In late February, The E.W. Scripps Co. moved ahead with a plan to reacquire 23 television stations sold at the end of 2020 to INYO Broadcast Holdings in order to satisfy necessary regulatory concerns tied to Scripps’ $2.65 billion acquisition of ION Media. This led the FCC to establish a pleading cycle, allowing interest parties to weigh in on the matter. Final replies were due Friday (6/12), and DirecTV chimed in.
The DBS provider doesn’t want Scripps to grab the stations, for one big reason.
As DirecTV Chief Content Officer Robert Thun has been harping for years, DirecTV believes further industry consolidation will make retransmission consent negotiations evermore difficult for entities such as his, as fewer companies translates to bigger power to control carriage fee rates.
To be clear, the FCC has stated repeatedly that this is hypothesis rather than fact, with assumptions fueling DirecTV’s opposition. Will that opinion once again arise in response to DirecTV and broadband communications compadres in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Tennessee and the State of Washington, who in reply comments firmly oppose Scripps’ applications for a transfer of control of those 23 INYO properties.
In the five-page filing made June 12, DirecTV and the broadband firms argue, “Applicants treat their entitlement to a waiver of the national ownership cap as a fait acccompli” and argue that the application for transfer of control should be granted “without delay.”
DirecTV and the broadband associations also address Scripps’ belief that the Media Bureau is empowered on delegated authority to grant its request for approval of the transaction. They challenge this assertion.
“If the Bureau acts on Applicants’ request, it will have contravened Congress twice in
a matter of months—after over twenty years in which the national cap was never waived—
without so much as a vote by the politically accountable Commissioners,” say DirecTV General Counsel Michael Hartman and SVP/External Affairs Stacy Fuller in a submission filed by legal counsel Michael Nilsson and Jason Neal of HWG LLP in Washington, D.C. “Prudence, common sense, and the law require otherwise … rather than repeat the highly controversial Media Bureau waiver in that case, the Commission should reserve decision on this Application until the full Commission and the D.C. Circuit can definitively address these issues.”
They conclude, “It would thus be highly inappropriate to move ahead with another Media Bureau waiver of the national cap when the full Commission has committed to review this issue in another proceeding. If the Media Bureau does grant a waiver here, the Commission should stay the effectiveness of the waiver pending final resolution of its authority in this area.”
