Sinclair/Allbritton Deal Under Scrutiny

Seems the FCC is really looking at the Sinclair buyout of Allbritton really carefully.  At issue are the stations in the Charleston, S.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Harrisburg, Pa.markets and agency owner rules.  TV NewsCheck reports:

"Under the deals at issue, Sinclair is proposing to take over the Allbritton ABC affiliates in those markets, spin off one of its existing stations in the markets to sidecar companies, in transactions that would give Sinclair some control over at least some operations of multiple TV stations in each market.

In a letter Friday to Sinclair, however, FCC Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman said the way the deals were structured, Sinclair would lose grandfathered protections that it previously had that allow it to operate more than one TV station in each market through local marketing agreements. LMAs, which essentially allowed broadcasters to operate multiple stations in a market completely, are no longer legal.

“In three of the markets — Charleston, Birmingham and Harrisburg — 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,” Kreisman said in her letter.

Sinclair is in the process of purchasing all the Allbritton broadcasting stations, including KATV in Little Rock.