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Broadcast station deal volume was $1.85 billion for...

Broadcast station deal volume was $1.85 billion for Q2, a $2 billion drop from the year-ago quarter, said SNL Kagan in a news release Wednesday. Some $1.33 billion of the Q2 2014 number comes from TV station deals, while $518.6…

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million comes from radio. The broadcast sphere is “still a very robust deal market despite the decline from last year’s huge totals,” said the industry research firm. It said 613 stations total changed hands in the first half of 2014: 449 radio and 164 TV. The average price of a TV station in the first half of the year was $46.5 million, compared to $2.3 million for radio stations. The slower “pace of consolidation” in the TV station market was likely caused by recent changes to FCC ownership rules, SNL Kagan said. The largest TV transaction of the quarter was a $429.7 million 21st Century Fox trade of owned-and-operated affiliates in Boston and Memphis for a Cox Fox affiliate in San Francisco together with an independent station in the same market, SNL Kagan said. The largest deal that wasn’t a swap was Gannett’s $215 million purchase of six stations from London Broadcasting, SNL Kagan said. Those companies completed that deal, said a Gannett news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1w1x47Y). In radio, SNL Kagan said Q2’s biggest deal was the $105 million sale of four FM stations by Wilks Broadcast Group to Steel City Media.