April 8, 2019 | Mason King
A media company founded by an Indianapolis native plans to purchase WISH-TV Channel 8 and sister station WNDY-TV Channel 23 for $42.5 million in cash.
The pending acquisition was announced Monday morning by DuJuan McCoy, president and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting LLC, and Texas-based Nexstar Media Group Inc., which owns the two stations.
“Words cannot express how overjoyed I am to be able to come full circle and own WISH and WNDY in my hometown of Indianapolis,” McCoy said in a media release. “I am looking forward to working with the great staffs of WISH and WNDY and expanding on their commitment of providing more local news and local programming to our community.”
McCoy also is the owner and CEO of Bayou City Broadcasting LLC, one of the leading black-owned broadcast television station affiliate groups in the United States. It includes stations in Louisiana and WEVV-TV and WEVV-TV in Evansville. Circle City Broadcasting is a newly formed entity.
The sale of the two Indianapolis stations is via a step in Nexstar’s plan to purchase broadcast giant Tribune Media for $4.1 billion. Tribune owns WXIN-TV Channel 59 and WTTV-TV Channel 4, which could set up federal regulatory obstacles for the purchase with one entity owning several major stations in a city.
As IBJ reported on Feb. 4, Nexstar told the FCC that if the Tribune acquisition is approved, it planned to keep WXIN and WTTV. That set the stage for the sale of WISH and WNDY.
Nexstar officials said the firm has worked with McCoy before on supporting greater local programming and public service in the we operate,” CEO Perry Sook said in a media release.
In his statement, McCoy said he was born and raised in Indianapolis’ Ben Davis High School and Butler University. He began his 30-year career in broadcasting as a local account executive.