Marci Ryvicker

“There is no basis” for the story in The Street that says that Fox and Ion are forming a joint venture to own and operate their combined stations, the Wells Fargo analysts says in a note to clients. “This is a complete overreaction based on no underlying research, data or factual information, in our view.”

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker sees station groups’ core advertising, which excludes political, growing 2% next year. In addition, she says broadcast stocks are also likely to get a boost from the FCC’s easing of the media ownership restrictions that will lead to further consolidation of the industry.

The Walls Fargo analyst reaffirms her Outperform rating for the station group’s stock with a target of $85. “We could not be more bullish,” she writes to clients. “In our view, this mgmt. team is doing everything right — in terms of capital allocation, M&A strategy, core operations, you name it.”

After meeting with Scripps’ top manager yesterday, Marci Ryvicker and her team of Wells Fargo analysts sounded all positive notes in a report to clients. “We get the sense that business is trending better than the market would suggest,” they say.

Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker: “Of the three broadcasters most ‘exposed’ to the auction, we view Sinclair Broadcast Group as the healthiest regardless and would view Tribune Co. as having the most potential downside risk to its stock price.”

“[We] do think there is more upside potential to the stocks and multiples; we do think there are more positive than negative revisions to core ad estimates (although we caveat it is still very early); we do expect a change to the 39% cap (and other ownership rules); and we do anticipate the station groups to be included in the streaming packages … eventually,” Marci Ryvicker’s team at Wells Fargo says in a note to investors today.

Wells Fargo analysts Marci Ryvicker and Jennifer Fritzsche address questions as the FCC’s “forward” portion of its incentive auction approaches.

Affiliate-fee renewal conversions have been so challenging for Sumner Redstone’s entertainment giant — including a price cut at AT&T’s DirecTV — that overall affiliate-fee revenue will swing from an expected 2% increase to a 10% decline, Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker, said in an investment note Monday.

It’s in the network affiliates’ interest to nurture some of these new skinny bundles by supplying them with their signals, even if it is on terms dictated by their networks. It’s a hedge against cord cutting and it’s another avenue into the OTT and mobile world where younger audiences await. Here’s the caveat: the affiliates’ revenue from the OTT providers — their end of whatever the networks negotiate — must be comparable to the net retrans they are getting from cable and satellite.

The proposed next-gen TV standard is endorsed by Wells Fargo securities analyst Marci Ryvicker and her S&P Global panelists: Sinclair’s David Amy and Nexstar’s Perry Sook. Said Ryvicker: “For me, I only see it as a good thing. I can’t put a cash flow on it. I can’t put a multiple on it. I just know it’s better than staying at 1.0.”  Amy: “It will forever change the way viewers consume our product.” Sook said he was especially interested in the potential for datacasting.

Wells Fargo Securities says that Scripps, Gray and Tegna have the most to gain in political revenue this year from the expansion of presidential battleground states and the “hot” Senate, House and gubernatorial races.

Shareholders “seem both confused and disappointed,” writes analyst Marci Ryvicker. “According to our conversations, they feel that MEG [Media General] should not be re-entering the publishing space, that the price for [Meredith] is too high, and that the timing is just ‘strange.’ “

With 12 days of LIN and barely a full year of Young numbers included in 4Q and year-end results, Media General’s been tweaking historical numbers in an effort to give analysts an apples-to-apples comparison and enable them to build forecast models. For some analysts, including Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker, the numbers aren’t adding up.

Securities analysts led by Marci Ryvickers tell investors that following a meeting with the FCC, their earlier concerns over what the commission would do about sharing agreements have been allayed, and upgraded TV station group stocks to outperform.

Securities analysts led by Marci Ryvickers signal investors to slow down on stocks of station groups that they cover because of “worsening” regulatory environment.

“Broadcast captures 35% of the audience, gets 7% of programming fees,” Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker told the TVB Forward conference today. Growing retrans consent revenue (it’s expected to total $2.6 billion this year) is one factor driving investor interest in broadcasting, she added, with broadcast TV stocks currently up 74% over what it was at this time last year.

While chatter about possible deals has grown louder, Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker says many are “unlikely to occur in the near to medium term.”

The Wells Fargo Securities analyst says the group’s recent purchases of 29 stations in 19 markets are sound moves. “We like SBGI’s scale, leverage and opportunistic approach to M&A and anticipate there is more to come.”

Wells Fargo Securities media expert Marci Ryvicker says in the wake of the station acquisitions the group has made in the last year, “we think Street estimates are too low on just about every metric.”

Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker says adding in network and national spot, political advertising on total broadcast TV increases to $1.33 billion for the year to date through Sept. 30.

Wells Fargo Securities media expert Marci Ryvicker says she’s bullish on the staying power of broadcast television, which stands apart from other media by offering the local news and programming viewers want. “I don’t think it’s replaceable.”

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker is raising her estimates for political ad spending from $4.9 billion to $5.2 billion. She upped her forecast based on television spending in August, which surged 77% on local TV to more than $171 million, compared to July. Local, network and cable TV are set to bring in $3.37 billion this election, boosting television revenue by more than 23% compared to last year. Local TV, at 54%, has the largest share of the three segments and is estimated to come in at $2.8 billion.

Political pros took a keen interest in July in markets including Zanesville, Ohio; Sioux City and Davenport, Iowa; Charlottesville, Va.; and Las Vegas and Reno, Nev. They saw the biggest increase in political ad spending relative to their market size in the month according to a report from Wells Fargo Securities’ Marci Ryvicker.

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker says yesterday’s denial of an injunction against Barry Diller’s Aereo online TV distribution service “was clearly more negative than we had anticipated.” However, she adds, it doesn’t seem to pose a “real risk to retrans dollars,” but could negatively affect broadcast stocks.

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker says that the new political ad requirements for FCC’s TV stations “will not only create a time-wasting headache for station groups, but we believe it could also result in downward pressure on ad rates in general.”

Don’t tell Wells Fargo Securities’ Marci Ryvicker that Big Media are washed up as infotainment power shifts to tech giants such as Google and Apple. The long-time analyst of broadcasting and pay TV companies says that CBS, News Corp., and Time Warner are likely to outperform the overall market while Disney and Viacom keep pace.

“Of the diversified media companies, CBS has the most TV and radio revenue exposure to the contentious political races of 2012,” says Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker, who expects political advertising to reach $4.9 billion this year.

Belo Corp. last week announced a reworking of its bank credit facility — moving the expiration out a few years and getting greater financial flexibility. Wells Fargo Securities analyst Marci Ryvicker likes the terms and is predicting that Belo will be returning more capital to shareholders.

The $212 million that Scripps agreed to pay McGraw-Hill for its station group justifies higher valuations for other stations groups like Belo and Sinclair, says Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker.

Wells Fargo Securities analyst Marci Ryvicker has officially upgraded the television sector to “overweight” (buy) from “market weight” (neutral). She also upgraded Sinclair Broadcast Group to “outperform” ahead of the company’s 4Q earnings report this morning.

TVNewsCheck picked the brains of some top broadcasters and analysts to see what the year’s important issues will be. For the first time in a long while, the general outlook was optimistic. Getting specific, here are nine things they will be keeping their eyes on: retransmission consent/reverse compensation, the FCC’s spectrum incentive auction, mobile DTV, industry consolidation, Comcast-NBCU deal ripple effects, signs of life in M&A, record off-year for political advertising, evolution of digital subchannels, publicly held station groups to pay dividends and local online and mobile media.