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The Federal Communications Commission has cleared the way for Circle City Broadcasting — the owner of WISH-TV and WNDY-TV — to acquire the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis in an $83 million deal announced last October.
The FCC on Friday agreed to waive a rule that bans a single company from owning more than two stations in a market. Circle City is planning to purchase WRTV from Scripps Broadcasting Holdings LLC.
The four-page decision said that common ownership of WISH-TV Channel 8, WNDY-TV Channel 23 and WRTV-TV Channel 6 “would not harm competition in the Indianapolis DMA, but bolster it, by strengthening Circle City’s position relative to station owners with significantly greater market power.”
WISH-TV is affiliated with the CW network. WNDY-TV is affiliated with MyNetworkTV. WRTV-TV is affiliated with ABC.
The FCC said “any potential competitive harm would be minimal in light of the market strength of the top three stations, the unusual breadth of the number of full-power broadcast stations in the Indianapolis DMA, and the degree of independent ownership of those stations.”
Indianapolis native DuJuan McCoy leads Circle City Broadcasting. He said in October that his company’s proposed acquisition of WRTV-TV “reinforces our long-term commitment to Indiana, enhances our current broadcast capabilities, and creates meaningful value for both our audiences and our advertisers across Indiana.”
McCoy declined to comment about the decision and about the status of the WRTV deal.
The FCC decision comes as another merger deal is pending.
Nexstar Media Group is in the process of acquiring Tegna Inc. in a $6.2 billion deal that would create a mammoth local TV company with 265 stations across 44 states.
Nexstar owns Fox affiliate WXIN-TV Channel 59 and CBS affiliate WTTV-TV. Tegna owns WRTV-TV Channel 13.
If all of the deals are completed and the FCC allows it, the Indianapolis metro area’s five TV stations that broadcast news could be owned by two companies.
Circle City Broadcasting purchased WISH and WNDY for $42.5 million in 2019.
WISH and WNDY became available for purchase because Nexstar’s acquisition of WXIN and WTTV in 2019 brought the company’s total of stations owned in the city to four, exceeding regulatory requirements at the time.
Last summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the FCC’s “top four” rule, which had prohibited ownership of more than one of the top four stations in a single market. In the case of WXIN and WTTV, two of the top four stations in a single market have been allowed to be owned by one company since 2015, when the local CBS affiliation moved from WISH to WTTV.
In August, the Federal Communications Commission announced plans to repeal 98 broadcast rules and requirements that it identified as “obsolete, outdated, or unnecessary.” FCC Chair Brendan Carr has long advocated for loosening industry restrictions.
Tegna owns WTHR-TV Channel 13 and low-powered digital sister station WALV-CD Channel 46, a MeTV affiliate. WTHR and WALV were acquired by Tegna in 2019 from former owner Dispatch Broadcast Group as part of a larger multi-station deal. Columbus, Ohio-based Dispatch had owned WTHR since 1975.
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