Television Stations

Lorimar-Telepictures has "agreed in principle" to buy six television stations, including KCST-TV in San Diego, for a reported purchase price of $1.8 billion, a Detroit television station reported Tuesday night. The station, WJBK-TV in Detroit, is one of six stations formerly owned by Storer Communications that are to be included in the sale, said George Sells, the station's evening anchor. He said the deal reportedly also includes the Storer Washington news bureau and Storer Programming Inc.

The television stations in Alabama, Oklahoma and Arizona are being sold to Knight-Ridder Newspapers to meet federal requirements for Gannett's acquisition of Evening News Assn., which is based in Detroit. The $160-million sales agreement is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission, Gannett said. The media company is selling Evening News Assn.'s stations to meet FCC rules restricting joint ownership of competing broadcast outlets.

Saturday night's California Lottery "Big Spin" show will be carried by a full network of 11 television stations throughout the state, lottery officials said Thursday, but the Los Angeles and San Francisco channels have been changed. The show, which will be taped beginning at 10 a.m. at an exhibition hall on the Cal Expo grounds in Sacramento, will be aired at 7:30 p.m. in Los Angeles by KTTV, Channel 11, replacing KABC, Channel 7, and at 9:30 p.m.

Times Mirror Co., as expected, said it has reached agreements to sell its four network-affiliated TV stations to an investor group for $335 million in cash and securities. The buyer, Argyle Television Holding Inc., is a newly created company that is acquiring the stations in association with the merchant banking group of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

Freedom Newspapers Inc., a Santa Ana-based newspaper and television company, agreed Friday to buy the nation's oldest television station for $57 million. Freedom Newspapers, which owns the Orange County Register, 28 other daily newspapers and four television stations, will pay $22 million more for WRGB in Schenectady, N.Y., than current owner, Universal Communications Corp., paid for it in 1983.

Two Canadian television stations, CFCF-12 in Montreal and ONtv in Ontario, are expected to drop the new TV show "Dr. Laura" next week. Gay rights advocates, upset over host Laura Schlessinger's statements on her syndicated radio program regarding homosexuality, have lobbied advertisers to avoid the talk program. Since its premiere in September, dozens of advertisers have pulled out of the show in the U.S.

Times Mirror Co. is in discussions over the possible sale of its four network-affiliated television stations, the Los Angeles-based media company said Tuesday. The sale would complete a shift away from broadcast television. The company said a transaction had not been agreed upon, and it was uncertain whether a final agreement would be reached. Sources said the value of the transaction, if completed, would be several hundred million dollars.

Federal investigators served subpoenas on Los Angeles television stations late Tuesday and demanded tapes of all un-broadcast footage of riot-related violence, but officials at the stations said they would fight turning over the material. "We don't feel that the government has the right to come and get this," Warren Cereghino news director at KTLA-Channel 5, said of the material.

Federal regulators are expected this week to approve News Corp.'s $5.35-billion purchase of Chris-Craft Industries Inc.'s 10 television stations--waiving government rules that would have prevented the deal, sources said. The purchase was announced last August, but Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission have resisted approving the deal out of concern it would allow media mogul Rupert Murdoch's company to exceed agency limits on the reach of media companies.

The Federal Communications Commission changed some rules to give television stations additional flexibility in switching to digital signals, as sought by Paxson Communications Corp. and other broadcasters. The FCC agreed to extend some deadlines for TV stations that agree not to use some of their allotted airwaves as part of an effort to clear the frequencies used by broadcasters on channels 60 to 69.