KFXO Sale on Hold?

Submitted by LynnS on Tue, 09/26/2006 - 11:11pm.

I hear tonight from an Anonymous Insider that the sale of Meredith-owned KFXO in Bend to competitor KTVZ is on hold. The rumor is that Bend Broadband/Cable has petitioned the FCC to block the sale:

Some thought that the KFXO news department was going to shut down and Z21 would do their newscast at 10pm. So does anyone out there know what's going on? How can a cable company block a sale of a TV station?

Cablenut says anyone--cable company or otherwise--can object if they claim it creates an anti-competitive atmosphere, but neither of us are coming up with a plausible reason why a cable company would do that. That doesn't mean the rumor isn't true, just that apparently there are limits to our deviousness. Imagine.

So, anyone got the skinny? Utterly Boring, are you out there?

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Politics
Submitted by Anonymous Source (not verified) on Wed, 09/27/2006 - 6:52am.

I'll wager that it has something to do with the fact that the Tykeson and Chambers families don't like one another. If blocking the sale forces Meredith to sell to somebody who actually knows what they're doing, it might put more competitive pressure on KOHD.

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Politics/Sale Blocked
Submitted by Anonymous Source (not verified) on Sat, 09/30/2006 - 9:13pm.

I didn't know the Tykesons didn't like the Chambers! Since they were both founders of the old Liberty Communications broadcast empire, I have always assumed they were on "friendly" terms. What could possibly be the basis for the dislike?

My take on the objection by Bend Broadband to the sale of KFXO to NPG/KTVZ is that Tykeson is trying to help the Chambers-owned KOHD gain ad sales revenue by stalling or killing the sale. After all, Chambers paid something around $8.5 milliion for the license. Which is possibly just a few million more than it is worth.

Or, if these two media mogul families really do dislike one another; then Tykeson is trying to stall/kill the deal to prevent NPG from creating a stronger local ad sales package with the combined NBC-FOX-Telemundo line up. After all, BBB sells a lot of local ads on all those cable channels!

Could this be about money? Oh, perish the thought!

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Well sure it's about the money
Submitted by Anonymous Source (not verified) on Tue, 10/03/2006 - 10:38am.

I see your point, but I was looking at it from a newscast perspective. I'm not that impressed with what little I've seen of KTVZ's news and residents I've spoken with consider it something of a joke.

As far as the families are concerned, I think the problems came after Liberty was sold to TCI. There was a camp that wanted to sell and one that didn't, which created friction. There's also the question of who gets the real credit for creating the Liberty empire in the first place.

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Show Me The Money...
Submitted by Anonymous Source (not verified) on Tue, 10/03/2006 - 4:33pm.

You seem to know quite a bit about the Liberty/Chambers/Tykeson history. This provides us all a very interesting perspective on why this objection has been filed. Could it be that Tykeson wants KFXO for him/herself? Or, might it be that the real motivation is to protect the cable ad sales monoploy they enjoy here?

OK, I'll bite. Who should get credit for creating the Liberty empire? And who was responsible for killing it?

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...sorry, been busy all day,
Submitted by Jake Ortman on Thu, 09/28/2006 - 11:43pm.

...sorry, been busy all day, didn't know a thing about this until somebody pointed it out. All I can confirm from folks who would know (it's 11:30 for cripes sake) is that there is indeed a delay, and that's about it. I haven't heard anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if the local cable company tried something like this. But the company that owns KTVZ will indeed own three network channels on the local cable company (KTVZ, KFXO, and a CW affiliate), so maybe the local cable company, who has an advertising market themeselves, were worried about that? I have no idea, really, but if I hear anything, I'll let ya know.

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Any news?
Submitted by Anonymous Source (not verified) on Thu, 01/25/2007 - 12:01pm.

Does anyone know how this ended up or if it is on-going?

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