Broadcasting moves away from Wall Street

BROADCASTING MOVES AWAY FROM WALL STREET
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Paige Albiniak]
Since November, four of the country’s biggest station groups -- Ion, Univision, Tribune Co. and Clear Channel -- have announced plans to be acquired by private-equity firms. In February, CBS sold seven of its stations to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $185 million. And two more groups that aren't among Broadcasting & Cable’s Top 25 Station Groups -- The New York Times Co. and Bluestone Television -- are taking shelter under a private-equity umbrella. More than half of the companies on the annual B&C list changed rank. CBS fell to No. 2 (exchanging places with Fox) because of the sale of seven stations. E.W. Scripps dropped from 11th to 16th because it sold off several stations that were part of the Shop at Home network it abandoned. But on next year’s list at least eight stations will be privately held, double this year’s number. “Wall Street has walked away from broadcast investments because they don't see the growth that the industry has had over the past 20-30 years,” says Larry Patrick, president of station brokerage Patrick Communications. “Growth has slowed, but broadcasting is a tremendously high free-cash-flow business. If you are a big hedge fund or a private-equity fund and you have $10 billion-$20 billion, you have to find places to park that. A television company has 35%-40% operating margin. You can't put your money in anything else that gets that kind of return.”
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6433752.html
See also --
* Private-Equity Firms Face Public Future
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Thomas Heath]
The co-founder of the Carlyle Group, the giant District private-equity firm that invests tens of billions of dollars on behalf of pension funds and other investors, said over the weekend that he expects most of the major firms in his industry to become public companies in the next few years. "These guys who built these private-equity firms: You can say many things about them, but one thing you can't say is they're stupid, or they are not an alpha male," said David M. Rubenstein, Carlyle's managing director. "These guys are going to be fairly forthright about getting what they think they earned for building these firms."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/15/AR200704...
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