Media Bureau Expected to Circulate Tribune Order Following Election
An FCC order that would let Tribune emerge from bankruptcy is expected to circulate after the election, possibly as early as the end of the week and probably before Thanksgiving, industry officials said. Commission approval, as Tribune attorneys and executives have repeatedly reminded commission officials in ex parte discussions, is the remaining holdup to the company’s more than three-year bankruptcy proceeding. CEO Eddy Hartenstein spoke with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Oct. 26 to press this point, a notice of the ex parte conversation said (http://xrl.us/bnxm4u).
"It seems to me that there would be a lot of pressure now on the commission to get this done,” said a communications attorney following the proceeding closely: “This case has been around for a long time, the issues have been thoroughly vetted.” A Romney-Ryan victory Tuesday could put even more pressure on the commission to act quickly, an industry official said. A spokesman for Genachowski’s office declined to comment.
Several issues need to be resolved by the commission before the company can exit bankruptcy. Those include Tribune’s application for license transfers and the waivers of the FCC’s newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) rule the company has requested in markets where it owns both a TV station and newspaper. Because of Tribune’s bankruptcy status, its counsel must file monthly applications to the court in order to get paid. This accounting of work, down to the tenth of an hour, provides a rare glimpse into the process of getting license transfers through the commission and the coordination with counsel to Tribune’s prospective owners.
Recent compensation applications filed with the bankruptcy court from Dow Lohnes, Tribune’s FCC counsel, reveal work in August on tolling agreement “stipulations” and several discussions with FCC Enforcement Bureau staff about resolving pending complaints at some of its licenses. Those are most likely indecency complaints, said Andrew Schwartzman, special adviser to Free Press, which has opposed granting Tribune the NBCO waivers it has asked for. “Those are the most common source of tolling agreements,” he said. Attention has also been given to Tribune’s post-ownership structure and the role that warrants and Class B shares play in it, the filings indicate.
By now the issues have been teed up before the commission long enough that the FCC should be able to act quickly, the lawyer following the deal said. “The cross-ownership issues are ones the commission has seen not only in this transaction but also the last Tribune transaction,” the attorney said. “These are the types of issues the commission can quickly resolve and get this company out of bankruptcy."
Tribune may not get everything it asked for in its license transfer and NBCO waiver applications, Schwartzman said. “It’s very hard to see how the commission will be able to grant all of the relief requested by Tribune, particularly in Hartford,” he said. “So there may be temporary waivers that are less than what Tribune would really like to have.” Making the matter more complicated is the status of the FCC’s media ownership rules, which are overdue by two years for a congressionally-mandated quadrennial review. A draft of that review is said to be nearing completion (CD Oct 18 p2). “The quadrennial review makes it a more murky situation,” an FCC official said.