On late Friday afternoon, the FCC gave approval to Apollo Global Management’s series of acquisitions of Cox Media Group’s radio and television properties and Northwest Television.
Apollo agreed in March to acquire Cox’s television stations plus radio and newspapers in Dayton OH for $3.1 billion and Northwest Television for $340 million. Cox’s 57 other radio stations plus CoxReps, Gaumt, and Cox’s Washington, D.C. news bureau operations were sold in June for an additional $500 million. The new company, set to take the Cox Media Group name, made a few late revisions to the deal in order to gain approval following the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals striking down of the FCC’s 2017 rule changes.
The amendment, filed in late October, saw three changes. Cox Enterprises’ stake of the new company drop to a 19.9% minority voting interest with Cox losing the rights to appoint any individual to the company’s board of directors until it can do so under FCC rules. The three newspapers involved in the deal, The Dayton Daily News, Journal-News,
and Springfield News-Sun will temporarily switch to a three day per week publishing schedule until gaining a waiver to operate jointly with the radio and television stations in Dayton or sold back to Cox Enterprises to restore them to daily status with a plan to separate the newspapers from the currently integrated media operations. The company will also surrender the licenses of one of the two stations being acquired from Northwest in the Syracuse NY and Yuma AZ while moving the programming of those stations to a digital sub-channel to subvert the television ownership cap rollback. Additionally, Apollo or any of its affiliated entities stated it will not have an attributable interest in Gannett following its merger with New Media Investment Group, Inc. following the recently closed merger of those companies.
In addition to those revisions, which must happen within 30 days of closing, as part of the FCC approval, the company will have two years to complete the divestitures of CHR “Power 95.3” WPYO Maitland/Orlando and Alternative “97X” 97.1 WSUN Holiday/Tampa FL from the Elliot Evers led CXR Radio LLC divestiture trust to new owners.
The deal is now set to close by the end of the year.
