KC’s first TV station part of News Corp. sale

WDAF-TV, Kansas City’s original TV station, is changing hands again.

News Corp., the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch, announced Saturday that it agreed to sell “Fox 4” and seven other stations to Oak Hill Capital Partners LP for about $1.1 billion in cash.

Pending regulatory approval, New York-based Oak Hill would become the seventh company to own WDAF since The Kansas City Star founded the station in 1948. The buyer would add the stations to Local TV LLC, which it formed earlier this year when it bought nine stations from the New York Times Co.

Fox announced in June that it would try to sell the stations, setting in motion the second sale drama at Fox 4 in less than a decade.

In 2001, the station’s then general manager announced that the station would be sold to the head of a New York credit counseling operation. The sale, which was never confirmed, appeared to be Fox’s reaction to mounting pressure from the federal government to shed some of its stations. After a federal appeals court questioned the legitimacy of the government’s ownership regulations in 2002, the sale rumors ceased.

News Corp. is selling the stations to focus on its largest and most lucrative markets after the $5.2 billion takeover of Dow Jones & Co. this year.

“It is part of News Corp.’s strategic decision to shed low-growth, noncore assets,” said Richard Dorfman, managing director of New York-based investment firm Richard Alan Inc.

Wall Street analysts may think Fox 4 was “noncore,” but the station was pressed to undergo an extensive rebranding process this year. The station’s on-air look now closely resembles that of other Fox stations, the Fox News Channel and MyNetworkTV, which News Corp. also owns.

The purchase would help Oak Hill, the buyout firm founded by Texas oil billionaire Robert Bass, create a broader U.S. network with stations in larger markets than the ones it bought from the Times.

Oak Hill would get WJW in Cleveland; KDVR in Denver; KTVI in St. Louis; WITI in Milwaukee; KSTU in Salt Lake City; WBRC in Birmingham, Ala.; and WGHP in Greensboro, N.C., according to the News Corp. statement confirmed by spokeswoman Teri Everett.

News of the sale capped a busy week for Local TV. On Thursday it said goodbye to its CEO, Randy Michaels, whose broadcasting career included creating the lucrative “61 Country” format on another WDAF, the AM radio station, in the 1970s. Michaels accepted a job running the interactive and broadcast divisions of Tribune Co., which immediately announced it was forming a partnership with Local TV to share back-office services, administration and other functions

The sale is expected to be completed in the third quarter.

Murdoch plans to use The Wall Street Journal brand, acquired in the Dow Jones sale, to attract viewers to its TV networks and Internet users to Web sites.

“News Corp.’s focus today is much more on Internet properties, such as MySpace, and cable,” said Dorfman. The sale of the stations “will help News Corp. raise capital. News Corp. is not walking away from the healthy broadcast world.”

Bloomberg News contributed to this report. To reach Aaron Barnhart, call 816-234-4790 or send e-mail to abarnhart@kcstar.com.