Broadcast M&A on Upswing in Q3, SNL Kagan Says

Broadcast station merger and acquisition activity accelerated in Q3, topping $3 billion -- more than twice the combined amount of the previous three quarters, SNL Kagan said Thursday. Radio M&A amounted to $422.1 million, with TV seeing $2.61 billion in deals, it said. Year to date as of the end of Q3, radio deals were $663.4 million, with TV deals at $2.75 billion, SNL Kagan said. While there were no deals valued at more than $100 million between October 2014 and August 2015, there were five such transactions in Q3, it said. The biggest deal announcement of the quarter was that of Media General's $3.1 billion takeover of Meredith -- which is now complicated by Nexstar's competing $4.1 billion bid (see [Ref:1509280041]), which isn't included in SNL Kagan's numbers. The researcher said the largest radio M&A announcement of the quarter was Alpha Media's $264 million purchase of Digity.