Fox And Nexstar Complete Station Sales

On Monday, Fox Corp. completed the previously announced $350 million purchase of Seattle stations KCPQ (Fox) and KZJO (MNT) as well as Milwaukee station WITI from Nexstar Media Group.

At the same time, Nexstar completed its $45 million purchase from Fox of WJZY (Fox), and WMYT (MNT) in Charlotte, N.C. WJZY will remain a Fox affiliate.

With the transaction, Fox Television Stations expands its market presence to 14 of the top 15 DMAs and adds two markets that overlap with Fox’s National Football League, Major League Baseball and college football broadcast packages.

Nexstar said it intends to use the approximately $240 million of net after tax proceeds from the transactions to reduce borrowings under its credit facilities and for general corporate purposes.

Nexstar President-CEO Perry Sook said: “Since completing the Tribune Media transaction we’ve evaluated opportunities to optimize our portfolio with the goals of positioning us in markets that are complementary to existing operations or markets where we believe we can generate greater upside and potentially freeing up some national cap ownership space.

“The addition of Fox affiliate WJZY and MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYT in Charlotte meet all of this criteria as they are geographically complementary to Nexstar’s already strong mid-Atlantic presence in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia while presenting financial and operating synergies with the company’s station portfolio and digital operations.”