Partnership With Nexstar ‘Important Step’ Toward ‘Speedy' ATSC 3.0 Rollout, Says Sinclair CEO

When Univision and Northwest Broadcasting in June joined the ATSC 3.0-based broadcaster spectrum consortium started by Sinclair and Nexstar (see 1706200084), it brought the consortium’s “reach” to 90 percent of the U.S., said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley on a Wednesday earnings call. “The consortium’s mission is to promote spectrum aggregation, innovation and monetization, and we are continuing to invite other broadcasters to join, as we enhance our industry’s ability to compete in the wireless data transmissions sector.” Sinclair also is working with Nexstar to “coordinate the transition” to 3.0 in 97 designated market areas, he said. That work is “an important step to ensuring a speedy rollout of the next-generation advanced services for our viewers and advertisers,” he said. “More broadcasters will be added to this planning process” as they join the spectrum consortium, he said. Sinclair is “quite excited” about the prospects for FCC "relaxation" of local media ownership rules, Ripley said in Q&A. “Overall, we think the industry needs to consolidate to two or three large broadcasters and really just one to two strong local players in each market,” he said. “In some of the larger, and even medium-sized markets, you’ve got anywhere from three to five local players,” and that “doesn’t make sense,” he said. “If there’s relaxation, there’ll be a consolidation at the local level, greater scale at the national level, and there’s significant savings to be had putting local content players together on a local level.” That will give way to “stronger local content producers, which will be able to spread their content and their resources across multiple platforms,” he said. “We see that as the evolution of the industry as dereg sets in here, and you end up with more consolidated, stronger local content players that are more efficient, and so the economics will be great and the strategic output will also be great.”