News Corp. (NWS-A) and Oak Hill Capital announced a deal on Saturday morngin where Oak Hill will be acquiring eight television stations from the conglomerate for approximately $1.1 billion.
Oak Hill Capital already owns nine stations, so this will bring their total to seventeen, which they own through their television platform Local TV. Earlier in the year they used that platform to acquire nine stations from the New York Times (NYT).
Oak Hill and Local TV will jointly own and manage the stations, while daily administration will be the responsibility of Tribune Co., just recently taken over by Sam Zell.
The lead investor for Oak Hill is Robert Bass, and the private equity firm has about $7 billion in investment funds overall.
All the stations sold by News Corp. are Fox affiliates located in small to medium markets. The Fox stations are WJW-TV in Cleveland, KDVR-TV in Denver, KTVI-TV in St. Louis, WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Mo., WITI-TV in Milwaukee, KSTU-TV in Salt Lake City, WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Ala., and WGHP-TV in Greensboro, N.C.
The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is projected to be closed in the third quarter of 2008.
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