SNL Kagan: Broadcast Deal Market Nearly Doubles

MONTEREY: U.S. broadcast station M&A volume reached $223.3 million in Q2 2015, nearly twice the total for the first quarter, according to SNL Kagan.

TV registered deals came in at $98.2 million for the second quarter. Even though the Q2 total of $223.3 million was nearly double Q1's reported $120.5 million, the broadcast station deal volume year-to-date is still a ways off from the billion-dollar-plus quarters in 2013 and 2014.

Compared to the first half of 2014, the $343.8 million of first half 2015 amounts to just 6 percent of the prior-year period's $5.3 billion volume. Major TV station group deals in the first half of 2014 included the Granite Broadcasting Corp. 11-station sale for $300 million in February; the LIN Media and Media General $2.5 billion merger announcement in March; the Graham Holdings Co. divestiture of Miami NBC affiliate WPLG to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for $364 million, also in March; Gannett Co.’s purchase of London Broadcasting’s six stations in Texas for $215 million in May; and the 21st Century Fox TV station swap with Cox Media Group in June valued at $859.3 million.

In the first half of 2015, the deal market will see average monthly volumes of $60 million and the occasional $100-million-plus month, with Alpha Media and Gray TV the most active radio and TV buyers. There is still appetite for additional station consolidation; however, the FCC incentive auction scheduled for 2016 has TV station owners in major markets holding out for potentially higher spectrum values.

The top TV buyer of Q1, Gray Television, made two deals in Q2. In April, Gray TV paid $10.25 million/8.0x forward seller’s cash flow for WAGM in Maine’s Presque Isle market. In May, Gray paid $33.6 million to Investment Company of America for KOSA, the CBS affiliate (with MyNetworkTV on a secondary channel) in the Odessa-Midland, Texas, market.

The TV market so far has registered five transactions above the $10-million mark, four of them in Q2. With 15 of the top 20 TV transactions of the first half of 2015 taking place in the second quarter, the TV deal volume of Q2 was almost four times as high as that of Q1.