Broadcast Deal Market Recap, Q1, 2022

At $11.05 billion, the broadcast deal market for first quarter 2022 reached the highest quarterly deal volume since third quarter 2019. In the last 40 years, quarterly volumes exceeded $10 billion only eight times. Most of these mega-volumes were due to one large consolidation deal or privatization deal, and first quarter 2022 was no exception.

Standard General LP in partnership with Apollo Global Inc., which owns a majority stake in Cox Media Group Inc., announced a $24-per-share deal on Feb. 22 that would take private TEGNA Inc., the third-largest TV station owner by revenue and one of the few remaining publicly traded groups.

We estimate the value of TEGNA's 64 full power and three low-power TV stations at approximately $8.71 billion, making it the second-largest transaction in broadcast deal history, topped only by the 1999 Viacom/CBS merger for which we estimated the value of the TV stations at $8.75 billion.

The acquisition of TEGNA was filed with the Federal Communications Commission in March. However, Standard General and Cox announced in a press release several spinoffs that have yet to be filed with the FCC.

Cox will acquire a group of four stations currently owned by Standard General affiliate Community News Media LLC, and an unspecified Standard General affiliate will acquire Cox's FOX outlet WFXT in Boston. These two transactions will need to close before the TEGNA acquisition.

In another transaction following the close of the TEGNA acquisition, Cox will purchase the five former TEGNA stations in Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas. We estimate the value of these stations at approximately $1.30 billion.

Part of the Standard General/TEGNA purchase is an AM/FM radio station combo in Columbus, Ohio, to which we allocated $11.5 million.

Near the end of the quarter, on March 30, Cox announced another large transaction in which it will sell 13 full-power stations in 11 markets to Imagicomm Communications LLC, parent company of the INSP network for $488.0 million.

The top five transactions for the quarter totaled $10.93 billion and accounted for 99% of the quarterly deal volume. The other 126 transactions still add up to a respectable $115.9 million.

Best of the rest was a January transaction in which Red River Broadcast Co. LLC, a subsidiary of Curtis Squire Inc., sold its last remaining stations to Forum Communications Co. for $24.0 million. The two main stations involved are the FOX affiliates in the markets of Fargo, N.D., and Duluth-Superior, Minn.-Wis. The stations come with three full-power and seven low-power translators.

Top-TV station deals, Q1, 2022

The quarter's largest radio deal, the acquisition of Cherry Creek Media LLC by Townsquare Media Inc., was announced on March 24. The $18.8 million transaction was the largest radio deal since 2019. To comply with FCC ownership regulations, Townsquare will spin off six of the stations and place two stations in a divestiture trust.

Cherry Creek's stations are located in six different states, mostly in nonrated areas. All the other large radio deals of the quarter focused on one or two markets or states.

The second and third-largest radio station deals were the sale of two Florida FM stations from CXR Radio LLC to Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. for $12.5 million and the largest single-radio-station sale of the quarter, the $8.0 million transfer of San Francisco's KSJO-FM from Universal Media Access - KSJO-FM LLC to Silicon Valley Asian Media Group LLC.

Top-Radio Station Deals Q1, 2022