Station Market Still Sizzling

STATION MARKET STILL SIZZLING
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Allison Romano]
Barrington Broadcasting cut a deal last week to buy a dozen affiliates from Raycom Media, doubling the size of Barrington’s group and buoying the prospects for the station market. Barrington, which is backed by former AOL COO Robert Pittman’s private-equity firm Pilot Group, agreed to buy 12 Raycom stations in nine markets for $262 million. The price represents about 11 times cash flow, according to executives familiar with the deal. Raycom is a seller after making a major acquisition of its own. In February, it closed on its $987 million purchase of Liberty Corp.’s station group. Because of some market overlap, the company pledged to sell stations in 12 markets. Barrington President Jim Yager, former head of Benedek Broadcasting, said, “Investors are seeing commercial, over-the-air TV is alive and well and a very viable business.” Station sales perked up last year, with $3.2 billion worth of transactions at an average price of $45.4 million per station, according to new data from Kagan Research. The figures are up from $1.2 billion the year before and $1 billion in 2003. Leading the way were the Raycom-Liberty deal and Emmis Communications’ sales of its stations, which has so far fetched more than $1 billion. Still, sales figures are well below the late 1990s and early 2000s levels, when the economy was robust and several major media companies were in the market for stations.
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