Time Warner Cable Seeks to Block or Condition LIN Station Deals
The FCC should block or attach significant retransmission consent conditions to two proposed TV station transactions involving LIN TV, Time Warner Cable said in petitions to deny the deals filed with the FCC Friday. The cable operator is seeking to stop LIN’s purchase of WCWF-TV Suring, Wis., from Acme Communications and Acme’s sale of WBDT-TV Springfield, Ohio, to Vaughn Media, following which the station would be run under a joint sales agreement by LIN. Allowing the transactions would give LIN undue market power in retransmission consent negotiations in the Dayton and Green Bay markets, where it already owns other stations, TWC said in its petitions. LIN and Acme didn’t immediately respond to our queries.
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LIN shouldn’t be allowed to take over WBDT’s retransmission consent negotiations because it won’t actually own the station following its sale but rather will operate it under a joint sales agreement, TWC said. “The commission has not previously authorized the practice of non-commonly owned broadcasters’ jointly negotiating retransmission consent for multiple stations in a single DMA (or elsewhere) and it plainly should not do so here,” TWC said. Furthermore, LIN’s control over WBDT and its ownership of WDTN-TV Dayton would require a waiver of the FCC’s local ownership limits, which LIN hasn’t sought, TWC said.
In Green Bay, LIN has sought a waiver of the ownership rules to acquire WCWF-TV. In that case, LIN has already informed TWC that it will seek retransmission compensation for both its Fox affiliate WLUK-TV and CW affiliate WCWF-TV, which TWC has carried for free under the must-carry rules, through a master retransmission consent agreement covering those stations plus others operating in other markets, TWC said. That switch from must-carry to retransmission consent status “vividly illustrates how it will use joint retransmission consent negotiations in an effort to extract compensation for one station based on the strength of another,” TWC said.
The ongoing dispute between Fox and Cablevision over carriage of Fox’s New York-area stations is further evidence why the LIN transactions should be denied or conditioned, TWC said. “Such disruptions and the reluctant increases in input costs ultimately harm consumers who must pay higher MVPD subscription rates without any attendant increase in quality of the programming they receive,” it said.
If the commission approves the transactions, it should attach conditions to the approval similar to what TWC and other MVPDs have sought in a petition for rulemaking on the FCC’s retransmission consent regime, TWC said. The stations should be barred from negotiating jointly the carriage rights for two stations in the same market, it said. Secondly, they should not be allowed to pull their signals during disputes with local pay-TV operators, it said. “Those stations instead should be required to submit to mandatory dispute resolutions procedures (such as arbitration) or an alternative form of rate-setting by the Commission,” it said.
Furthermore, TWC said it will dispute Acme’s claim that its WCWF-TV station is “failing” as grounds for LIN’s waiver of local media ownership limits. TWC is negotiating with Acme’s counsel to obtain the station’s financial records, which are not publicly available. And due process requires the FCC to wait until TWC has a chance to review and respond to those records before acting on the application, TWC said.