Cordillera Looking To Exit The TV Station Business

Cox Media Group is not the only privately owned broadcast company in the station trading marketplace.

So is Cordillera Communications, according to two industry sources.

Cordillera Communications President Terry Hurley

The St. Paul, Minn.-based broadcasting arm of the Charleston, S.C.-based Evening Post Industries has hired Methuselah Advisors of New York City to sell its portfolio of 11 stations in 11 small markets, the sources say.

Executives of Cordillera and Methuselah could not be reached for comment.

Cox Media Group, a unit of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, announced last week that it wanted sell or find a partner for its 14 stations in 10 markets, saying, in essence, that the group was too small to compete effectively anymore.

“Our analysis shows that scale is critical to be successful,” said CMG President Kim Guthrie in a memo to CMG employees.

Although Cordillera operates nearly as many stations as CMG, it is a much smaller company.

CMG has stations in two top-10 markets (Boston and Atlanta) and all of its stations are in markets larger than the largest of the Cordillera markets (Lexington, Ky., DMA 63).

Cox ranks No. 13 in the TVNewsCheck/BIA Top 30 Stations Groups with 2017 ad revenue of $493 million; Cordillera ranked No. 18 with ad revenue of $129 million.

Cordillera parent Evening Post Industries also publishes small market newspapers and has interests in heath care, marketing services and real estate.

The Cordillera Group:

WLEX Lexington, Ky. (DMA 63, NBC)

KVOA Tucson, Ariz. (DMA 65, NBC)

KOAA Pueblo-Colorado Springs (DMA 87, NBC)

KATC Lafayette, La. (DMA 121, ABC)

KSBY San Luis Obispo, Calif. (DMA 123, NBC)

KRIS-KZTV* Corpus Christi, Texas (DMA 128, NBC-CBS)

KPAX Missoula, Mont. (DMA 164, CBS)

KTVQ Billings, Mont. (DMA 167, CBS)

KXLF Butte, Mont. (DMA 185, CBS)

KRTV Great Falls, Mont. (DMA 193, CBS)

KTVH Helena, Montana (DMA 205, NBC)

*SagamoreHill Broadcasting owns KZTV, but KRIS operates it under a shared services agreement.