WBIN-TV sold in FCC Auction; NH1 News to invest in new digital platforms

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: WBIN-TV

2 hours 51 minutes ago

WBIN-TV sold in FCC Auction; NH1 News to invest in new digital platforms


WBIN-TV announced today that it has been sold to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a recently completed auction. The total proceeds from the complex transaction are estimated to be nearly $100 million dollars.

In a process called the Spectrum Auction, the FCC is purchasing local TV stations and reselling their over-the-air rights, or spectrum, to mobile telephone and wireless communications companies. These airwaves will be used to create lightning fast 5G wireless internet.

WBIN-TV sold its television broadcast rights in the auction for $68.1 million dollars. Additionally, it entered into a sale of its remaining television license rights to a major television group for an undisclosed amount but estimated by insiders to be an additional $10-30 million dollars. The total proceeds from these transactions are estimated to be nearly $100 million dollars. WBIN-TV was purchased a little more than five years ago for $9 million dollars.

WBIN-TV and its television operations will cease broadcasting in the coming months. The proceeds from the sale will be used by the company to acquire other media assets in the digital, outdoor and radio areas as well as for continued investment in its 19 radio stations and its digital news web business NH1.com.


Read more: http://www.nh1.com/news/wbin-tv-sold-in-fcc-auction-nh1-news-to-invest-in-new-digital-platforms/

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This is of national interest, because the spectrum auction is a nationwide thing. Not many people are like me and watch TV over the air. The bandwidth used for broadcasting will be, in many markets, repurposed for other uses.

You can always pay for cable.

What are your nearby stations doing?

Another one:

One New York Station Will Bring in $212 Million in Spectrum Auction

By Chris Ariens on Feb. 14, 2017 - 9:27 AM

While entire TV station ownership groups will earn in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the FCC’s reverse spectrum auction, one station alone will pull in $212 million.

WRNN, based in Rye Brook, NY, in the New York City market, may end up out-earning every station in the country in the FCC’s auction, TVNewsCheck reports.

WRNN, which operates on Channel 48, is privately owned by the French family. Richard French Jr. is president and CEO, and his sons, Richard III and Christian are programming/news president, and COO, respectively. The station is carried on major cable and satellite providers stretching from the Jersey Shore to the Hudson Valley as well as Long Island. The station carries mostly paid programming, but also produces a nightly public affairs program. It also owns and operates RNN News which produces regional news for Verizon’s FiOS1 News.

[benld74]

1. STL here

Heard nothing so far in this area

WHo or what owned the station in the post?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. It was owned by the Binnie family. NT

[elmac]

3. my only TV option is over the air

I will not pay a penny extra to watch cable, reality shows, corporate news, nothing interests me. The only series I watch, The Americans, Walking Dead, I can get online for next to nothing, sometimes nothing.