Ch. 12 a prime draw in sale

By Cliff Peale

Clear Channel selling off TV, radio stations

Long one of Greater Cincinnati’s top-performing television stations, WKRC-TV (Channel 12) could reap more than $200 million for owner Clear Channel Communications Inc. in a sale.

“Clear Channel is going to look for top dollar on that deal,” said local media buyer Rob Riggsbee, president of Inside Media in Newtown.

San Antonio-based Clear Channel on Thursday said it would sell its 42-station television group, along with 448 of its 1,150 radio stations in smaller markets. The sale is independent of the company’s $26.7 billion deal to go private with two private-equity firms, it said.

In Greater Cincinnati, WKRC-TC will change hands, but Clear Channel will keep its eight radio stations here, including standard-bearer WLW-AM (700).

Clear Channel’s size makes the deal a powerful symbol of trends driving the media industry, including depressed stock prices but fundamentally healthy businesses.

Terry Jacobs, former chief executive officer of both Jacor Communications, which sold WKRC to Clear Channel in 1999, and Cincinnati-based Regent Communications Inc., said an established national broadcaster might buy the television station to fill out a roster of the nation’s biggest markets.

As for the radio stations Clear Channel is selling, Regent could be interested in some of them, president and CEO Bill Stakelin said. With media companies’ stock values depressed but the businesses still producing good cash flow and high margins, you could see more companies going private, he said.

“We’ve thought of that and a lot of other things,” Stakelin said. “We continue to look at all the options.”