The volume of U.S. broadcast station mergers and acquisitions hit $189.6 million in the third quarter and most of that was on the count of radio deals, according to S&P Global research firm Kagan.
Kagan said that even though this was the lowest quarterly deal volume of the year—with multiple billion-dollar deals skewing the numbers for previous quarters—the volume was still ahead of the fourth quarter of 2016 and seven other quarters since 2008.
Topping out TV broadcast deals during the quarter was the July 21 transaction in which OTA Broadcasting sold its two stations in the Palm Springs, California, market to Entravision Communications for $21 million. Kagan estimated a 7.5x forward seller's multiple, ahead of the 6.5x multiple that Entravision reported.
RELATED: U.S. broadcast M&A nears $4.5B in Q2, thanks largely to Sinclair
Other TV deals during the quarter include EVINE Live selling its TV station WWDP in the Boston market to WRNN-TV Associates Limited Partnership for $10 million. As part of that deal, EVINE Live also entered into a $3.5 million channel-sharing agreement with WMFP that will let NRJ TV to still have access to one-third of WWDP's spectrum.
London Broadcasting sold KTXD in Dallas to Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation, a marketing agreement partner of Sinclair, for $9.5 million and Southern California License sold KAZA in the Los Angeles market to Weigel Broadcasting for $9 million. As part of that deal KAZA entered into a channel-sharing agreement with KHTV-CD, owned by Venture Technologies Group.
Kagan said that all other TV deals during the third quarter clocked in at $6 million each or less, bringing the total quarterly TV deal volume to $66.6 million.