Hollywood Reporter: Warren Buffett’s Only TV Station Loses ABC Affiliation as Disney Finds New Miami Partner

Story from Hollywood Reporter:

The Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett is parting ways with Disney at his conglomerate’s only local TV station.

Disney said Thursday that WPLG, the south Florida TV station owned by Berkshire Hathaway for the last 11 years, would be losing its ABC affiliation later this summer. Disney says that it is partnering with Sunbeam Television Group to launch a new home for ABC, called ABC Miami.

Disney says that ABC programming will continue on WPLG until Aug. 4, after which point it will move to ABC Miami at channel 72. Sources say that the agreement for the affiliation deal ended at the end of the year, and despite continued talks, the two sides were unable to come to terms on a deal.

“Broadcast television stations across the country have announced massive layoffs in recent years,” WPLG CEO & president E.R. Bert Medina told staff in a meeting Thursday, per the station. “WPLG is proud we’ve not had layoffs, but it became clear that if we accepted the deal ABC was proposing, we too would have been forced to lay off employees in order to pay the hefty price the network was demanding.”

Medina said that WPLG will instead double down on local programming.

Disney, meanwhile, is happy to have found a new partner in Sunbeam, which owns and operates WSVN-TV in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL, as well as WHDH-TV and WLVI-TV in Boston, MA.

“We are incredibly excited to join forces with Sunbeam Television in South Florida moving forward as they not only share Disney’s enduring commitment to serving local communities, but they also recognize the value of ABC’s esteemed brand and the significant investments we’re making to our world-class network content,” said Susi D’Ambra Coplan, senior VP of affiliate relations for Disney Entertainment. “We would also like to thank Berkshire Hathaway Media and everyone at WPLG Local 10 for their partnership – we are very proud to have brought some of the most compelling programming to our highly-valued, mutual viewers over the years.”

“When the opportunity to affiliate with ABC became available, we knew that our combined resources would allow us to develop an extremely strong partnership,” added Paul Magnes, co-president of Sunbeam Television Corporation. “Sunbeam Television Corporation has a proven track record as a competitive broadcaster. Adding ABC programming to our stations’ portfolio will only strengthen our footprint. As a family-owned company, we have been embedded in this community for nearly 70 years, with a commitment to local news and supporting non-profit organizations across South Florida.”

The end of the affiliation agreement marks the end of an era for WPLG, which has been Miami and south Florida’s ABC affiliate station on channel 10 for decades. The station has a long and complicated history, and was owned for much of its existence by The Washington Post and the Graham family. After the Grahams sold the Post to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, their non-Post assets were merged into a new company, and they later sold WPLG to Buffett’s Berkshire in 2014.

Buffett is not a media mogul, and Berkshire Hathaway is not a media company, though it has dabbled in the business over the years. It used to own and operate a number of regional newspapers, including the Omaha World-Herald and Buffalo News, before offloading those in 2020 to Lee Enterprises.

And Buffett holds and has held a number of media stocks, including Charter Communications and SiriusXM. Berkshire also acquired and subsequently sold a large stake in Paramount Global, taking a huge loss.