FCC Should Delay Sinclair/Tribune Until DC Circuit Rules, Say PK, Common Cause
The FCC should delay consideration of Sinclair buying Tribune until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the revived UHF discount, said a motion from Public Knowledge and Common Cause filed Thursday in agency docket 17-179.…
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“Disassembling a transaction that has been consummated, or bringing it in compliance with a significantly lower ownership cap, would be very difficult or impossible.” Though the deal’s shot clock has been stopped while the FCC collects comments on Sinclair’s latest amended application, “only 13 days remain on the clock,” PK and Common Cause said. The final filing deadline for the Sinclair/Tribune proceeding is July 12. “If the Commission were to restart it at the close of the current pleading cycle, that could lead to action in this proceeding that would be uninformed by the Court’s decision,” said Common Cause and PK said. “Jumping the gun” and approving the deal before the court ruling could allow the combined company to obtain “long-lasting concessions from distributors” based on “a heft that it will have to shed shortly thereafter,” the motions said. Disassembly of the combined company could take “a long time to effectuate” and would be extremely difficult, the groups said. If the UHF discount were to go away after the companies were allowed to combine, they would have to divest stations to reduce their reach by 33 percent of U.S. households, the y said. “Abeyance is necessary to guard against the substantial ‘unscrambling of the eggs’ in the form of station divestitures by New Sinclair so significant that they would amount to an undoing of the merger.” Sinclair didn’t comment.