Sinclair: FCC had nothing to do with retrans deal

Sinclair Broadcast Group shot down claims by the Federal Communications Commission that the agency’s intervention was the reason that Dish and Sinclair finally hammered out a new retransmission consent agreement. In a statement, Sinclair said, “We understand the temptation for the FCC to take credit for resolving this impasse, but their intervention had nothing to do with it. We were very close to a resolution well before Chairman Wheeler got involved. In fact, the FCC process actually delayed the resolution, because it added more issues to negotiate, which lengthened DISH’s service interruption, not shortened it. And it is important to remember that our stations never went off the air in any of those markets, but were consistently available free of charge to our viewers, as well as through DISH’s competitors.”