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The Federal Communications Fee has decided that native TV large Nexstar Media Group‘s takeover of WPIX-TV in New York in 2020 violated federal limits on station possession.
In a ruling issued Thursday, the regulatory company ordered Mission Broadcasting, Nexstar’s accomplice in WPIX, to promote the station. Failing that, Nexstar might put the station below its umbrella after which shed different stations in its portfolio in an effort to stay below the possession cap. The FCC additionally fined the corporate $1.2 million.
Nexstar responded by vowing to “vigorously” dispute the choice.
WPIX, which went on the air in 1948, has been a fixture in New York media and have become an affiliate of The CW in 2006. Nexstar, the No. 1 proprietor of U.S. TV stations, acquired management of The CW in 2022. The corporate has operated WPIX since 2020 below a neighborhood advertising and marketing settlement with Mission. Such agreements, usually described as “sidecar” offers, have come below scrutiny lately amid consolidation reshaping the native TV sector, with regulators expressing concern that the pacts can function workarounds to long-established possession guidelines.
Nexstar appeared to interact in “an unauthorized switch of management” and broke by way of the longtime cap of 39% of U.S. TV households reached by a single proprietor, the FCC mentioned in its ruling.
In a press release, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook issued a press release saying the corporate was “extraordinarily disillusioned” by the FCC’s resolution, “and we intend to dispute it vigorously.”
The regulatory company, he continued, “has been misled by the usually distracting noise within the media ecosphere and that it has utterly misjudged the information. The information are that Nexstar has all the time complied with FCC rules.”
Nexstar’s acquisition of WPIX, Sook mentioned, and the native advertising and marketing settlement had been authorized by the FCC in 2020, when WPIX-TV was bought by Mission. “Nexstar believes that joint working, shared service, and native advertising and marketing agreements like these by which it’s engaged are vitally essential to keep up a aggressive media market and to allow broadcasters to proceed investing in native information, investigative journalism, and different companies that they uniquely present to the communities by which they’re positioned.”
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel famous that corporations are prohibited from proudly owning or controlling broadcast stations that attain greater than 39% of the nationwide tv viewers.
“The file right here displays a scenario the place an organization exceeds this threshold. Except and till Congresschanges this legislation, it’s the duty of this company to implement it,” she mentioned in a press release.
Brendan Carr, one in all two Republicans on the fee, issued a concurring assertion. He mentioned that “it’s regarding to me that the FCC cites as proof of management these options of the connection that the FCC beforehand signed off on. We have to be cautious that we don’t undermine affordable reliance on prior FCC selections.”
He mentioned that he would “preserve an open thoughts because the FCC critiques the file in response to this doc. A part of that can require the FCC to make sure that any treatments the company finds needed are ones which might be acceptable given the procedural posture of this enforcement motion.”