designed to reduce the company’s debt by more than $400 million — had won the approval of a bankruptcy judge in New York. RHI also said the company soon would be emerging from the Chapter 11 proceedings it initiated in December.
Exclusives
A group of lenders to bankrupt Tribune Co. withdrew its reorganization plan for the media company, leaving creditors with three other options when they begin voting on how to end the two-year-old Chapter 11 case.
In a move that underscores the dramatically changing of tastes of television viewers and the overleveraged finances of some media companies, the once-vibrant Robert Halmi Inc. production company has filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 reorganization in New York Bankruptcy Court.
Tribune Co creditors asked a Delaware judgeon Friday to let them try to recover millions of dollars awarded to insiders in the year prior to the media company’s bankruptcy, saying they can do a better job than Tribune can.
