Super Bowl Update

Right This Minute, the video joint venture show produced by Cox Media, Raycom and Scripps, will begin its second season on Sept. 10 with a handful of new stations added to those which carried it last year.

Six of the seven new stations carrying the program are Scripps-owned stations, including WRTV 6 in Indianapolis and the other stations the company purchased from McGraw-Hill last year.

The program airs locally each weekday on 14Xtra (WFIE 14.2 / 5 and 8 p.m.), The Heartland's CW (KFVS 12.2, WQWQ 9 and WQTV 24 / 4 and 4:30 p.m.) and This TV Louisville (WAVE 3.2 / 3 and 3:30 a.m.).

“We’re still endeavoring to sell the show beyond our partner markets,” says Phil Alvidrez, general manager of MagicDust Television, which partners with Cox, Raycom and Scripps to produce RTM. “But Scripps is totally on board. We are in all their markets. And we’re in half of the Raycom and Cox markets.”

In its original form, RTM was a one-hour program in which they showed clips and then talked about them into two half-hours where they track down videos before they go viral, like a recent clip of a woman in her military uniform breastfeeding her baby.

“You see a pop in the ratings with a great video that people haven’t seen in a lot of places,” says Lisa Hudson, who is RTM’s co-executive producer with Dennis O’Neill. “The website gets a lot more traffic and our name gets out there. People talk about us more.”

The show is moving from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism to a bigger production facility with a more intimate set. Instead of looking like a newsroom as before, the set now looks like a coffee shop, where the hosts sit on barstools around a tall table while watching videos on a computer.

On Thursday, Cox Media Group was one of three companies (the other two being Nexstar and Sinclair) to buy a group of Newport Television's stations.  Today, the company announced that it's selling several of its existing stations, both of the TV and radio variety.

Among the stations the company plans to sell are its four FMs in the Louisville market, all of which are rated in the city's top 10:

The company will also sell off additional radio properties in Birmingham, Ala.; Greenville, S.C.; Hawaii; Richmond, Va.; and Southern Connecticut, as well as TV stations in four markets: El Paso, Texas; Johnstown, Pa.; Reno, Nev.; and Steubenville, Ohio.

Newport Television announced late this morning, as expected, that it has reached three agreements to sell 22 of its stations to Nexstar Broadcasting, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Cox Media Group.

As The Wall Street Journal previously reported, Newport's owner, Providence Equity Partners, will get $1 billion for the sale.

Nexstar, which owns WEHT Local in Evansville and WTWO in Terre Haute and operates Local 7 WTVW and WAWV-ABC for Mission Broadcasting, will spend $285.5 million to acquire 12 of the company's stations in Binghamton, Elmira and Watertown, N.Y.; Jackson and Memphis, Tenn.; and Salt Lake City, Utah.  Mission will acquire and Nexstar will run the Newport stations in Little Rock, Ark.

In addition to the stations, Nexstar is also getting Newport's Inergize Digital operation, which produces websites and mobile apps for Newport's stations and others.

With the purchase of the new stations, Nexstar will own and/or operate 67 stations in 40 markets, and the company's chairman, president and CEO, Perry Sook, is happy to have the new stations on board. “The Newport stations represent an ideal complement to our existing station portfolio in terms of geographic fit, market size and duopoly presence," Sook said in a statement. "Under Nexstar’s ownership, the stations’ financial results will benefit from additional retransmission revenues as well as synergistic operating improvements.  We intend to implement our proven strategy of focusing on local programming and effective online marketing solutions across the twelve Newport stations being acquired.  We will also marry best of breed e-Media practices from our existing operations with those of Inergize Digital to deliver fully-integrated digital management solutions to both our stations and our station clients to generate revenue both on-air, online and on mobile devices.”

Sinclair, the owner of KBSI-Fox 23 in Cape Girardeau and operator of WDKA-My49 in Paducah, is getting six stations in Cincinnati, Ohio; Harrisburg, Pa.; San Antonio, Tex.; and Wichita, Kan.  The company will also assume the operations of additional Harrisburg and Wichita stations which Newport currently runs through shared services agreements.

While Sinclair is getting half as many stations as Nexstar, it's paying more:  $412.5 million, to be exact.

"In the past year, we have announced the acquisition of 23 television stations, representing the addition of almost $1 billion in assets," commented David Smith, president and CEO of Sinclair. "The Newport stations acquisition is consistent with our focus of adding "big four" affiliates in mid-sized markets and strengthening our in-market positions. We are excited to add the stations to our portfolio and look forward to welcoming the Newport employees to the Sinclair family."

As part of the deal, Sinclair will spin off two stations it already owns in San Antonio and Cincinnati to Deerfield Media, but it will continue to operate those stations.  It will also assign Deerfield the right to purchase two other stations that Sinclair currently manages.

Cox, as was announced yesterday, will get the smallest number of stations.  It has agreed to acquire Newport's stations in Jacksonville, Fla. and Tulsa, Okla.  The company owns two stations in each of those cities.

"These divestitures are the result of a thoughtful strategic review process conducted by the board to maximize value at Newport, and we believe these high quality stations will have a bright future with their new owners," said Sandy DiPasquale, president and CEO of Newport Television. "Nexstar, Sinclair, and Cox are well-suited to foster continued success at each of these stations."

The sales of all of the stations are expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year pending FCC and other regulatory approvals.

It looks like Nexstar Broadcasting, which owns and/or operates several Indiana stations (including WEHT Local, Local 7 WTVW in the Evansville market and WTWO-NBC 2 and WAWV-ABC in Terre Haute), and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns KBSI-Fox 23 in Cape Girardeau and operates Paducah's WDKA-My49, are in a buying mood again, along with Cox Media.

Providence Equity Partners, the parent company of Newport Television, is preparing to sell 24 of its 29 TV stations to Nexstar, Sinclair and Cox, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. It's not immediately clear which of the 24 stations each company will end up with, although it's being reported that Nexstar will end up with most of them, with Sinclair taking the next-largest number of stations, and Cox taking the rest.

It's not known which 24 of Newport's stations are being sold.  The company has stations in cities such as Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, San Antonio, Memphis, Tulsa and Little Rock, just to name a few.

The five stations Newport will still own once these stations are sold are also said to be up for grabs, and Newport says it's talking to "interested parties" about those.  But, as with the larger deal, we don't yet know which stations are being discussed.

The deal is expected to be finalized and officially announced as early as this week, so stay with JDTVB for more details as they become available.

• TVNewsCheck - "WSJ: Newport Goes To Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair"
• Broadcasting & Cable - "WSJ: Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair Keen on Newport Stations"