NorthEast Radio Watch 3/25/2024: FCC Slams Nexstar’s WPIX Deal

In this week’s issue… FCC cracks down on Nexstar’s WPIX deal – Remembering WBZ’s Shaw – More new LPFMs all over

By SCOTT FYBUSH

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*Let’s get something out of the way at the start of this week’s column: the FCC’s current rules on TV station ownership make no rational sense.

On paper, they at least try to prevent big TV station group owners from owning so many stations that they can become fully national players. No single owner can have more than two stations in any market (with a limit of one in smaller markets), and no single owner can have stations that collectively reach more than 39% of the nation’s TV households.

Except it doesn’t work that way in the real world, for two big reasons. That cap of one or two stations in a market? It’s largely meaningless because the FCC has long allowed big companies like Nexstar and Sinclair to operate additional stations in their markets through the use of shared-services agreements (SSAs) and joint sales agreements (JSAs). So a station that might have “Mission Broadcasting” or “Deerfield Media” on its license turns out to actually be a Nexstar or Sinclair station in every sense, becoming a second or third station in what should be a one or two station market.

And that 39% national cap? It became a de facto 78% national cap after the DTV transition, when the FCC repealed but then restored the “UHF discount.” That policy, which counts UHF stations with only half their market’s households against the national cap, made sense in the old analog days when being on the UHF band really did hinder a station’s ability to succeed.

These days, though, most DTV stations broadcast on UHF RF channels, which tend to provide superior reception quality to VHF signals. Does anyone rationally believe that New York’s CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates, which all broadcast on the UHF band, should really count only half as much toward ownership caps as WABC-TV, which got stuck on the VHF dial? Of course not.

Yet it’s not any of the networks that are in big trouble with the FCC about their NEW YORK station ownership. Instead, it’s Nexstar, which doesn’t even own a TV station in the nation’s #1 market.