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Sinclair Sells KBSI/WDKA to Soohyung Kim


CircleSeven

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Sinclair is unloading its duopoly in Paducah, KY-Cape Girardeau, MO (KBSI & WDKA) to a new firm Community News Media, LLC for $28M.

 

Community News Media will be ran by Standard General, LP leader Soohyung Kim.

 

Could this be the sign of Sinclair unloading more stations? We know they have an enormous amount of debt ($8B) from those RSNs. And that $28M won't be enough to pay down that debt.

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59 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

Sinclair is unloading its duopoly in Paducah, KY-Cape Girardeau, MO (KBSI & WDKA) to a new firm Community News Media, LLC for $28M.

 

Community News Media will be ran by Standard General, LP leader Soohyung Kim.

 

Could this be the sign of Sinclair unloading more stations? We know they have an enormous amount of debt ($8B) from those RSNs. And that $28M won't be enough to pay down that debt.

For what it's worth, Sinclair Broadcast Group itself is only responsible for $175M of that $8B debt. 

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6 hours ago, Weeters said:

 

For what it's worth, Sinclair Broadcast Group itself is only responsible for $175M of that $8B debt. 

And of the rest of the $8B, how much of that debt is Byron Allen responsible for since he's part of that joint venture? 

That could potentially throw a wrench in any future acquisitions if that's the case.

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Welp..

 

I kinda called that, I knew something had to happen to Sinclair because that RSN buy was just.. a bad buy and while Sinclair may be responsible for about $175 million or so of that debt however @WeetersI have to agree with Circle Seven on that one, even though it's only $28 million and it does put a dent into Sinclair's debt I would say in order for Sinclair to get all of the $175 million they're currently in debt paid off meaning that by the time the KBSI deal gets done they would still be close to $150 million in debt ($147 million to be exact), they would probably have to sell at minimum maybe 10 stations if not more, just to get the debt either paid off or at a level they can transfer over the remainder of the debt to Diamond.

 

Honestly, this can't and won't be the last sells of Sinclair's stations in fact I expect even more deals with (in some cases, Soo Kim) going forward and I have to imagine he's probably talking to Sinclair about some of the Sinclair's stations he tried to buy in the failed Trib deal in 2017. We don't know if that's exactly what's going on but given the fact that not only is Soo buying 2 TV stations from Sinclair but there's no reason to believe he couldn't buy at least some of the stations he tried to buy from them in 2017.

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There's plenty of dog stations that Sinclair can unload and hopefully cover that debt. 

Namely those where the stations rely on others for newscasts (KDSM, WRLH, etc...), isolated netlets (WTVZ), or complete train wrecks like KDNL.

They could even blow up their presence in the deep south (Macon, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Albany, Savannah) since these stations are stretched too thin to begin with. 

And if they find a taker for WPMI and WJTC in Mobile, Sinclair can allow another voice back into the market.

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16 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

Sinclair is unloading its duopoly in Paducah, KY-Cape Girardeau, MO (KBSI & WDKA) to a new firm Community News Media, LLC for $28M.

 

Community News Media will be ran by Standard General, LP leader Soohyung Kim.

 

Could this be the sign of Sinclair unloading more stations? We know they have an enormous amount of debt ($8B) from those RSNs. And that $28M won't be enough to pay down that debt.

Sounds like Kim is now competing since he didn’t get what he wanted with TEGNA.

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1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

There's plenty of dog stations that Sinclair can unload and hopefully cover that debt. 

Namely those where the stations rely on others for newscasts (KDSM, WRLH, etc...), isolated netlets (WTVZ), or complete train wrecks like KDNL.

They could even blow up their presence in the deep south (Macon, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Albany, Savannah) since these stations are stretched too thin to begin with. 

And if they find a taker for WPMI and WJTC in Mobile, Sinclair can allow another voice back into the market.

I think the point I made over in Discord is a pretty valid one, I think that whatever corporate synergies that the stations at Sinclair had (and still has) pretty much went out the door today, I believe the WDKY sale despite having all sorts of synergies up in Cincy, West Virginia and Nashville was the first sign of what was to come from Sinclair.

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3 hours ago, JCB4TV said:

I believe that Deerfield owns WPMI & WJTC.

On paper, but these like all other shell deals are where Sinclair does the heavy lifting and virtually everyone works for them.  Sinclair likely still has an option to buy them as well.

Deerfield has their own problems after the botched retrans deal they had along with the other Sinclair sidecars.

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