KADY May Be Sold to Area Buyers : Television: The deal means the county’s largest English-language station will be under local ownership.

The operators of KADY-TV Channel 63 on Wednesday announced a deal to buy out the station’s out-of-state owners, putting the county’s only full-power English-language television station under local ownership for the first time.

The proposed sale, dependent upon approval from the Federal Communications Commission, is estimated to carry a price of more than $10 million.

“We will be a part of the community and will be responsive to it,” said John Huddy, who oversees the station’s operations now and heads the investors’ group planning the purchase. “One of the things a television station does is help define a community.”

Last month, the station announced plans to expand local coverage of special events, listing 12 special programs to be broadcast over the next six months, from Seabee Days in Port Hueneme in June to Cal Lutheran University football games this fall.

The station attempted half-hour nightly newscasts for a time, but abandoned them in 1989. Huddy said his “pet project” is to resume newscasts, if KADY can attract enough advertising and contain costs, perhaps through cooperation with another local media outlet.

While cable companies countywide maintain channels that broadcast City Council meetings and local functions to their own customers, KADY is the only local English-language broadcasting available through several cable systems countywide.

The Oxnard-based station was founded by a group led by Beverly Hills accountant Donald Sterling in August, 1985, and opened under the call letters KTIE. Since 1988, it has been owned by Riklis Broadcasting, a subsidiary of New York-based E-II Holdings Corp.

Huddy is president of Riklis and his wife, Erica, is programming director.

On Wednesday, Huddy said, an investors’ group that he leads reached agreement on a pact to buy the station from E-II. Under the terms of the sale, ownership would go to HBC Holdings, made up of John and Erica Huddy and several investors from Ventura County and Southern California. Both Huddys would continue in their current jobs.

E-II officials were unavailable for comment. Huddy said the sale agreement included a pledge not to disclose the price, but a source close to the deal, requesting anonymity, put its price tag at “more than $10 million in cash, notes and assumed liabilities.”

KADY’s operation on Maulhardt Avenue in Oxnard employs 47 people, sending out its programming via both a cable signal and conventional over-the-air broadcast. The station’s programming is also distributed in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties under an agreement with San Luis Obispo station KADE, giving the operation a tri-county viewership.

Huddy said the stations together have a potential reach of 429,800 households, 306,800 of them through cable broadcasts.

The station’s current schedule includes first-run programming (including Laker basketball games and the new versions of the “Dragnet” and “WKRP” series), movies (“Murphy’s Romance” “Purple Rain” and “Cry Freedom” are on the July schedule) and syndicated reruns (including “The Rockford Files” and “Highway to Heaven”).

FCC officials said they knew of no pending complaints against the station, but a spokesman did note two past complaints--letter-writers who, in February, 1989, and September, 1990, cited offensive language or nudity on the air. Neither provided further documentation, and the FCC has shelved their complaints.

“We no longer automatically eliminate all nudity. We no longer automatically eliminate every four-letter word,” Huddy said. “I’m not going to put on ‘Tom Jones’ Bawdy Adventures’ uncut, but if it’s a movie of quality, of merit . . . I don’t see that our role should be as censors here.”

Ventura County’s only other full-fledged television station, broadcast officials said, is KSTV, a Spanish-language operation that in October became available to the 36,000 Oxnard households that subscribe to Jones Intercable.

Most of KSTV’s 24-hour schedule is filled with a feed from the Mexico City-based Galavision network. KSTV President Walter Ulloa said the station is negotiating to reach viewers through other county cable companies and that this fall he hopes to begin a nightly half-hour local news program and a weekly variety show.