Equity sells 60 stations

[FTAList]

Equity Media, trying to work its way out of bankruptcy, sold 60 of its (according to Broadcasting and Cable) "100+" TV stations at auction a few weeks ago. This impacts FTA viewers in a lot of ways, most of them bad:

* Daystar bought a lot of the channels, such as WNGS and KWBM. I assume that Daystar will replace the secular programming on those channels with its network feed, duplicating what we can already get elsewhere.

* Other network affiliates were bought by smaller companies, such as Max Media's purchase of the Fox stations in Montana. IMHO, the new owners would be fools to abandon their network affiliation, but they might not need the same satellite slot, or any satellite, to distribute their signals.

* Maybe some of those Univision stations, which seem like duplicates since we can watch a half dozen of them, will be changed to some other network. Hey, I can dream.

It'll take a couple of months or so for the owner transitions to work their way through the FCC, but I'll be really surprised if we're still watching "this" network movies on WNGS in September.

Here's an article with a good list of what was sold to who: Radio Business Report/Television Business Report - Voice of the Broadcasting Industry

[RDosetareh]

* Daystar bought a lot of the channels, such as WNGS and KWBM. I assume that Daystar will replace the secular programming on those channels with its network feed, duplicating what we can already get elsewhere.

They may also just stop transmission on satellite because they already broadcast on Galaxy 19, and a better station may start broadcasting in their place on satellite! I hope

* Other network affiliates were bought by smaller companies, such as Max Media's purchase of the Fox stations in Montana. IMHO, the new owners would be fools to abandon their network affiliation, but they might not need the same satellite slot, or any satellite, to distribute their signals.

Chances are they could not efford to pay a heavy fee for satellite transmission so it may be taken off. Another bummer!

* Maybe some of those Univision stations, which seem like duplicates since we can watch a half dozen of them, will be changed to some other network. Hey, I can dream.

Me too FTAList, me too!

[Babadem]

We're now seeing the full effect of the reccession.

[RDosetareh]

I hate to see them go out of business. I hope the bidders keep the stations around... But I highly doubt they will.