Investor Group to Buy 3 Times Mirror TV Stations

Times Mirror, publisher of the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, said Monday that it has agreed to sell three of its seven television stations for $84 million cash.

The stations, located in Harrisburg, Pa.; Syracuse, N.Y., and Elmira, N.Y., will be sold to Smith Acquisition Corp., an investor group made up of three television executives and a venture-capital company.

Taken together, Times Mirror said, the three stations account for less than 1% of the company’s revenue.

The sale will leave Times Mirror with stations in Dallas, Austin, St. Louis and Birmingham, Ala. These generally are larger markets and generate more than three times as much revenue as the three stations being sold.

President and Chief Executive Robert F. Erburu said in a prepared statement that Times Mirror was committed to buying additional stations “compatible with the company’s long-term growth goals.”

Times Mirror said it expects to post a pretax gain of more than $65 million on the sale, which is expected to become final in the first half of 1986. The deal must have government approval and the two sides must complete certain contractual matters.

The deal was initiated by the investor group, Times Mirror said. Robert N. Smith said in an interview from his offices in Michigan that he and his co-investors approached Times Mirror because he had “a lot of faith in the economic development and future growth” of the cities involved and because the group was “excited about getting stations with the high-quality management that Times Mirror had.”

In addition to Smith, who is part owner of a TV station in New Bern, N.C., the investor group includes George D. Lilly, president of a company that owns four stations in Montana, and William S. Reyner, owner of the CBS affiliate in Schenectady, N.Y. The investor group also includes TA Associates, a venture-capital firm with offices in Boston and Palo Alto.

The stations involved are WHTM-TV Channel 27, the ABC affiliate in Harrisburg; WSTM-TV Channel 3, the NBC affiliate in Syracuse, and WETM-TV Channel 18, the NBC affiliate in Elmira.