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Another Tegna bidder: Trinity Broadcasting, partner


east-tx-tv

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In this episode of As the Tegna Bidding War Turns, Trinity Broadcasting and Najafi, a Phoenix investment firm, are together offering $20/share.  Nothing is said in the article about why TBN's parent is interested, unless they want to flip some of the stations to TBN in a mid-90s style Fox-New World type of deal.

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2020/03/18/texas-broadcaster-teams-up-with-investment-firm-to.html

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...What the...

 

Per the Republic, here's a bit about Najafi:

 

The company's brands range from shampoo Pert Plus and airline catalog SkyMall to DVD-marketer Columbia House. The company also owns various upscale hotels and has a minority stake in the Phoenix Suns.

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"Churches" and private equity......

 

Now I've seen everything......

 

I know Tegna is screwed up, but are they betting on the rapture to save people's souls?  This is an EMF style move that's only recently began to hit the ranks of radio after Cumulus and others wanted some quick cash....

 

Well at least T.D. Jakes could be safe.....

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Given the situation were in, I am not surprised that the majority of the bidders for Tegna are Private Equity Firms, those firms are just stock pilling cash it's mind boggling now how they're able to do that in this period of economic uncertainty that were in right now and I think they're doing this so that way for whoever is closest to winning the bidding war for Tegna will have the cash needed to get the deal sealed and sent to the DOJ/FCC for approval.

 

The fact that traditional media companies (e.g. Scripps, Meredith) haven't joined the fray tells me that the economic uncertainty is keeping those companies away from this bidding war and yesterday's news about Gray leaving the race didn't help those prospects for them.

 

The more I'm analyzing and reading more into this the more it feels like the period from the late 2000s to the early 2010s where we saw several station groups sell to private equity firms and then once the economy turned around was when we saw those same PE-firms that bought TV stations during the recession cashing out and sold the stations, I think going forward it could happen again.

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This would be EXTREMELY bad for broadcasting if it happens. You'll be looking at network affiliations going to .2s in some major cities if this happens.

 

But because it's stock-based, it probably won't happen.

 

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1 minute ago, TSSZNews said:

This would be EXTREMELY bad for broadcasting if it happens. You'll be looking at network affiliations going to .2s in some major cities if this happens.

 

But because it's stock-based, it probably won't happen.

 

That's the biggest drawback to that bid for that joint group if it was all cash like Apollo and Allen this would've worked instead they chosed stock and we all know that's not a good idea at this point in time.

 

Right now at this point I say it's coming down to Apollo and Allen for Tegna with the Najafi/TBN bid likely coming in 3rd due to the stock based bid.

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Although at this point I don't see TBN becoming the primary buyer, it's very possible that TBN could get stations that end up divested.     But anything is possible.

 

I hope that TBN is able to get at least a couple rejected stations from whatever eventual deal is made.  

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13 minutes ago, channel2 said:

What if TEGNA simply refuses to sell?

They can refuse to sell but by doing that they risk being taken over by Soo Kim and given that Tegna's stock has been holding generally in the mid teens a share (in spite of the huge stock market plunge) they're a prime candidate to be taken over by Soo Kim.

 

So right now Tegna has 2 clear choices, they can avoid the takeover by selling to someone like Apollo or Allen or they say no to both of them and then eventually get forced into a takeover.

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3 minutes ago, oknewsguy said:

They can refuse to sell but by doing that they risk being taken over by Soo Kim and given that Tegna's stock has been holding generally in the mid teens a share (in spite of the huge stock market plunge) they're a prime candidate to be taken over by Soo Kim.

 

So right now Tegna has 2 clear choices, they can avoid the takeover by selling to someone like Apollo or Allen or they say no to both of them and then eventually get forced into a takeover.

 

And I think we know Tegna is going to want to go on its own terms--not a takeover.

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6 hours ago, east-tx-tv said:

In this episode of As the Tegna Bidding War Turns, Trinity Broadcasting and Najafi, a Phoenix investment firm, are together offering $20/share.  Nothing is said in the article about why TBN's parent is interested, unless they want to flip some of the stations to TBN in a mid-90s style Fox-New World type of deal.

