Young Retains Cox Reps for its 10 TV Stations

NEW YORK: Young Broadcasting has enlisted Cox Reps for national sales representation of its 10 TV stations. The company is also replacing its own rep firm with dedicated sales personnel in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The sales executives will be devoted exclusively to the company’s 10 stations located primarily in top-100 media markets.

Young Broadcasting’s Adam Young, Inc., a television representation firm founded in 1944 by Adam Young, will cease operations at the end of January.

“The TV rep business has changed dramatically over the past decade, with an increasingly complex business environment forcing a wave of consolidations,” said Young President Deborah McDermott, “Now, with Young Broadcasting financially structured as one of the strongest and healthiest television broadcast companies, we have joined forces with Cox, an industry leader. Together, both companies are poised to succeed and to take advantage of our rebounding business environment, as well as the new digital rep revenue system.”

Young Broadcasting went private last June in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy that erased $800 million in debt off of the books. Seven of its TV stations were put under the operation of Gray Television of Atlanta. Young’s stations include five ABCs: WKRN-TV in Nashville, Tenn.; WTEN-TV in Albany, N.Y.; WRIC-TV in Richmond, Va.; WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tenn.; and WBAY-TV in Green Bay, Wis. Three CBS affils: WLNS-TV in Lansing, Mich.; KLFY-TV in Lafayette, La.; and KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, S.D. It has one NBC, KWQC-TV in Davenport, Iowa; and a MyNetwork station, KRON-TV in San Francisco, Calif.