In February 2001, Clear Channel Communications subsidiary
Citicasters was fined $25,000 for its use of time brokerage agreements and litigation for unlawfully controlling
Youngstown,
Ohio area radio station WBTJ (101.9 FM, now
WYLR); the company had also been the target of complaints for using
KFJO (FM) to rebroadcast
KSJO after it had nominally sold KFJO to minority-owned interests. In 2009, the Media Council of Hawaii complained to the FCC about Raycom's
Hawaii News Now operation, stating that it would "directly reduce the diversity of local voices in a community by replacing independent newscasts on the brokered station with those of the brokering station." In response, the FCC stated it would begin to investigate into the matter. The lawsuit was settled in February 2013 via mutual agreement, after which the Fox affiliation was given back to WFFT.
Acquisitions Gannett acquisition of Belo in
Dallas,
Texas. Gannett Company's 2013 acquisition of Belo was opposed by organizations such as the American Cable Association and
Free Press, due to Gannett's plans to use LMAs and two shell companies owned by former Belo and
Fisher Communications executives (respectively, Sander Media and Tucker Operating Co.) to dodge FCC newspaper cross-ownership restrictions in
Louisville,
Phoenix,
Portland, Oregon and
Tucson. Although Gannett contended that the arrangements were legal, Free Press president Craig Aaron stated that "the FCC shouldn't let Gannett break the rules. Media consolidation results in fewer journalists in the newsroom and fewer opinions on the airwaves. Concentrating media outlets in the hands of just a few companies benefits only the companies themselves." The deal would have given Gannett a virtual triopoly in Phoenix, consisting of its NBC station
KPNX, independent station
KTVK and CW affiliate
KASW. In Tucson, Fox affiliate KMSB and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU were already operated by Raycom Media's CBS affiliate KOLD-TV under a shared services agreement established under Belo ownership, but Gannett would still handle advertising sales for the stations. Following the closure of the Belo purchase,
Meredith Corporation announced a deal to purchase KMOV, along with KTVK and KASW. As Meredith would have a duopoly between KTVK and its Phoenix CBS affiliate
KPHO-TV, KASW was to be sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting and operated by Meredith under an LMA. As a result of the FCC's scrutiny on any new station sharing agreements, on October 23, 2014, Meredith would backtrack on this plan and instead sell KASW to Nexstar, which would operate the station independently of KTVK and KPHO. Following Gannett's split into independent broadcasting and publishing companies,
Tegna, Inc.—the owner of Gannett's stations following the split, bought back the licenses to the Sander Media stations, placing them back under its full control. In December 2013, FCC Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman sent a letter demanding information from the Sinclair Broadcast Group on the financial aspects of its "sidecar" operations, and warned that in the three aforementioned markets, "the proposed transactions would result in the elimination of the
grandfathered status of certain local marketing agreements and thus cause the transactions to violate our local TV ownership rules." Sinclair restructured the deal in March 2014, choosing to sell WHP-TV, WMMP and WABM, and terminate an SSA with the Cunningham-owned Fox affiliate
WTAT in Charleston to acquire the Allbritton-owned stations in those markets (
WCIV,
WHTM-TV and
WBMA-LD, while also creating a new duopoly between the
ABC and
CW affiliates in Birmingham), as well as foregoing any operational or financial agreements with the buyers of the stations being sold to other parties. In May 2014, Sinclair disclosed in an FCC filling that it was unable to find buyers for the three affected stations, requiring changes to its transaction. However, in Charleston and Birmingham, the company proposed to shut down stations entirely (rather than selling them to other buyers that would also handle their operational responsibilities) so it could maintain legal duopolies; surrendering the licenses for WCIV and the full-powered repeaters of WBMA-LD (WJSU and WCFT), and moving their ABC programming to Sinclair's existing stations WMMP and WABM respectively – which would shift their existing MyNetworkTV programming to digital subchannels.
Nexstar acquisition of Tribune Nexstar Media Group acquired
Tribune Media in 2019; to meet ownership limits, it divested 21 stations to the
E. W. Scripps Company,
Tegna Inc., and Circle City Broadcasting. The divested stations included Tribune's New York City flagship
WPIX; the station was sold to Scripps, but with a $75 million option for Nexstar to buy it back between March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2021. Nexstar transferred this option to Mission Broadcasting, who subsequently exercised it in August 2020 (the following month, Scripps announced its intent to acquire
Ion Media, including its New York station
WPXN-TV). In October 2022, Nexstar would acquire a majority ownership in that station's network affiliation,
The CW. In March 2024, the FCC fined Nexstar and Mission $1.2 million and $612,395 respectively, and ordered Mission to sell WPIX within twelve months; the FCC found that Mission's agreements with Nexstar to operate WPIX amounted to an "unauthorized transfer of control" of the station, thus exceeding the FCC's 39% market share limit for broadcasters. Nexstar must either divest other stations so it can legally own WPIX, or Mission must sell the station to a third-party.
