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TVNewsCheck.com:
Buy low, sell high. George Lilly has been applying that basic business principle in the buying and selling stations since 1983. In 2005, he partnered with the private equity firm The Blackstone Group to form Montecito Broadcast Group and purchased four stations from Emmis Communications for $259 million. Less than two years later, he flipped the stations to New Vision for a figure somewhere north of $330 million. Now he thinks he can work that buy-low, sell-high formula at least one more time. Backed by Sankaty Advisors, a unit of Bain Capital, Lilly last month agreed to buy two small-market ABC O&Os -- WJRT-TV Flint, Mich., and WTVG Toledo, Ohio -- for $30 million. With the worst of the recession apparently past and new sources of revenue beginning to materialize, Lilly believes the stations' price tag is low and that he will be able to sell at a considerable markup several years from now. How low? According to BIA/Kelsey, the same George Lilly and yet another investment group sold the stations to ABC for $120 million... Bullish big time on buying TV stations (Mon, 12/6)
