Sinclair Buying WHAM Rochester for $54M

Sinclair Broadcast Group said today it closed last Friday on the acquisition of eight stations, including six from Newport Television, and has agreed to buy another from Newport, ABC affiliate WHAM Rochester, N.Y.

The six Newport stations for which it agreed to pay $412.5 million last summer:

• Cincinnati (DMA 35) — WKRC (CBS)
• San Antonio, Texas (DMA 36) — WOAI (NBC)
• Harrisburg-Lancaster (DMA 41) — WHP (CBS)
• Mobile, Ala.-Pensacola, Fla. (DMA 60) — WPMI (NBC) and WJTC (Ind.)
• Wichita, Kan. (DMA 67) — KSAS (Fox)

Included in the deal were Newport’s rights to operate third-party duopoly stations in Harrisburg (CW affiliate WLYH), and Wichita (MNT affiliate KMTW). Those rights include options to buy the stations.

The other two acquisition closings involved WTTA Tampa, Fla. (MNT), which it bought from Bay Television: and KBTV Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas (Fox), which it bought from Nexstar Broadcasting.

Sinclair had been operating WTTA under a local marketing agreement.

Sinclair said it also closed on the sale of the license assets of five stations: KMYS San Antonio, Texas (CW); WSTR Cincinnati (MNT); WPMI-WJTC Mobile-Pensacola and KBTV Beaumont. The buyer is each case was Deerfield Media, a Sinclair duopoly partner.

Sinclair will provide sales and other non-programming services to each of these five stations pursuant to shared services and joint sales agreements with Deerfield.

Providence Equity Partners, the private equity firm that owns Newport Television, announced last July that it was breaking up the group, selling  12 stations to Nexstar, four to Cox Media Group and six to Sinclair.

At that time, Providence still had five stations left, including WHAM. Since then, it has slowly been selling them off. Sinclair said that it would pay $54 million for the non-license assets of the station and for an option on the license assets.