Bridge News, which has been buying LPTVs left, right, center, up and down across the country, strikes in Phoenix and San Diego with the purchase of KVPA-LD here and KSDX-LD there for $3 million.
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Bridge News buys KVPA-LD
- Thread starter Sammi Brie
- Start date
Pending FCC approval, which is likely. Bridge News is the producer of News Net, formerly seen in Phoenix on KPHE 44.3. The only way to get News Net into the markets seems to be to buy the stations themselves. It's not a bad product...fast-paced without an obvious slant found in many popular "news" channels today.
I'm more surprised that Estrella sold. There's no obvious place for them to take their programming unless they partner with another station to be a subchannel. Estrella owns five total LPTVs, but the others are in the New York, Chicago, and Miami markets. They also own full-power stations in LA, Houston, Miami (Key West), and Denver (and sold their Dallas station on which they still maintain a subchannel).
Not bad but not really good either. Looks very small market. Probably the worst looking news network in the United States.
No argument there...it is small market. But I'm willing to overlook the lack of style.
The details of the sale are not known, but it wouldn't surprise me if Estrella were allowed to lease KVPA's .2 and .3 subchannels while Bridge News puts their NewsNet on 42.1.
I’ve long wondered if Estrella would get out of the broadcast station business in order to concentrate on the actual TV network. Their radio division would seem to be ripe for the plucking, especially with national religious broadcasters on the prowl for more stations. But the former Liberman creditors who now have equity in Estrella might be content with the cash flow for the time being…who knows.
Estrella might get back an O&O in DFW. Although they sold KMPX to Tegna in 2020 (creating a duopoly with WFAA) there is an option for Estrella to acquire the current WFAA RF8 signal, while WFAA programming would move to the superior KMPX RF30…essentially a license, call and transmitter swap. Estrella is still going on KMPX, but WFAA has a simulcast on KMPX as well, so viewers can see WFAA on virtual 8.1 and 8.8 from different transmitters.
Had the Standard General deal to acquire Tegna succeeded, the Estrella reacquisition deal would have been triggered as part of the WFAA spinoff to Cox Media Group. With the SG deal now dead, and Tegna trying to figure out what its future is, the status of the channel swap is anyone’s guess.
Bridge News also has a second network called "Sports News Highlights" that they put on the .2 subchannel of their stations.
My guess is that Estrella will go to one of the "we don't care about 16:9 channels being squeezed into 4:3 encoders, we just care about getting paid" subs of one of the Globe LPTV frequencies.