WASHINGTON—In a meeting with Federal Communications Commission staffers, representatives of the CBS Television Network Affiliates Association and their lawyers urged the regulator to impose conditions on the pending Paramount Global-Skydance merger to strengthen local stations and “address issues related to CBS control over affiliate finances and ‘virtual MVPD’ negotiations, exclusivity of programming, and affiliation renewal practices.”
Representatives of the affiliates and their lawyers met with David Brown, Jeremy Miller, Chris Robbins, and Emily Harrison of the FCC Media Bureau on July 8.
A letter summarizing the meeting said the affiliates raised issues that have become increasingly contentious between station owners and broadcast networks in recent years, namely network affiliate fees and retransmission consent negotiations with vMVPDs like Hulu and YouTube TV.
In recent years, the NAB and station groups have been lobbying the FCC and Congress on the issue of how vMVPDs are classified. Unlike traditional cable operators, those retrans negotiations are handled by the owners of major broadcast networks, such as Paramount, The Walt Disney Co. (owner of ABC) and NBCUniversal. Station group owners believe that if they handled the negotiations with vMVPDs, they could boost retrans fees.
The owners of the broadcast networks and vMVPDs have opposed the change, saying it would raise pay TV bills for consumers.
The importance of the issue for affiliates is seen in the attendance of senior executives from station groups that own CBS affiliates. In addition to lawyers from Cooley LLP, Co Media Group CEO Dan York, chairman of the affiliates association; Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley, its secretary; and Gray Media Presient and Co-CEO Pat LaPlatney all attended the meeting at FCC headquarters in Washington.
According to the letter, the affiliate representatives at the meeting “advocated that conditions associated with any merger approval order should be designed to strengthen local stations’ capacity to continue serving their communities with local news and information programming, and address issues related to CBS control over affiliate finances and ‘virtual MVPD' negotiations, exclusivity of programming and affiliation renewal practices. The Affiliates Association representatives asked the Media Bureau participants to consider these issues as they continue processing the proposed merger.”
The letter did not provide more specifics and did not address whether the FCC has the authority to impose such conditions on a pending merger as part of the transfer of the CBS-owned stations to new owners.
