Sinclair Agrees to $9.49 Million Consent Decree With FCC
Sinclair Broadcast agreed to a $9.49 million settlement with the FCC over violations of the good faith negotiation and licensing rules, said a consent decree released Friday. The consent decree included the dismissal of all pending claims against Sinclair in…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
the Media Bureau, and the FCC now will issue license renewals for 90 TV stations, Sinclair said in a news release. “This Consent Decree and the dismissals of other pending matters, brings closure to all of these issues and allows Sinclair to focus on the future,” Sinclair said in the release. According to the consent decree, the Media Bureau found that Sinclair represented numerous stations it had sharing agreements with in retrans negotiations, after the FCC had implemented rules against joint negotiation, the consent decree said. It also resolves complaints filed against Sinclair for violations of the news distortion policy and local television ownership rule, the consent decree said. Sinclair also agreed to create a compliance plan for self-reporting rule violations, the consent decree said. "2017 will begin a new era for broadcasting, with the post-auction repack and the initial rollout of Next Generation TV (or ATSC 3.0), and clearing this backlog sets the stage for that," Rebecca Hanson, Sinclair's senior vice president-strategy and policy, said in the release.