U.S. regulators tightened rules on broadcast owners controlling more than one TV station in a city and said companies such as Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. must alter existing arrangements to comply.
The Federal Communications Commission on a 3-2 Democrat-led partyline vote Monday adopted Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to crack down on what he has called attempts to circumvent rules limiting media ownership. The rules are designed to ensure news within communities isn’t dominated by one voice.
“Today what we’re doing is closing off what has been a growing end run” around ownership limits, Wheeler said at the FCC’s monthly meeting.
The change attacks a technique in which TV station owners control the advertising of nearby stations owned by a third party and reap the sales revenue. The deals position the larger station as “de facto owner” of the smaller station, whose independence is “a legal fiction,” Wheeler said in a March 6 blog post.
Republicans and companies said the arrangements facing new restrictions help fund local programming at struggling television stations in midsize and smaller markets.
The shared arrangements help stations in smaller markets survive, said Ajit Pai, the agency’s senior Republican. He called the agency’s action “the epitome of arbitrary and capricious decision-making.”
The FCC, by its vote, said shared advertising sales of 15 percent or more amount to common ownership. It gave station owners two years to comply or to seek an exception.
Options for station owners include reducing or eliminating ad-sales sharing, William Lake, the FCC’s media bureau chief, said during a news conference.
“It’ll be a matter for the judgment of station owners to decide how to restructure their situation,” Lake said.
The waiver standard is “vague,” Pai said, adding, “I fear that the substantial majority of requests will not meet with a favorable response.”
Wheeler’s proposal would “effectively eliminate” the arrangements in small and medium markets, Gordon Smith, president of the National Association of Broadcasters trade group, said in a March 24 letter to Wheeler.
The FCC has approved 85 shared-ad sales arrangements in merger reviews since 2008, said Smith, whose group is based in Washington.
Shares of Nexstar Broadcasting Group Inc. rose 3.9 percent to close Monday at$37.52 and Gray Television Inc. rose 5.5 percent to $10.37, while Sinclair climbed 2.1 percent to $27.09. Shares of all three station owners had declined after Wheeler’s proposal was announced March 6.
Jennifer Neuman - a spokesman for Nexstar, owner of KARK-TV, Channel 4 and KLRT-TV, Channel 16 in Little Rock - said the company doesn’t expect Monday’s FCC vote to have an immediate impact on the stations.
“Until we see the order in writing as released by theFCC we can’t give any guidance to how this will impact the particular stations, in this case in the Little Rock market,” she said.
Sinclair on March 20 said it would restructure a deal with the Allbritton family to meet FCC objections, selling a station in three markets where it proposes to buy an affiliate of Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network from Allbritton.
Sinclair, based in Hunt Valley, Md., owns or provides programming and services to 149 TV stations in 71 markets, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It provides nonprogramming services such as sales and management help to 20 stations in 17 markets, according to the filing. The practice helps stations operate efficiently and better serve their communities, Sinclair said in the filing.
The FCC also voted to limit TV stations’ power to negotiate jointly for fees charged to cable companies and said it would begin a wider review of ownership rules.
Information for this article was contributed by Jessica Seaman of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Business, Pages 23 on 04/01/2014