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The Hill reports that the FCC will take public comments on Sinclair-Tribune merger until July 12th of this year. Sinclair stations currently reach 40% of US households and with the merger that would increase to 72%.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will take new comments from the public on Sinclair Broadcast Group’s $3.9 billion bid for Tribune Media.
The agency is reopening its review of the merger for public comments after the two companies proposed to sell off some local stations in an effort to bring the deal in line with media ownership restrictions.
The public will have until July 12 to weigh in on the docket.
Also at Reuters: FCC seeks new comments on proposed Sinclair Tribune merger.
Earlier on SN: Sinclair Broadcast Group to Buy Indebted Tribune Media for $3.9 Billion (2017)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday May 23 2018, @01:13PM (1 child)
The main reason broadcast radio is nearly dead is because of Clearchannel. They overpaid for a bunch of stations, fired the local DJs, erased all local memories and ties, generated a playlist in Podunk Ark that nobody except the owners of Clearchannel liked, then watched the listeners flock to CDs, NPR, and, later, the internet. Then sat in bankruptcy court wondering what happened.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 23 2018, @03:12PM
CC was more a symptom than a cause. All dying industries have some kind of financialization gambling scheme boiling down to we lose money on every sale but we'll make it up in volume. Its pretty much the standard death pattern in the modern economy.
The LBO bonds paid interest on time for a decade, if the rate was high enough I'm not sure the investors lost money on the deal (too lazy to look it up). Well, sure they lost money compared to inflation over the last decade, etc, but it wasn't a totally crazy gamble to take.
Ten seconds of google resulted in some babble about "14% senior unsecured notes due 2021" so a decade of 14% APR payments isn't that bad of a loss, really. Of course if you were expecting your capital back in 2021 in addition to the payments, then it suxs thats its vaporized, but its not like you lost money on the deal.