I swear this has got to be an early-April Fool's joke....

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And TBN is actually headquartered in Southern California; their mailing address (P.O. Box A, Santa Ana, CA 92711) has always been the same since day one, but they do have a major operation in Texas.

 

But TBN taking the Tegna stations?! Which one would be its WGTW (the low-power Philadelphia independent that once upon a time was WKBS)?

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I doubt TBN's goal here is to gain more .1's, but it wouldn't surprise me to see TBN get offered on these stations as a .2-whatever in the unlikely event this actually happens.

 

You want to talk about cap space and shell companies? TBN is already at 35% and directly operates a shell company (Community Educational Television) to get around the cap. I doubt they're going to end up as the "owner", Najafi would simply add the Tegna brand to their, uh, diversified portfolio and TBN would get the rights to a subchannel or two in exchange for financing part of the purchase.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think any equity firms in 2020 would get involved with a scheme to buy up a bunch of decent big 4 TV stations and flip them to what is essentially a religious TV network repeater.

 

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1 hour ago, Weeters said:

I doubt TBN's goal here is to gain more .1's, but it wouldn't surprise me to see TBN get offered on these stations as a .2-whatever in the unlikely event this actually happens.

 

You want to talk about cap space and shell companies? TBN is already at 35% and directly operates a shell company (Community Educational Television) to get around the cap. I doubt they're going to end up as the "owner", Najafi would simply add the Tegna brand to their, uh, diversified portfolio and TBN would get the rights to a subchannel or two in exchange for financing part of the purchase.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think any equity firms in 2020 would get involved with a scheme to buy up a bunch of decent big 4 TV stations and flip them to what is essentially a religious TV network repeater.

 

My thinking here is very simple a sale would most likely be to someone like Apollo (which they clearly seem to have the deepest pockets right now out of the groups that remain in the running)

 

I don't think Najafi stands a chance given what they're offering which is an all-stock deal.

 

Clearly they want to meet the same demise as Gray in my eyes.

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1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

The way this market is going, all of us on TVNT could scrape our spare pennies together and make Tegna an offer they couldn't refuse!

 

I've got a nice, crisp, fancy-ass Thomas Jefferson $2 bill to donate to the cause. Those are rare enough.

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5 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

The way this market is going, all of us on TVNT could scrape our spare pennies together and make Tegna an offer they couldn't refuse!

 

🤣 I can't foresee Standard General selling Tegna for pennies on the dollar any smart hedge fund company wouldn't just sell some piece of property like television stations for pennies on the dollar just because the economy is tanking, the preference here is to get the most money out of it they can get with the conditions you have and right now given the circumstances were in I think $20 a share is the most likely outcome since how nobody wants to go north of $20 a share right now (likely because Tegna's stock just can't seem to go north of $18 a share)

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On 3/18/2020 at 8:14 PM, detroiter313 said:

I swear this has got to be an early-April Fool's joke....

EXACTLY! Matt Crouch was talking this up during tonight's "Praise" program (what little I saw of it), but as I see it this is nothing more than a very slickly engineered and two-weeks early April Fools Joke.

O'course if this were to somehow actually happen this sidecar would inherit at least three Tegna duopolies in markets where TBN already has stations of its own, including Seattle (the legendary KING/5 & KONG/6-16 from Tegna, KTBW/20 from Trinity). That wouldn't look good. TBN itself would also likely face another hurdle - losing its non-profit status which allows it to chase down viewer contributions, which means more than several tax men would be pounding on the TBN door in Texas (where corporate is now located) to take a good long look at the books. I think we can all do the math here. Tegna and TBN will not link up in any way, shape or form.

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8 hours ago, Joe Capitano said:

EXACTLY! Matt Crouch was talking this up during tonight's "Praise" program (what little I saw of it), but as I see it this is nothing more than a very slickly engineered and two-weeks early April Fools Joke.

Paul and Jan Crouch (Matt’s parents who started up TBN) would’ve rolled in their graves!

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