COMMENTARY
Pergament: What’s happening at WNGS?
I was thinking of sending a private eye like Jim Rockford (James Garner) or Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck)— who used to appear on WNGS-TV—to try and uncover exactly what had been going on at the independent station in the last few months.
It would have been a last resort, because I had been unsuccessful trying to get answers from the station’s owner or WKBWTV (Channel 7), which used to have a sales partnership with WNGS.
To be honest, I’m not sure Brenda Johnson of “The Closer” could have gotten the answers before Friday. That’s when I learned that WNGS has been sold by Equity Media Holdings to Daystar Television, a Dallas-based religious television group.
WNGS was among 16 stations that Daystar purchased for $7.4 million at an auction, said Gregory Guy, managing partner of Patrick Communications, a media brokerage that assisted with the auction. In all, Equity reportedly auctioned off 60 stations for $21.3 million, with Daystar buying the most stations.
It means that pending approvals from a bankruptcy court that is conducting a hearing this week in Little Rock, Ark.—where Equity is located —and the FCC in three or four months, WNGS is expected to go from carrying old movies to carrying religious programming. Daystar, which is one of the largest owners of religious TV stations in the country, owns 83 stations, primarily in the South and the West Coast.
The one thing that could change those programming expectations would be if Daystar subsequently sold WNGS to another buyer, if that is even allowed.
Failing that, there will a whole lot of TV religion around here. WNYB, Channel 26, which is licensed in Jamestown and is on Buffalo cable systems, carries religious programming. A third religious station, EWTN, that carries Catholic-themed programming and is based in Alabama, also is carried here. Under Time Warner’s current channel lineup, religious stations could be on Channels 10 (EWTN), Channel 11 (WNGS) and Channel 12 (WNYB) by August or September.
How and why did WNGS need to change owners?
This is what I know. WNGS, which is licensed as Channel 67 in Springville, changed its affiliation in January from RTN or Retro Television Network to THIS TV a few months after its owner, Equity, declared bankruptcy.
According to a trade publication, Equity made the programming switch from old TV shows to old movies after it divested RTN to its former chief executive officer, Henry Luken, for $18.5 million.
Another trade publication, MediaDailyNews, reported that THIS was started by MGM in partnership with Weigel Broadcasting in anticipation of the digital TV conversion coming next month. The idea is to give local TV stations programming for the extra channels that they will have the capability of programming once the digital conversion takes place. MediaDailyNews reported in December that MGM said its library has 4,100 films and 10,000 hours of TV programming.
RTN had a more satisfying schedule of classic TV shows, including “The A-Team,” “Magnum, P. I.,” “Emergency!,” “Kojak” and “The Rockford Files.”
However, the impressive list of movies offered by THIS TV seemed to have compensated for the decline in the TV schedule. From my e-mails, some viewers who were enjoying the movies being carried by THIS became upset a few weeks ago when the station was pulled from WKBW-TV’s digital channel 7.2 and from FiOS.
“The station had an agreement with a third party (presumably Channel 7) to deliver us their signal,” e-mailed a spokesman from FiOS. “That agreement is no longer in place and they have stopped sending us their signal.”
WNGS remains on Time Warner Cable, which is following a FCC must-carry rule because the station is licensed in Springville.
WNGS had been available without cable from a digital converter box on 7.2 through a sales service agreement between Equity and Channel 7. That agreement originally expired at the end of December 2008 but was carried over to April, when it expired again, Channel 7 General Manager Bill Ransom explained weeks ago. Channel 7 stopped allowing WNGS to use its digital signal in April.
Repeated calls to Equity, which is based in Little Rock, Ark., weren’t returned last week. However, its executives were a little busy. They were preparing for an auction of Equity’s assets, which include 19 full-power and 85 low-power TV stations.
The published reports noted that Equity declared bankruptcy late in 2008 after defaulting on a $41.5 million loan from Silver Point Finance LLC of Greenwich. If Silver Point rings a bell, that’s because it’s the same company that now owns WKBW, which is still run by Granite Broadcasting.
The big unknown was what a station like WNGS, which in 2002 was affiliated with the former UPN network when “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” were in its lineup, was worth in the digital age when TV affiliates will be able to program two or more channels. According to one published report, minimum bids for Equity stations ranged from $1.5 million for a Texas station to as little as $50,000.
A decade ago, Channel 7’s then owner, Granite, agreed to buy WNGS for $23 million from its then owners, a husband-and-wife business team. In other words, Granite agreed then to pay about $15.6 million more than Daystar paid for WNGS and 15 other stations last week and about $1.7 million more than Equity got at auction for 60 stations.
It appears that Granite was fortunate that the deal fell through a decade ago.
Granite said it planned to start a 10 p. m. newscast on the station back then. Ultimately, Channel 7’s news competitors started 10 p. m. news programs.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments