FCC Votes 3-1 for $518,000 Top-4 Forfeiture Against Gray
The full FCC voted 3 to 1 to approve a $518,283 forfeiture against Gray Television for violating the prohibition against owning two top-four stations in a market, said an order Tuesday. FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington was the lone dissenter. If…
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the FCC renders “growth, acquisitions, and swaps risky enough,” prudent media businesses “will have no choice but to be passive in small markets,” Simington wrote. The forfeiture concerns Gray’s purchase of the CBS affiliation of Denali Media's station KTVA Anchorage in 2020 in a sale of “non-license assets” and subsequent shifting of the programming to its KYES-TV Anchorage -- now KAUU -- while continuing to own NBC affiliate KTUU-TV Anchorage. Gray’s “strained reading” of a 2016 rule on using channel swaps to make deals that result in one group owning more than one top-four station in a single market “would reduce competition and intentionally circumvent Commission review of such transactions,” said the order. “Gray intends to challenge the FCC’s decision and expects a complete reversal by an impartial federal court,” said Gray in a statement Tuesday. Gray violated the rules because “the affiliation acquisition it engaged in was the functional equivalent of a station license transfer,” the FCC said. The forfeiture amount is based on the amount of time of the violation multiplied by the $8,000 forfeiture amount, capped at the statutory maximum the order said. “We found that Gray failed to fulfill a continuing or persistent legal duty from consummation of the CBS affiliation acquisition on July 31, 2020 to March 3, 2021 -- 215 straight days,” the order said. “Gray anticipates that its challenge of today’s Forfeiture Order will likewise end in another strong judicial vindication of its position and another strong judicial repudiation of a federal agency overstepping its authority and failing to adhere to the rule of law and protect the public interest,” Gray said.