Content area
Full text
The Federal Communications Commission's approval last week of News Corp.'s $5.35 billion purchase of 10 TV stations from Chris-Craft Industries has set off talk of major station swaps between News Corp. and other top broadcast groups, including Viacom, as the groups aggressively move to create additional duopolies in major markets.
Sources said News Corp.'s Fox Television Stations unit has already agreed to swap ChrisCraft's KTVK-TV in Salt Lake City, an ABC affiliate, and its San Antonio NBC affiliate, KMOL, to Clear Channel Communications for its Minneapolis Fox affiliate, WFTC. The Justice Dept. conditioned its approval of News Corp.'s acquisition of Chris-Craft on the company selling off a property in Salt Lake City within six months. With WFTC (which is expected to switch its affiliation from Fox to UPN) and KMSP-TV (expected to switch from UPN to Fox), News Corp. would have a powerful duopoly in Minneapolis.
Fox Television and Clear Channel executives did not return calls.
WFTC is Clear Channel's highest-billing TV station. The company has a large cluster of media assets in the Minneapolis market,...