FCC limits on joint sales agreements for television stations In response to criticism of the virtual duopolies and sharing agreements, the FCC began to consider potential changes to address these loopholes. In March 2013, the Commission first tabled a proposal that would make joint sales agreements count the same as ownership. In January 2014 town hall meeting, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler disclosed that he planned to place more scrutiny on the use of LMA-style agreements and shell companies, stating that "there were a couple of references in a couple of recent decisions in which we've said that we're going to do things differently going forward on what were called these shell corporations." Later that month, it was reported that the FCC had placed all pending acquisitions involving the use of shell companies on hold, so the Commission could discuss changes to its policies. Among the deals affected by this decision included the aforementioned Sinclair/Allbritton purchase. On March 6, 2014, the FCC announced that it would hold a vote on March 31 on a proposal to ban joint sales agreements involving television stations outright, making them attributable to FCC ownership limits if the senior partner sells 15% or more of advertising time of a competing junior partner station in the JSA; the ban applies to both existing sharing agreements under such a structure as well as pending station transactions that include a JSA. Station owners would be given a two-year grace period to unwind or modify joint sales agreements in violation of the policy; coordinated retransmission consent negotiations between two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market would also be barred under the proposal. Wheeler also proposed an expedited process to review joint sales agreements on a case-by-case basis, granting a waiver of the rules if a broadcaster can prove a particular joint sales agreement arrangement serves the public interest. On March 12, 2014, the FCC Media Bureau released a notice that it would further analyze television station transactions that include sharing agreements, particularly those that include a purchase option that "may counter any incentive the licensee has to increase the value of the station, since the licensee may be unlikely to realize that increased value." The
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) – which, along with station groups such as Sinclair Broadcast Group, have disapproved of the proposal to ban JSAs – presented a compromise proposal, in which the brokered licensee in a sharing agreement would retain control over at least 85 percent of the station's programming, maintain at least 70 percent of ad sales revenue and "maintain at least 20 percent of station value in the license itself". FCC commissioner
Ajit Pai, and Gordon Smith, president of the NAB, were also opposed to the new rules on joint sales agreements, believing that they would discourage the ownership of television stations by
minority-owned companies. Tom Wheeler, however, proposed the restrictions in the hopes of encouraging more women and minorities to own stations, due to the ongoing consolidation in the television industry through company mergers and sharing agreements. On March 31, 2014, the FCC voted 3–2 to approve the proposed ban on joint sales agreements and voted 5–0 to approve the proposed ban on coordinated retransmission consent negotiations between two of the four highest-rated stations within a given market; the JSA ban went into effect on June 19, 2014. Under the restrictions, the FCC would rule on waivers to maintain select existing JSAs within 90 days of the application's filing. The FCC also began a request for comment on policies to address other agreements, such as shared services agreements. The prohibition on television JSAs had been proposed as early as 2004, a year after the FCC voted to treat JSAs between radio stations as duopolies. Despite this fact, broadcasting companies criticized the ban, accusing the Commission of using it as a move to encourage participation in a
spectrum incentive auction then set to occur in 2015, and stating that the ban would place them at a disadvantage during retransmission consent negotiations with pay television providers. On December 19, 2015, as a
rider to the federal budget, the grace period for unwinding or modifying existing JSAs was extended to 10 years. On May 25, 2016, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down the restrictions on joint sales agreements, ruling that the FCC cannot manipulate its ownership rules without "[in] the previous four years, [fulfilling] its obligation to review [the] rule and determine whether it is in the public interest". On November 16, 2017, under the
Trump administration, the FCC voted in favor of no longer having JSAs attributable to ownership.
