As it turns out, public television station KCSM apparently won’t live until its 50th anniversary. College of San Mateo has agreed to sell the station to an entity owned by the Blackstone Group hedge fund that intends to sell off the station for its spectrum next year—when KCSM turns 49. The aim is to convert the station’s bandwidth for mobile phone service use. Upstart LocusPoint Networks, owned by Blackstone, will pay up to $3.6 million for the station, blogs the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club, which has details from Wednesday’s college board of trustees meeting.
The college has caught flak from opponents both for its decision to sell the public television station and for the less than transparent way it has gone about it. It released little information about prospective bidders and largely avoided public debate during the talks that led to the deal with LocusPoint.
Noted: The sale won’t affect KCSM-FM 91, the college’s jazz radio station.
Media
