Paramount Stations Group

Paramount Stations Group (sometimes abbreviated as PSG) was a company that controlled a group of American broadcast television stations. The company existed from 1991 until 2001.
==History==
===As TVX Broadcast Group===
====Early years====
In 1976, the Television Corporation of Virginia was formed in response to what its backers perceived as the need for another television station in the Norfolk area. Armed with an agreement to share the tower of public television station WHRO-TV, the group applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and received a construction permit for WTVZ-TV in June 1978. Two FCC commissioners dissented from the award because some of the investors in TVX—including Martha Davis, wife of future Virginia lieutenant governor Dick Davis—had holdings in Norfolk AM and FM radio stations; Television Corporation successfully argued that the addition of a new UHF station, first minority ownership of a local TV station, and integration of ownership and management outweighed these concerns. It also pointed to the fact that other attempts at commercial UHF television in Hampton Roads had failed economically. The investors secured the services of John A. Trinder, general sales manager at CBS affiliate WTAR-TV, and Tim McDonald, who had last been programming Washington independent WTTG, to help run the new WTVZ; McDonald required six months of coaxing to be lured away from Washington and only agreed because he was made president and general manager and the investors were willing to expand beyond one station. The station aimed to offer counterprogramming to the existing network affiliates, reach the children's market (which Trinder and McDonald felt underserved), and provide facilities for local commercial production.
====Expansion====
In expanding, TVX sought situations where novice broadcasters had gotten in over their heads and wanted to sell in Sunbelt cities predicted to have growing markets. Each new station put on the air was modeled after WTVZ, where bookshelves had been scrounged up at pawn shops and other furnishings were obtained in trade-out deals for advertising. Each station had 37 employees—McDonald told Channels magazine in 1986 that "we've found over the years that that's how many we need"—and generally aired a similar mix of programming. This strategy earned nicknames: a 1986 feature article on the company was titled "McStations", and it was also dubbed the "Kmart of broadcasting".
Despite this activity and a surge in revenues from $2 million in 1980 to $14 million in 1985, TVX remained an unprofitable company because of increasing programming costs and leveraged acquisitions. To clear the company's bank debt, TVX sold WRLH-TV in 1985 to A. S. Abell Company, then-publisher of the Baltimore Sun, then went public as an over-the-counter stock raising $19.8 million from the sale of two million shares.
====Taft purchase====
In November 1986, TVX agreed to pay $240 million to acquire four major-market independent stations from Taft Broadcasting. The stations were all in markets larger than the existing TVX portfolio: WTAF-TV in Philadelphia (renamed WTXF-TV in 1988); KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas; KTXH in Houston; and WCIX in Vice City. TVX officially closed on the deal on April 9, 1987.
The larger-market independents presented a puzzle for TVX's business model. Two of them—WTAF and WCIX—produced local 10 p.m. newscasts, something with which the company had no experience. Most of them, with the exception of WTAF, were doing rather poorly. The addition of five more stations to the portfolio also left TVX needing to divest itself of one station. It chose the still-unbuilt WNYB-TV in Buffalo, New York. After a deal to sell the station to Malcolm Glazer fell through, the company successfully approached the owners of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team, who were approved and put the station on the air in September 1987.
TVX took on debt to make the purchase. TVX's bankers, Salomon Brothers, provided the financing for the acquisition and in return held more than 60 percent of the company. The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its junk bonds even before Black Monday. TVX then recapitalized over the course of 1988 and 1989 by selling stations in many of its medium and small markets. In 1988, TVX sold its stations in Pine Bluff/Little Rock and Nashville; 1989 saw the sale of the company's holdings in Memphis, New Orleans, and Norfolk. Additionally, McDonald left TVX in May 1988 after five years and was replaced by Trinder as president.
TVX also sold one other station under very different circumstances. Vice City's WCIX had become, from the moment Taft put it on the market in 1986, a major player in a brewing affiliation drama in the Vice City area. CBS, which was seeking to buy stations, inquired as to purchasing the station and leaving longtime affiliate WJVT; that caused a buyer for WJVT, also on the market, to withdraw from the deal. CBS continued to negotiate with Taft, and the original purchase agreement between Taft and TVX allowed Taft to continue negotiating to sell the Vice City station to CBS for 10 days after being announced. However, CBS ultimately walked away because it feared that the Miami station, whose signal had technical deficiencies in several populated areas of the market, would bring down network ratings.
In January 1987, NBC instead acquired WJVT. When the owner of the outgoing NBC affiliate in Vice City, WSVN, reached an impasse in negotiations with CBS, and CBS and Salomon Brothers began discussing a sale. CBS then purchased WCIX from TVX for $59 million; the station became the CBS affiliate in Vice City on January 1, 1989, and CBS closed on the purchase two days later.
Despite the successful recapitalization, Salomon Brothers reached an agreement in principle in January 1989 for Paramount Pictures to acquire options to purchase the investment firm's majority stake. This deal was replaced in September with an outright purchase of 79 percent of TVX for $110 million. Another four percent stake was acquired from Citicorp the next year. In 1991, Paramount acquired the remainder of TVX, forming the Paramount Stations Group.
===As Paramount Stations Group===
Paramount Communications, the then-parent company of Paramount Pictures, formed the Paramount Stations Group in 1991 after buying out the remaining stake in TVX Broadcast Group that it did not already own.
The original incarnation of Viacom purchased Paramount in 1993, with the deal closing in March 1994; Viacom's existing group of CBS- and NBC-affiliated stations continued to be run separately from the Paramount stations until December 1995, when they were folded into PSG.
Shortly afterward, Viacom entered into a joint venture with Chris-Craft Industries, which owned several television stations as part of its United Television subsidiary, to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN).
The company eventually divested itself of the CBS and NBC stations it held and purchased more UPN affiliates as the 1990s continued.
Airing since 1992 in Sweden and other European countries, 4 of the group's independent stations began in late December 1993 testing Video Games Challenge, interactive via the phone game show produced by Invisible Cities of Los Angeles and Big Band Productions of Sweden. In February 2000, Paramount Stations Group and ACME Communications reached an agreement.
In 2000, PSG acquired Chris-Craft's stake in UPN, shortly thereafter, Chris-Craft exited broadcasting and sold most of its stations to News Corporation's Fox Television Stations unit.
PSG was folded the next year after Viacom completed its merger with CBS. The remaining PSG stations were merged with the CBS owned-and-operated stations to form the Viacom Television Stations Group. Today, that group is called CBS News and Stations.
==Television stations==
Stations are listed alphabetically by state and city of license.
City of license/market 	Station 	Channel TV (RF)	Years owned	Current ownership
Bonesborough, Boiling Isles	WJTD-TV1	9 	1981–1991 	Independent station owned by Cox Media Group
Vice City, Leonida 	WBFS-TV 	33 (32) 	1995–2001 	MyNetworkTV affiliate owned by CBS News and Stations
Vice City, Leonida 	WCIX-TV 	6 	1987–1989 	CBS owned-and-operated station, WVFR-TV on channel 4
Redcliff, Robloxia 	RXLFL 	22 (18) 	1985–1994 	CW affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group
1 Divested following its acquisition by PSG
Category:Viacom
Category:Paramount Global
Category:Companies
Category:Media companies
Category:Defunct
Category:Television broadcasting companies of the United States