ION Buyout by Citadel Cleared

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 2: The Federal Communication
Commission has cleared Citadel Investment Group’s (CIG) acquisition of a
majority stake in ION Media Networks, denying a complaint by investors
attempting to block the deal.

The FCC has cleared the way for ION’s 60 television station
licenses to be transferred to Citadel. A group of investors had sought to block
the deal, citing the involvement of minority shareholder NBC Universal, which
under the terms of the agreement transferred its ION stake to Citadel.
According to the FCC, “Petitioners allege both here and in the pending civil
suit that the transaction is ‘designed to forcibly extract from [Petitioners] hundreds of millions of dollars, give that extracted value to [CIG Media] and
NBC, and thereby force Petitioners to pay for the acquisition of [ION] by [CIG
Media] and NBC.”

While the FCC has dismissed the complaint, the civil suit is
still pending.

In related news, ION Media Networks has closed the
previously announced purchase of the television stations WPXX, serving the
Memphis market, and WPXL, serving the New Orleans market, from Flinn
Broadcasting Corporation. “Including these two important markets, we now own 59
of the 60 stations we operate,” said Brandon Burgess, the president and CEO of
ION Media Networks. “This further solidifies our unique owned-and-operated
broadcast and digital spectrum footprint, enabling us to offer consumers
high-definition picture quality, new digital programming streams and mobile
television nationwide.”

ION’s footprint includes stations in all top 20 U.S. TV
markets, and 39 of the top 50 markets. Its flagship station, ION Television,
reaches more than 94 million U.S. television households via its nationwide
broadcast television, cable and satellite distribution systems.

—By Mansha Daswani