WASHINGTON—Sinclair has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission backing the proposed acquisition of Tegna by Nexstar arguing that FCC has authority to lift ownership caps and that the combination would not harm competing local news outlets like Sinclair in markets around the country.
“We respectfully submit that many of the Petitioners are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” the filing said. “They lecture the Commission about competition and the importance of local journalism despite their complete lack of involvement in promoting, preserving, or expanding local news. For its part, Sinclair competes with both Nexstar and Tegna. Indeed, our stations would overlap with a merged Nexstar and Tegna in 15 markets. If any party would have standing to legitimately protest this transaction, it would be us.”
“Yet we are submitting comments in this proceeding because, unlike the Petitioners, we recognize that the market in which local broadcasters compete today is far larger than broadcast television,” Sinclair argued. “The issues at stake are larger than any single broadcaster or transaction. If the Commission wants to preserve local news, it must modernize its regulations and its conception of the relevant market before it is too late.”
Referring to massive changes in the media landscape with the rise of big tech dominated digital platforms and streaming services, Sinclair stressed that “in their pleadings, Petitioners dig a broad and deep hole in the sand and invite the Commission to bury its head, ignoring everything that anyone who has been paying attention understands about the radical changes in the media and video ecosystem over the past two decades. Petitioners engage in fanciful thinking regarding relevant markets and recycle hopelessly outdated arguments that are wrong on the law and wrong on policy.”
More specifically, Sinclair argued that the FCC has the authority to raise ownership caps: “Section 202(c)(1)(B) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not itself establish a statutory ownership limit. Rather, Congress directed the Commission to `modify its rules’ to increase the national audience reach limitation to 35 percent.4 By instructing the Commission to revise its regulations, Congress confirmed that the power to revise the national cap resided in the FCC’s ownership rules and not in the Communications Act itself. In 2004, after the Commission had raised the national cap to 45 percent, Congress did not question the Commission’s authority to raise the cap. Rather, Congress simply instructed the Commission to once again modify its rules to increase the national cap to 39 percent.”
Sinclair also rebutted arguments that the deal would reduce competition: “As the Commission is aware, just two dominant streaming platforms, YouTube and Netflix, capture a greater share of viewing than all broadcasting combined. Yet YouTube and Netflix face no restrictions on their ability to operate at scale – in fact, they operate globally. Nor do they face any limitation or restriction on their ability to continue to grow to reach more viewers – and indeed there is every expectation that they will continue to do so.”
“The petitions to deny submitted in this proceeding fail to acknowledge the very real changes in the media marketplace over the previous decades,” Sinclair concluded in the Jan. 15 2026 filing. “They provide no basis for the Commission to deny the transaction at issue in this proceeding – rather, they rely on outdated assumptions and are in many cases flatly self-interested and anticompetitive.”
The full filing is available here.
