FCC Settles $2.6 Million Forfeiture Against Sinclair for $500,000
Sinclair Broadcasting has reached an agreement with the FCC to pay $500,000 to resolve what was originally a $2.6 million forfeiture against the company over children's programming violations and to renew the licenses of numerous stations, said a consent decree Friday. Together with a Media Bureau order dismissing a petition to deny against several Sinclair-controlled stations, the agreement resolved a yearslong holdup in the license renewals of nearly all Sinclair stations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has pointed to the lack of Sinclair license renewals under the previous FCC as the precedent for his actions against CBS and other networks (see 2502270076).
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The previous FCC issued the much heftier original forfeiture against Sinclair in September (see 2409060054), but Sinclair and the other broadcasters appealed it. Friday’s consent decree also resolved several enforcement proceedings against Sinclair stations involving filing and closed caption violations, as well as renewing numerous Sinclair station licenses. The Media Bureau separately released the order granting the renewals of Sinclair-controlled stations in Baltimore and dismissing a long-standing petition against them. Broadcast attorneys told us that companies frequently seek to settle outstanding matters with the FCC when preparing to purchase or transfer stations.
The kidvid violation stems from incidents in 2018 when a number of Sinclair-controlled stations aired a commercial for the Hot Wheels Super Ultimate Garage toy on 11 occasions during eight episodes of the Hot Wheels-themed TV show Team Hot Wheels, violating FCC rules for children’s TV. Eighty-five Sinclair stations and 10 others owned by Sinclair-affiliated companies Deerfield Media and Cunningham Broadcasting were involved, along with seven Nexstar stations and several smaller broadcasters. Sinclair said the error was due to a miscommunication.
Carr voted to approve the 2022 notice of apparent liability proposing the larger forfeiture against Sinclair but dissented from the 2024 forfeiture order, blasting it for counting each airing of the commercial as a separate violation. “I think the days are numbered for FCC enforcement decisions that rest on stacked penalties, creative math, surprise standards, and extraneous behavioral conditions,” Carr said then in his dissent.
“We greatly appreciate the constructive and diligent work of the Commission’s staff, and we are pleased that we were able to reach a mutually acceptable resolution of these issues," a Sinclair spokesperson said Monday.
Sinclair has violated kidvid rules before, said University of Minnesota media law professor Christopher Terry. The 2024 forfeiture order increased the amount of Sinclair's penalties because of its history of violations. Terry said the $500,000 settlement seemed like "a sweetheart deal" and could represent favorable treatment of a conservative-leaning broadcaster. "Repeat offender, but Trump-friendly media company, gets cut a break by Carr's FCC. Who would guess?"
In the other order Friday, the Media Bureau dismissed a 2020 petition filed by Ihor Gawdiak, a Columbia, Maryland-based viewer represented by Smithwick & Belendiuk attorney Arthur Belendiuk, because Gawdiak died a few years later. He had petitioned against the renewal of Sinclair’s WBFF Baltimore, Cunningham’s WNUV Baltimore and Deerfield's WUTB Baltimore.
Gawdiak’s petition argued that Sinclair used Deerfield and Cunningham to subvert FCC ownership rules. A “litany of documents” show “the principals of Cunningham and Deerfield are cronies of Sinclair and have no stake or risk in the business,” Gawdiak said in the filing. In 2024, Belendiuk filed a motion to substitute a new petitioner for Gawdiak in the proceeding, viewer Eleanor Goldfield. The Media Bureau rejected that substitution Friday. “The record fails to demonstrate any connection at all between Goldfield and Gawdiak. And a mere desire to ‘take up Gawdiak’s cause’ is not a sufficient legal basis for substitution,” the bureau said. “Having denied the Motion, we dismiss the Petition as there is no party left to prosecute it.”
Because the matter was handled by the bureau, it isn’t considered a final order that can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Belendiuk, a frequent Sinclair opponent (see 2504150056), said Monday that he instead plans to appeal the matter to the full FCC, but he doesn’t expect it to go anywhere. “They will sit on it until I and all my clients are dead,” he told us. “These agencies, they wonder, 'Why are the courts taking away all my power?' This is why. This shit.”