A Michigan station involved in a sharing arrangement with...
A Michigan station involved in a sharing arrangement with Young Broadcasting doesn’t have an independent management structure from the Young-owned station it shares with, said Spartan-TV -- also in a sharing arrangement with Young. The “unauthorized duopoly” between the Young-owned…
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WLNS-TV Lansing and WLAJ Lansing shows that sharing arrangements proposed as part of Media General buying Young in overlapping markets won’t comply with FCC rules, said a reply comment Monday (http://bit.ly/1cdEUDj). WLNS is one of the stations involved in the deal, and is also involved in a sharing arrangement with Spartan’s WHTV Jackson and WLAJ. All three stations also share the same physical space, said Spartan. “The FCC’s rules and policies for sharing arrangements were not designed to be followed strictly by small broadcasters and circumvented by larger ones,” it said. Spartan submitted a series of emails from a manager at WLNS that it said show the lack of separate management. In two emails from March and May filed with Spartan’s comments, WLNS General Manager Robert Simone has the title of vice president/general manager of Young-Lansing, and both WLNS and WLAJ are listed under his title. In a later email dated Aug. 20 -- after Spartan filed its informal objection -- Simone’s signature block no longer mentions WLAJ. Spartan also submitted testimony from the station manager of its WHTV that the station manager job at WLAJ was vacant until eight days after Spartan filed its earlier, informal objection to the commission. Those pieces of evidence “should be seen as a de facto admission by Young that they had not been operating in compliance with the rules,” said Spartan. In an opposition filing last week, Young said Spartan’s accusations about the sharing arrangements were untrue, and accused Spartan of trying to “coerce” Young into extending the sharing arrangement with WHTV (CD Aug 21 p21) and “grab” WLAJ’s ABC affiliation. Spartan denounced those arguments as a “red herring,” and asked the FCC to “investigate the WLAJ-TV/Young arrangement and hold the proposed merger in abeyance until the investigation is completed.” Simone and Young didn’t comment.