Newport Television, LLC was a television station

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the Security (finance), securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own Share ...

founded by

Providence Equity Partners Providence Equity Partners L.L.C. is a specialist private equity investment firm focused on media, communications, education, and technology investments across North America and Europe. The firm specializes in growth-oriented private equity inves ...

and

Sandy DiPasquale Sandy DiPasquale is an American broadcast media executive. DiPasquale has held ownership positions in such broadcast companies as WGRZ Acquisition Group, Smith Broadcasting (KWCH Television), Sunrise Television, Bluestone Television and Newport Te ...

in 2007 to acquire the television stations owned by

Clear Channel Communications iHeartMedia, Inc., or CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc., formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc., a company founded by ...

History

In September 2007, Newport agreed to sell KFTY and

KVOS-TV KVOS-TV (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Bellingham, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle–Tacoma market as an affiliate of the Spanish-language network Univision. It is owned by Weigel Broadcasting alongside Seattle-l ...

t
LK Station Group LLC
for $26.6 million. The deal was set to be completed in March 2008 but eventually collapsed due to LK's lender refusing to provide the funding; KFTY (now KEMO-TV) and KVOS have since been sold to other companies. As of October 10, 2007, Newport had agreed to sell

KION-TV KION-TV (channel 46) is a television station licensed to Monterey, California, United States, affiliated with CBS, Fox, and Telemundo. Owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company, it serves the Monterey Bay area from studios located on Moffett ...

, KMUV-LP, K44DN, KKFX-CA,

KCOY-TV KCOY-TV (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Santa Maria, California, United States, serving the Central Coast of California as an affiliate of Telemundo and The CW. It is owned by VistaWest Media, LLC, which maintains a shared se ...

Cowles Publishing Company The Cowles Company is an American diversified media company based in Spokane, Washington. The company owns and operates ''The Spokesman-Review'' in Spokane, founded in 1894, and owned the ''Spokane Daily Chronicle'' until it was shut down in 19 ...

for $41 million. Newport's purchase of the Clear Channel stations and those being resold were granted conditional

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) approval, subject to divestitures of media properties owned by other affiliates of Providence Equity Partners in several other markets. The entire deal closed on March 14, 2008, after several stations, in addition to those being divested by Newport, were placed into trust companies. In March 2012, Providence Equity Partners began to explore strategic alternatives for Newport Television, which may lead to a sale of the group. In July 2012, it was officially confirmed that

Nexstar Broadcasting Group Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarters in Irving, Texas, Midtown Manhattan, and Chicago. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 television stations ...

would acquire twelve of Newport's stations,

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb o ...

would acquire six, and

Cox Media Group CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company p ...

would acquire four. As part of the same deal, Newport's CMS operations, branded as Inergize Digital, would go to Nexstar. This deal was followed eight days later by the announcement that

WXXA-TV WXXA-TV (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Albany, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of the Fox network. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, it is operated under a shared services agreement (SSA) b ...

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...

would be sold to Shield Media, LLC, who would then enter into joint sales and shared services agreements with

Young Broadcasting Young Broadcasting, LLC was an American media company that owned or operated 12 television stations in 10 markets with a total U.S. television household coverage of 5.9%. The company was formerly known as Young Broadcasting Inc. and was the out ...

WTEN WTEN (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Albany, New York, United States, serving the Capital District, New York, Capital District as an affiliate of American Broadcasting Company, ABC. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is a sister s ...

. Four other Newport stations were not part of either of the July 2012 deals, with the company continuing to pursue buyers for those stations;"Newport Sells 22 Stations for $1 Billion,"
from TVNewsCheck, July 19, 2012 Nexstar would announce its acquisition of two of those stations,

KGET-TV KGET-TV (channel 17) is a television station in Bakersfield, California, United States, affiliated with NBC. Its second digital subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of The CW Plus. Owned by CW majority owner Nexstar Media Group, KG ...

Bakersfield, California Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which is located in the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's population as of th ...

and

KGPE KGPE (channel 47) is a television station in Fresno, California, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside NBC affiliate KSEE (channel 24). The two stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fres ...

Fresno Fresno (; ) is a city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County, California, Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley (California), Central Valley region. It covers a ...

, on November 5. On November 26, Newport announced that

KMTR KMTR (channel 16) is a television station in Eugene, Oregon, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Roberts Media, LLC, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of CBS af ...

would be sold to

Fisher Communications Fisher Communications, Inc. was a media company in the United States. Based in Seattle, Washington, the company primarily owned a number of radio and television stations in the Western United States. It was the last company in the Seattle area ...

. Because Fisher already owned

KVAL-TV KVAL-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Eugene, Oregon, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to dual NBC/ CW+ affiliate KMTR (channel 16) under a shared services a ...

, Fisher assigned the rights to acquire the FCC license to Roberts Media, LLC (a company wholly unrelated to the bankrupt

Roberts Broadcasting Roberts Broadcasting Company is a media company based in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a subsidiary of the parent company, the Roberts Companies, one of the largest African American-owned conglomerates. It is co-owned by brothers Steven and Michael R ...

), which Fisher then entered into a Joint Sales and Shared Services Agreement with KVAL. On October 23, the FCC granted approval to the sale of the

Jacksonville Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

and

Tulsa Tulsa ( ) is the second-most-populous city in the state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tul ...

stations to Cox, plus

the ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

Albany station to Shield Media. This was followed the next day by the FCC approval of the July sale of the stations to Nexstar except for

two 2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and the only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many ...

in Little Rock being sold to

Mission Broadcasting Mission Broadcasting, Inc. is a television station group that owns 29 full-power television stations in 26 markets in the United States. The group's chair is Nancie Smith, the widow of David S. Smith, who founded the company in 1996 and died in 2 ...

, which were later approved on December 10. On November 19, the FCC granted approval of the remaining stations from the July deal to Sinclair. Nineteen of the stations involved in the July deal were consummated on December 3, 2012. On the same day, Sinclair announced that they would acquire non-license assets of

WHAM-TV WHAM-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Rochester, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW. It is owned by Deerfield Media, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of Fox ...

, while the license was transferred to

Deerfield Media Deerfield Media, Inc. is a broadcasting company and a shell corporation owned and operated by Stephen P. Mumblow. It was established on December 1, 2012, by the acquisition of several television stations connected to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. ...

. On January 23, 2013, the FCC granted approvals of the Newport California stations to Nexstar; and on January 30, the FCC granted approval to the WHAM transaction to Sinclair. On April 24, 2013, the FCC granted its approval on Newport's final station, KMTR to Roberts Media. This was after an announcement that Fisher was being sold to Sinclair for $373 million, two weeks prior. On June 1, the KMTR sale was consummated, completing the disestablishment of the company.

Former stations

* Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and

city of license In U.S., Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broadcast ...

Variety Television Network

Variety Television Network (also referred to as VTV or the Variety Channel) was a

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...

operated by Newport Television on various US DTV stations including 6 owned by Clear Channel; The network went off the air in early January 2009.

References

{{COXMG Defunct television broadcasting companies of the United States IHeartMedia Companies based in Kansas City, Missouri American companies established in 2007 Mass media companies established in 2007 Mass media companies disestablished in 2013 2013 disestablishments in Missouri 2013 mergers and acquisitions Providence Equity Partners companies Sinclair Broadcast Group Nexstar Media Group Cox Media Group