The Morning Call announced Sept. 2 the sale of Target Select Cable, the Allentown company that sells advertising on the Lehigh Valley’s three major cable television stations.

The newspaper group also sold to the same group LVTV, or Lehigh Valley Television, a TV station running mostly classified ads on the RCN and Service Electric television networks.

Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed. Target Select officials declined to name the new owners, though they said some were members of the ownership group that sold Target Select to The Morning Call three years ago.
Michael Foux, vice president of marketing and planning for The Morning Call, said the newspaper decided to focus on its core publishing business and other multimedia partnerships.

The newspaper, based in Allentown, bought Target Select in March 2000 for an undisclosed price. At the time, Morning Call officials said the purchase would make the newspaper “a more integrated, more efficient company.”

Ten days later, The Morning Call’s parent company, Times Mirror, was bought by The Tribune Co. of Chicago in an $8 billion deal.

Target Select, formed in 1991, serves advertisers in Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Monroe, Northampton and Schuylkill counties. It sells ads on the RCN, Service Electric and Blue Ridge Communications systems.

The company sells local commercial time on 36 national cable networks, including the Food Network, CNBC and ESPN. National cable companies set aside two to three minutes every hour for local ads. Target Select buys that time for the Lehigh Valley market, then resells it to area companies. Using high-speed fiber-optic connections, Target Select sends local-themed ads to outlying offices, where they are slotted on the air.

Target Select also servers the Lancaster, Lancaster County and greater Washington, D.C., markets.

The company employs 35-40 people, said Todd Donnelly, vice president and general manager. He declined to comment on the company’s annual sales.