In 2008, the Filipino Associated Broadcasting Company leased its airtime to Malaysian broadcaster Media Prima (through local subsidiary MPB Primedia) similar to an LMA – with MPB providing entertainment programming and ABC taking over programming and news operations. Soon after, ABC and Media Prima were sued by rival media company GMA for attempting to use the partnership to circumvent laws requiring national ownership of broadcasters. In response, Pat Marcelo-Magbanua, ABC`s head of media relations, reiterated that the subsidiary was a philippine company self-registered and managed by the Philippines. [134] The concerns became irrelevant in 2010 when Media Prima announced that it would sell its ownership of the network to MediaQuest Holdings, PLDT`s broadcast subsidiary. [135] News America Marketing — News America Marketing, often referred to simply as News America, is a marketing company owned by News Corporation. It is one of three companies in the United States (the other two are Valassis Communications and Insignia Systems) that . Wikipedia In a 2005 Canadian dispute, Rogers Media and Newcap Broadcasting entered into a joint sale agreement for CHNO-FM in Sudbury, Ontario, but community interests and the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting provided the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission with substantial evidence that the agreement was de facto an AML in practice. which went far beyond advertising sales in program production and news collection. AML in Canada cannot be implemented without CRTC approval, and in early 2005, the CRTC ordered the termination of the agreement.
[133] In 2014, the FCC, under President Tom Wheeler, began to strengthen its control over the use of such agreements – particularly joint sales – to circumvent its policies. On 31 March 2014, the Commission voted that joint sale contracts should be considered as property if the lead partner sells 15% or more of the advertising time for its partner and prohibit coordinated retransmission agreements between two of the four largest stations in a market. Wheeler hinted that he plans to enter into local marketing and shared services agreements in the future. The change in attitude also led to changes in the acquisitions then planned by Gray Television and the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which, instead of using sharing agreements for their control, moved their existing affiliations to programs and networks to digital subchannels of existing company-owned stations in the market or a low-power station (which is not subject to any ownership cap), then relinquished control of the original broadcasters. by selling their licenses to third parties. With Quincy Newspapers` acquisition of granite Broadcasting`s remaining stations, the acquisition was briefly restructured to retain Malara Broadcast Group, which acted as a virtual duopoly partner for Granite with WISE-TV (NBC) Fort Wayne and KDLH-TV Duluth (CBS), the stations and their current agreements with WPTA and KBJR-TV, rather than selling them to SagamoreHill Broadcasting. The acquisition was restructured in July 2015 so that SagamoreHill Broadcasting would re-acquire both stations, but complete their current SSAs within nine months. The FCC also issued a request for comment on policies to make other arrangements, such as shared service agreements. [2] [3] [93] The ban on JSA television had already been proposed in 2004, a year after the FCC decided to treat JSAs between radio stations as a duopoly. WABM and WTTO in Birmingham and WHP-TV in Harrisburg were to be sold to Deerfield Media, and WMMP in Charleston was to be sold to Howard Stirk Holdings – a broadcasting company owned by conservative expert Armstrong Williams.
[75] Howard Stirk Holdings was also used as a sidecar for two conflicting stations during Sinclair`s previous acquisition of Barrington Broadcasting. [76] Codeshare Agreement — Not to be confused with codeshare number, a codeshare with a phone number in another country A flight information display system that displays multiple codeshare flights. For example: British Airways flight BA4552 is actually the same flight as. . Wikipedia On March 6, 2014, the FCC announced that it would hold a vote on March 31 on a proposal to completely ban joint sale agreements with television stations, so that they would be due to FCC ownership restrictions if the senior partner sells 15% or more of the advertising time of a competing junior affiliate in the JSA; the prohibition applies both to existing sharing agreements under such a structure and to ongoing station transactions involving a JSA. Station owners would have a two-year grace period to settle or amend joint sale agreements in violation of the Directive. Coordinated negotiations on the authorisation of retransmission between two of the four highest-rated stations in an internal market would also be excluded from the proposal. Wheeler also proposed an expedited process to review joint sale agreements on a case-by-case basis, granting a waiver of the rules if a broadcaster can demonstrate that a particular joint sale agreement serves the public interest. [86] [87] Emergency; or to comply with federal, state, or local laws.
Sharing agreements can also be used as a loophole to control TV stations in situations where it is legally impossible to own them directly. For example, FCC regulations allowed a single company to own more than one full-performance television station in a given market only if there were at least eight different station owners, and also prohibited ownership of two or more of the four highest-rated stations (based on the total number of daily viewers) in a market. An AML or similar agreement does not affect the ownership of the broadcaster`s license, meaning they do not need FCC approval to establish it, and the two stations are still legally considered separate transactions from a licensing perspective. [11] Tribune Media and Gannett Company had to use shared service agreements as a similar loophole to take control of certain stations in their respective purchases of Local TV and Belo in 2013, as they had no exemptions from the FCC`s restrictions on newspapers in the affected markets. [12] [13] The two companies have now split their publishing divisions into independent companies; the Tribune Publishing Company and the Gannett Company. .