Nexstar, Mission Complete Burlington Buy

Nexstar Broadcasting Group and Mission Broadcasting, Inc. announced Monday that they completed the previously announced acquisition of the assets of WFFF (Fox) and WVNY (ABC) Burlington, Vt. (DMA 97), from Smith Media for $16.9 million. Concurrent with the closing of the station acquisitions, Nexstar and Mission entered into a local services agreement whereby Nexstar is providing sales and other services to WVNY.

Perry A. Sook, Nexstar chairman, president and CEO, commented: “This transaction is consistent with our acquisition criteria as it further diversifies our operations, expands our scale, creates another new duopoly market and is financially accretive. Since mid-2012, Nexstar has expanded to 72 from 55 the number of television stations that it owns, operates or provides services to and in doing so, we’ve grown our duopoly markets to 26 from 20.

“The 18 recently acquired stations will be additive to our operating results throughout 2013 and we continue to evaluate additional station acquisition opportunities that will allow the Company to leverage its intellectual capital and operating management disciplines.”

Waller Capital served as the exclusive financial adviser to Smith Media.