Heartland Media LLC and MSouth Equity Partners are buying a television in Mississippi.

The station, WTVA, is an NBC and ABC affiliate in Tupelo, Mississippi.

The deal expands Heartland's holdings to five television stations. The other stations are located in Utica, New York, and Eugene, Medford, Klamath Falls, Oregon. All the TV stations are ABC network affiliates.

Heartland, headquartered in Omaha, is run by newspaper and broadcasting veteran Bob Prather, who previously implemented an aggressive growth strategy to build Grey Television Inc. into a 41-station group.

MSouth Equity is an Atlanta private equity firm that generally invests in companies that are valued between $25 million and $125 million.

The deal is subject to approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

M&A for broadcast stations has picked up lately, as the deals allow buyers to capitalize on fees from cable companies that want to run local programming. The firm sold Fischbein LLC, a packaging machinery and material-handling supplier, to Odyssey Investment Partners LLC in May 2013. 

Recent deals include Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.'s (Nasdaq: SBGI) $120 million deal for Las Vegas station KSNV. In May, Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) agreed to buy six television stations in Texas for $215 million. 

For more on the trend, see Broadcasting Stations Beckon Buyers.