Nexstar Media Group says it will acquire a television station owned by Winston Broadcasting to create a duopoly in the Cleveland market.
The station, WBNX (Channel 55), will join Nexstar’s Fox affiliate WJW-TV (Channel 8) and become an affiliate of the CW Network next September. That will displace WUAB (Channel 43) as the market’s CW Network affiliate when WBNX takes over the affiliation next year.
“The acquisition of WBNX-TV strengthens our presence in Cleveland, a top-20 television market, and in the political battleground state of Ohio,” said Andrew Alford, the President of Nexstar’s broadcasting business. “WBNX-TV will complement our existing operations at WJW-TV, the local news leader in Cleveland, by diversifying our programming for viewers and advertisers with the addition of CW sports and entertainment programming.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal is likely to experience less regulatory resistance compared to other transactions, because Nexstar already owns a station in the market, and the addition of WBNX does not influence its national reach.
The acquisition continues a strategy at Nexstar of moving the CW Network affiliation to more of its owned or operated stations throughout the country as the broadcaster invests more money and programming into the network. Similar moves have been made in San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix.
