Uncertainty concerning the financial system weighed on deal-making final month as S&P International says the month had the fewest offers of any month final 12 months throughout the media and telecommunications sector. In all, S&P says there have been 88 offers struck throughout December within the U.S. and Canada, down 29% from November. It was additionally down from a 12 months in the past when 193 transactions have been reached in December 2021.
The December deal market could have been softer than prior months, however 4 of the ten largest offers concerned radio. The most important was VCY America’s pending $7.25 million deal to purchase “Speak FM 103.9” WFAS, Bronxville, NY from Cumulus Media.
Augusta Radio Fellowship Institute’s pending $1.3 million deal to purchase grownup R&B “95.3 Clean R&B” WRLD from PMB Broadcasting additionally made the record. So did a $1 million deal reached by Related Radio to purchase three FM translators in Houston and Austin from Carlos Lopez and Mary H. Lopez. Fellow non secular broadcaster Iglesia Pentecostal Vispera del Fin’s pending $900,000 deal to purchase Spanish Christian “Radio Zoe 1430” WOIR Miami from Amanecer Funding Firm was additionally a high ten deal for December.
Microsoft’s pending buy of Activision Blizzard for $79.59 billion was the biggest deal in 2022 for media and telecom firms. Elon Musk’s $48.06 billion deal to purchase Twitter ranked second. However they have been outliers. S&P says not one of the transactions introduced within the sector over the last 4 months of 2022 crossed the $1 billion mark. The rankings for the 12 months’s high 10 media and telecom offers by gross transaction worth have remained unchanged since September.
No radio offers have been large enough to land on the year-end rating, however a pair of tv offers did. The most important is Commonplace Common’s pending $8.84 billion deal to purchase Tegna, adopted by Cox Media Group’s associated $1.3 billion deal to amass 5 tv stations. If it clears FCC scrutiny, Cox will add tv stations in a number of small markets, together with KBSI-TV Cape Girardeau, MO; KLKN-TV Lincoln, NE; WDKA-TV Paducah, KY; and WLNE-TV New Bedford, MA.
Radio brokers say that they don’t count on any significant acceleration within the radio deal market this 12 months, whilst they anticipate some operators will make the most of distinctive alternatives to both tuck stations into clusters or to promote to broadcasters higher positioned in a market. Longer-term, modifications to media possession limits may change that, though the Federal Communications Fee has not signaled that it intends to roll again any of its present caps.