Sinclair, Tribune Sued for Price-Fixing 'Conspiracy'

An Arkansas law firm filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit in Maryland federal court against Sinclair and Tribune accusing them of colluding to fix advertising prices, connecting the accusation to reports DOJ is investigating the companies over advertising sales amid the FCC designating Sinclair/Tribune for hearing. “This antitrust class action arises from a conspiracy among Defendants and their coconspirators to fix prices for commercials to be aired on broadcast television stations,” said the complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the Law Offices of Peter Miller, a Sinclair advertiser. The broadcasters conspired to artificially inflate ad prices in response to insufficiently increasing revenue, the complaint said. Sinclair and Tribune had “numerous opportunities to conspire” as members of associations like NAB and were negotiating a deal to combine, the complaint said. An NAB spokesman said it's "laughable" to suggest that the association had any involvement in price-fixing. The companies colluded “by having members of their advertising sales teams share competitively sensitive information and data with each other, which they used to raise advertising prices to levels higher than they otherwise would have been,” the complaint said. The lawsuit is on behalf of all direct purchasers of advertising from them in the U.S. The plaintiff, Sinclair, Tribune and DOJ didn’t comment.