Divestment and subchannel consolidation of stations The increased scrutiny being imposed by the FCC regarding local marketing, shared services, and joint sales agreements have led to more drastic measures by broadcasting companies attempting to use them in acquisitions; in 2014, two broadcasting companies declared intents to shut acquired stations down entirely and consolidate their programming onto existing stations through multicasting, rather than attempting to use sidecars and sharing agreements or selling them to other parties that would assume full responsibility of their day-to-day operations. Sinclair was able to retain WBMA-LD in any event as the FCC does not impose any ownership limits on low-power stations. On June 13, 2014, Gray Television announced that it would shutter six stations and consolidate existing programming onto subchannels of Gray-owned stations in their respective market. Unlike Sinclair, however, Gray stated that it would sell the licenses of the shuttered stations to minority-owned broadcasters in collaboration with the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council – under the condition that they would operate them independently from other stations in the market, and without the use of any sharing agreements. All six of the stations were owned by companies other than Gray, but their non-license assets are either owned by Gray, or were operated by stations now owned by Gray under agreements. Gray would operate the affected stations under LMAs until the sales and consolidation are complete. Aside from one, most of the stations involved in these changes were related to Gray's acquisition of stations from
Hoak Media. Three of these stations were immediately shut down the same day, while the remainder remained operated by Gray until the sales were completed. Gray announced buyers for the stations on August 27, 2014. On August 27, 2014, the station was sold to Legacy Broadcasting. On May 21, 2018, Gray agreed to acquire KNHL from Legacy Broadcasting for $475,000, becoming a satellite station of KSNB-TV. •
KNDX/KXND (
Bismarck/
Minot, North Dakota), owned by Prime Cities Broadcasting, which asked the FCC to dismiss the sale of the stations to Excalibur Broadcasting (a sidecar owned by former Gray executive Don Ray), Gray acquired the stations' non-license assets on May 1, 2014; both stations were then taken off the air on June 13, 2014, with Fox programming being moved to subchannels of the NBC North Dakota stations (
KMOT,
KQCD-TV and
KFYR-TV). On August 27, 2014, the station was sold to Chang Media Group, and was later re-launched as
Cozi TV station
KGBY. Following the approval of Sinclair's purchase of Allbritton, commissioner Ajit Pai further criticized the FCC's new policies and its endorsement of Sinclair's proposal to shut down stations to comply with them. Describing the three Allbritton stations as being "victims" of the "crackdown" against joint sales agreements, he stated regarding WCIV that "apparently the Commission believes that it is better for that station to go out of business than for Howard Stirk Holdings to own the station and participate in a joint sales agreement with Sinclair. I strongly disagree. And so too, I'll bet, would consumers in Charleston." In Quincy Newspapers' acquisition of Granite Broadcasting's remaining stations, the acquisition was briefly re-structured to have
Malara Broadcast Group—which served as a virtual duopoly partner for Granite with
WISE-TV (NBC) Fort Wayne and
KDLH-TV Duluth (CBS), retain the stations and their current agreements with
WPTA and
KBJR-TV in lieu of having them sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting. The acquisition was restructured in July 2015 to, again, have SagamoreHill Broadcasting acquire the two stations, but have their current SSAs wound down within nine months. Following the end of the SSA, the two stations retained The CW as independently run stations, with their remaining affiliations moved to subchannels of KBJR and WPTA. Quincy similarly wound down an SSA in
Peoria, Illinois with Sinclair-owned
WHOI by trading its
South Bend Fox affiliation (previously held by
WSJV-TV) to Sinclair (where it moved to a subchannel of
WSBT-TV), in exchange for WHOI's ABC and CW affiliations, which moved to subchannels of
WEEK-TV. In 2018, Quincy re-purchased WISE and KDLH, under an assertion that both stations were not within the top 4 of their respective markets.
WAGT dispute and
WAGT. In February 2016, Gray Television acquired
Schurz Communications' stations, including
Augusta, Georgia's
WAGT. As Gray could not own both WAGT and its existing
CBS affiliate
WRDW-TV as a legal duopoly, Gray proposed the sale of WAGT's broadcast spectrum during the incentive auction, and for WAGT to go silent upon completion of the deal so the company would not be running more than one of the top four stations in the market. The FCC, however, required that Gray continue to operate WAGT as a separate station through the end of the auction, and not enter into any joint sales agreements. Upon the closure of the sale, Gray unwound the shared services and joint sales agreements that Schurz had established with
WJBF-TV and
Media General, and replaced its previous news programs with simulcasts from WRDW. Gray also accused WJBF of "[refusing] to agree to a smooth transition of personnel [from WAGT]", as WAGT's employees fall under the employment of Media General due to the SSA. On February 26, 2016, Media General obtained a preliminary injunction against Gray for violating the SSA and JSA, which required that Gray return control of WAGT to Media General, and forbade Gray from selling WAGT in the spectrum incentive auction. The company accused Gray of using the spectrum auction and sale of the station to exit the agreements illegitimately, as they were to last through 2020, and apply to any future owner of WAGT. Gray attempted to block the injunction by arguing that its actions were required in order to comply with the FCC's prohibition of joint sales agreements, but was denied. On March 23, 2016, the Supreme Court of Georgia struck down the injunction without addressing the litigation, and Gray took back control of WAGT. On July 13, 2016, Media General was issued a $700,000 fine by the FCC. WAGT's spectrum sold for $40,763,036.
DirecTV lawsuit In March 2023,
DirecTV sued Nexstar Media Group, alleging that it was conspiring with the sidecar companies Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting to manipulate retransmission fees for its stations. The company, which had been in a
carriage dispute with Mission and White Knight since October 2022, stated that the companies "effectively relinquished decision-making authority to Nexstar, which has served as the ringleader of a conspiracy to harm competition and violate the antitrust laws." ==Internationally==