Chris Ripley, CEO of TV station giant Sinclair, ripped Disney and YouTube TV‘s ongoing carriage fight for depriving audiences of local programming and running afoul of regulatory rules.
Speaking to Wall Street analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Ripley called on government regulators to ramp up their investigation of network-affiliate relations in light of the carriage fights. He said the distribution tangles, particularly ones involving virtual MVPDs like YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and others, represent “antitrust issues” and “hurt local viewers and local journalism.”
ABC stations, along with Disney networks like ESPN, have been unavailable to YouTube TV’s 10 million subscribers since last Thursday. The bitter standoff is one of the most high-profile of the year, especially due to its timing in the middle of football season, but just one of a string of battles between the growing YouTube TV and major programmers. Hispanic broadcast network Univision has been dark on YouTube TV since late-September in one such impasse.
Sinclair, Ripley conceded, has experienced the downside of YouTube TV’s growth, including blackouts of its affiliated Diamond Sports Group regional networks. But the exec focused his remarks on the traditional network-affiliate relationship.
“As local broadcasters, we have no say in whether our content and the content we pay to air will be distributed to local viewers,” Ripley said of YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and similar internet-delivered services. “This was clearly not the intent of the Telecommunications Act (of 1996), and seems to be, from our perspective, an antitrust issue as well. This dispute, and others like it, continue to hurt local viewers and local journalism, and the ecosystem of global journalism. So as we and many broadcasters have discussed with the FCC and antitrust regulators, we believe this practice needs to be stopped.”
ABC and other broadcast networks, he added, “should not be able to dictate to us whether we can or cannot distribute content to YouTube TV.”
The FCC, he noted, has opened an investigation into network affiliation practices that hurt local broadcasters. “We’re seeing those hurtful practices play out in front of our eyes as viewers, are missing local news, and local sports. Particularly concerning is that consumers are now being forced to buy more streaming services from one of the parties in the dispute to get the content that they literally already paid for. We call on Congress, the FCC, and antitrust regulators to further review this and stop the harm to local broadcasters and local viewers.”
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