Meredith buying WB in K.C. from Sinclair

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. said Friday that it was selling a Kansas City, Mo. television station to Meredith Corp. for $33.5 million.

Sinclair said Meredith paid $26.8 million for the non-license assets of the WB affiliated KSMO-TV, and was awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission for the remaining $6.7 million.

Meredith already owns KCTV-5, the CBS affiliate in Kansas City, and plans to run KSMO with Sinclair under a joint sales agreement under which Meredith will provide sales, operational and administrative services that are unrelated to programming.

Microsoft

Novell sues rival again

Less than a week after a collecting a $536 million settlement from Microsoft Corp., Novell Inc. on Friday filed another lawsuit accusing the software giant of violating antitrust laws.

The suit, which dovetails with the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft, claims Microsoft used its market dominance in the mid-1990s to keep Novell’s WordPerfect word processing program and Quattro Pro spreadsheet application from gaining wider commercial acceptance.

The lawsuit alleges that Microsoft withheld technical information about Windows to prevent Novell from updating its software, made its operating system inhospitable to WordPerfect and other Novell programs and leveraged its own ubiquity to prevent Novell from offering its programs to customers.

Microsoft officials argue that antitrust laws don’t require the company to disclose technical intricacies, and say Novell is trying to blame others for its own bad business decisions.

Aviation

Report: French want to create Boeing rival

The French government wants to merge Airbus parent EADS with defense company Thales to create a new European giant to rival Boeing Co., a leading financial daily reported Friday.

Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy would not comment on the report in Les Echos that the government was pushing for a takeover of Thales SA by European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., his spokesman said.

EADS, which is 15 percent owned by the French state and relies heavily on government orders for its military businesses, refused to say whether the companies had discussed such a deal. Media officials from Thales did not return calls.