The purchases of WRBU St. Louis; WZRB Columbia, S.C.; and KTRV Boise, Idaho, expand the group's portfolio to 63 stations in 58 markets, including all of the top 20 and 24 of the top 25. Terms weren’t disclosed.
DMAS 21, 77 & 106)
Ion Buys 3 Stations In Mo., S.C. And Idaho
Ion Media announced this morning the purchase of three TV stations — WRBU St. Louis (DMA 21); WZRB Columbia, S.C. (77); and KTRV Boise, Idaho (106) — in two separate deals.
Terms were not released.
The St. Louis and Columbia stations are held by a trust set up to sell them after they fell into bankruptcy under the ownership of Roberts Broadcasting.
The trust had agreed to sell the stations to Brian Brady’s Northwest Broadcasting in 2015, but that deal never closed and the parties asked the FCC to dismiss their sale application in May.
The seller of the Boise station is Block Communications.
According to an Ion press release, the deals expand Ion’s portfolio to 63 stations in 58 markets, including all of the top 20 and 24 of the top 25.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
“Growing our TV station portfolio will give U.S. households access to much-needed affordable independent entertainment, kids and lifestyle programming,” said CEO Brandon Burgess in a statement. “These three important acquisitions will add five million viewers to our networks’ audience reach.”
Comments (13)
Tom Hardin says:
June 20, 2017 at 10:06 am
As the world consolidates into less and less personal and individuality, the media giants will have more and more influence upon our lives. Sinclair buying Tribune, Comcast buys up cable and NBCUNI, ATT is almost all back together.
Where is Judge Harold Green now that we need him?
Cameron Miller says:
June 20, 2017 at 4:23 pm
Media giants do not affect our lives, and Ion Media isn’t that big of a company, provided their network is mainly reruns and that doesn’t even air in some major markets either.
Kristina Veltri says:
June 20, 2017 at 6:57 pm
This is Ion. The only impact was in Boise, where Block is finally getting out of an area where they got burned by a greedy Fox who took a lowball bid from Journal/KNIN to affiliate with them. KTRV really paid an unneeded price by losing that affiliation unnecessarily.
Cameron Miller says:
June 20, 2017 at 8:11 pm
Fox is NOT greedy, never has, never will be. No corporation nor businessman is greedy in any way. Don’t you ever label said businessmen/corporation as greedy ever again!
Veronica Serrano Padilla says:
June 20, 2017 at 9:01 pm
LMAO!!! “No corporation nor businessman is greedy in any way.” Do you realize the ignorance in this statement?? No, probably not. Likely because the sky is purple in your alternate universe.
Debra Rein says:
June 20, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Hell I love re-runs. Put ION on all stations and let’s watch Archie Bunker together.
Cheryl Thorne says:
June 20, 2017 at 2:35 pm
Somewhere needs a home for pi commercials . Pretty soon this is all you’ll see on daytime tv on all nets
Cameron Miller says:
June 20, 2017 at 4:21 pm
Change “buys” to “to buy” please. Thank you.
Kristina Veltri says:
June 20, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Any news as to what is happening with the Evansville translators of WAZE that were also part of the Roberts Broadcasting fire sale? Or has Ion just given up on doing anything with that mess that was left to them?