Rainbow Push Says Sinclair Threatened Dish Over FCC Complaint

Sinclair's retransmission consent dispute with Dish Network may have breathed new life into a year-old application for review of Sinclair’s buy of Allbritton’s TV stations, said Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the filers of the original complaint, in a supplemental filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-203. In the original application for review, Rainbow PUSH maintained that Sinclair improperly controls the TV stations owned by an affiliated company, Cunningham Broadcasting (see 1409110049). Though the Media Bureau previously ruled that Rainbow PUSH’s allegations about Cunningham are without merit, emails between Dish and Sinclair during a recent retrans between those two companies show Sinclair was claiming the right to negotiate retrans agreements on Cunningham’s behalf, Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair “took the position that it has de jure control of Cunningham and thus, under the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014 ('STELAR'), can represent Cunningham and other companies in retransmission consent negotiations,” Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair said it didn’t have improper control over Cunningham during the regulatory review of its Allbritton deal. Sinclair also threatened to pull its stations from Dish if that DBS company complained to the FCC, Rainbow PUSH said. This “raises profound questions of basic qualifications based on Sinclair’s now-admitted control of Cunningham, as well as Sinclair’s misrepresentations to the Commission, violations of the rules governing duopolies, abuse of the retransmission consent process, and the use of coercion to attempt to prevent a party from petitioning the FCC for redress of grievances," Rainbow PUSH said. The FCC should open hearings on the matter, Rainbow PUSH said. “We have grown accustomed to filings like this from Rainbow Push over the years," a Sinclair spokeswoman emailed us. "As with previous filings, we don’t believe there is any validity to their claims and will respond procedurally in due course.” The Media Bureau declined to comment.