The FCC has approved a transfer of control request and waiver documents submitted for the Media Bureau’s review and approval that finally gives Sinclair ownership of an affiliate of The CW Network serving Northeastern Pennsylvania, which it has operated via a shared service agreement since September 2013.
David J. Brown, Video Division Chief of the FCC’s Media Bureau, granted the transfer of control of WSWB-TV to Sinclair from MPS Media.
The request came in February 2026, and based on the Video Division’s review of the application and the record, Brown concluded that the potential public interest benefits of the proposed combination outweigh the potential harms.
“Indeed, any potential competitive harm would be minimal in light of the market strength of the top three stations, the breadth of the number of full-power broadcast stations in the Wilkes Barre-Scranton-Hazleton, PA DMA, and the degree of independent ownership of those stations,” he said.
Brown added that the Bureau has not identified any other issues or potential public interest harms that would require further consideration, concluding that Sinclair’s acquisition of WSWB would serve the public interest.
To view the letter from David J. Brown, please click here.
Seller MPS Media hasn’t operated WSWB since September 2007. That’s when New Age Media took control of WSWB via a Joint Sales and Shared Services Agreement.
When the New Age Media-Sinclair deal was drafted, MPS Media intended to sell WSWB to Cunningham Media, a cozy shared services partner of Sinclair. This would have had Sinclair enter an LMA with Cunningham, pairing WSWB operations with Sinclair-owned WOLF-TV. However, that deal didn’t happen. Instead, MPS remained the licensee of WSWB.
Now, that 2007 option has been executed by Sinclair’s “WQMY Licensee LLC,” giving it a “triopoly” in NEPA as Sinclair owns not only WOLF-TV but also WQMY-TV.
As Sinclair sees it, owning WSWB, WOLF, and WQMY — all UHF stations — will not result in any change to Sinclair’s national ownership reach. The issue is the ownership of three full-power TV stations in the Wilkes Barre-Scranton DMA, thus the waiver request of the Local Television Ownership Rule. “Further, the Wilkes-Barre DMA is struggling with increased competition from digital and other programming sources,” Sinclair stated.
Brown agreed.
