South Florida television station WTVJ was put up for sale by its corporate parent NBC on Wednesday in a move that startled other local broadcasters.
NBC executives told station staffers in an hour-long meeting that they'll sell WTVJ-NBC 6 but retain Spanish-language WSCV-Telemundo 51, the flagship station of NBC's Telemundo network.
The sale, which is expected to take a year to complete, will mark the first time since NBC acquired WTVJ in 1987 that a major broadcast network's affiliate in South Florida has changed hands.
That sale touched off a mad scramble of call letters, channel numbers and affiliations as station ownership and broadcast alliances changed. And some local broadcasters wondered Wednesday if history will repeat itself.
''My e-mail is just jammed right now,'' said an executive at one local station. ``Everybody wants to know what it means.''
Officials at NBC and WTVJ refused to comment on the announcement. But, in an NBC memo to WTVJ staff members obtained by The Miami Herald, the network said it plans to sell both WTVJ and its station in Hartford, Conn., to raise money to expand its operations on so-called digital platforms like the Internet and cellphones.
''We've taken a hard look at our portfolio and made some difficult decisions about what's best for our business going forward,'' John Wallace, head of the division that oversees NBC's owned-and-operated stations, wrote.
Wallace's memo stated the network will operate stations only in the top 10 U.S. television markets. Miami-Fort Lauderdale is 16th, Hartford 29th.
NBC's decision to sell WTVJ while holding onto WSCV puzzled local broadcasters, who said owning two stations -- a ''duopoly,'' in industry lingo -- cuts costs and increases profitability in a business that is under pressure due to shrinking audiences.
''It caught people off-guard,'' said Dave Boylan, general manager at WPLG-ABC 10. ``Generally speaking, when you own a duopoly, you're pretty happy.''
The economic advantages of a duopoly prompted a wave of speculation among station managers that one of South Florida's lone-wolf stations might try to snap up WTVJ, expected to bring a sale price between $350 million and $400 million.
The biggest stations without broadcast partners are WPLG, owned by the Washington Post Co., and WSVN-Fox 7, owned by Sunbeam Broadcasting.
Said WPLG's Boylan: ``We've learned of the news just as you guys have. There's no effort on the part of the Washington Post Co. that I know of to buy WTVJ.''
Ed Ansin, owner of Miami-based Sunbeam -- which recently bought another station in Boston to create a duopoly there -- declined comment.
