WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has approved the transfer of licenses for five TV stations from Sinclair to Rincon Broadcasting, which announced a $29.4 million deal to acquire the stations in March.
In doing so, the FCC also provided a rare exemption from its ownership rules prohibiting station groups from owning more than one top-four station in a market. That decision could be interpreted as another example of the FCC’s willingness to relax TV-station ownership rules. The agency has cleared two other waivers of the rule so far this year.
The five stations are WVTV-TV in Milwaukee, KTVO-TV in Kirksville, Mo.,; WICD-TV in Champaign, Ill., KHQA-TV in Hannibal, Mo., and WICS-TV in Springfield, Ill.
Rincon had been seeking to acquire from Sinclair the licenses of full-power television stations KHQA-TV, Hannibal, Mo., which carries both ABC and CBS affiliations in the Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk DMA; and KTVO, Kirksville, Mo., which carries both ABC and CBS affiliations in the Ottumwa-Kirksville DMA. Granting the proposed assignments allow Rincon to own multiple top-four rated programming streams in these DMAs.
In its memorandum opinion and order, the FCC concluded that “any potential public interest harms of Rincon’s proposed ownership of KHQA-TV and KTVO with their top-four affiliations intact are outweighed by the unrebutted record evidence of the public interest benefits of this transaction, which would ensure the preservation of local news service in the local markets. Accordingly, application of the Top-Four Prohibition would not be in the public interest in this case. We also find that grant of the applications will pose no competitive harm and would otherwise serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.”
In addition, the FCC granted Rincon “continued authority to operate WICD as a satellite of WICS in the Champaign-Urbana & Springfield-Decatur market.”
In approving the license transfers the FCC rejected a petition by public interest group Frequency Forward opposing the deal. Frequency Forward had argued that Sinclair has a history of skirting ownership caps by having closely affiliated companies own the licenses of stations that then establish operational ties with Sinclair. Rincon is owned by Todd Parkin, a former Sinclair executive.
The full Memorandum and Order is available here.
