FCC Renews Sinclair's Baltmore's TV Licenses Depsite Compaint From Petitioner Who Died Waiting

 Originally posted at the BradBlog August 13, 2025

 

But the five-year fight ain't over just yet...

Dead man tell no tales. But the evidence submitted to the FCC before he passed away, challenging dodgy, unlawful television station ownership by a major national broadcasting conglomerate, is still alive and well. Or, at least, it should be.

As covered at The BRAD BLOG in September of 2020, Baltimore resident Ihor Gawdiak and his attorney Arthur Belendiuk filed a Petition to Deny (PtD) the FCC license renewals of three TV stations controlled in Baltimore by Sinclair Broadcasting in apparent violation of both FCC ownership rules and federal law.

In brief, Gawdiak's petition detailed a complicated shell game carried out by Sinclair, one of the nation's largest owners of local television stations, to carry out the plot while staying beneath the FCC radar.

Sinclair claims ownership of Baltimore's WBFF-TV Channel 45, (which shares news reports from the Baltimore Sun newspaper, owned by Sinclair's Executive Chairman, David Smith, son of Sinclair's founder, Julian Sinclair Smith.) The David Smith family also controls both Cunningham Broadcasting and Deerfield Media which operate Baltimore's WNUV-TV and WUTB-TV, respectively. Both companies have very deep and direct ties to Sinclair. (Belendiuk found the "official" owner of Deerfield was Smith's personal banker, Stephen Mumblow, and the "official" owner of Cunningham is the company's former banker, Michael Anderson, who has no broadcast experience and actually served as a paid employee of Sinclair.)

The elaborate shell game, Gawkiak's complaint argued, is an effort to monopolize the information U.S. television viewers can access in their own local towns, by skirting FCC ownership limits in a single market. Petitioner Gawdiak's license challenge first went to Trump's Republican-controlled FCC during his first term, then was taken over by Biden's FCC. Now it is back in the hands of Trump's heavily-controlled Commission once again.

The FCC likely breathed a sigh of relief when Gawdiak passed away in 2023 before the matter was ultimately adjudicated. But then another petitioner, Baltimore resident Eleanor Goldfield, signed on to take his place. Finally, it would seem, someone at the FCC would have to take a formal look at the complex Sinclair scheme of forming sidecar companies under their complete control, designed to flaunt FCC rules with tacit approval of federal regulator.

After five years, Trump's Sinclair-friendly FCC finally responded formally to attorney Art Belendiuk on June 27, 2025, informing him that one FCC petitioner may not be substituted for another and, therefore, the Commission would not be taking up this longstanding case.

This is despite the FCC's own administrative law judge, in a related proceeding, demanding such an inquiry take place.

In 2018, Ajit Pai, Trump's Republican FCC Chair at the time, called an unprecedented public Hearing about deliberate untruths Sinclair made to the FCC in its effort to acquire Tribune Broadcasting. The hearing was scuttled after Sinclair went behind closed doors with the Commission. But it resulted in a stunning $48 million dollar fine. Still, the judge in that hearing, Jane Halprin, demanded these conflicts be thoroughly examined in a future hearing at the Commission, stating: "This alleged deception was ostensibly aimed at allowing Sinclair to bypass the Commission's multiple ownership limitations. ... the behavior of a multiple station owner before the Commission may be so fundamental to a licensee's operation that it is relevant to its qualifications to hold any station license."

The 2020 Petition from Gawdiak could have provided for the scrutiny Halprin called for in the earlier matter.

In 2021, Belendiuk filed a Freedom of Information Act request on my behalf to discover just what was said in those closed door meetings between the FCC Media Bureau and the FCC. It took two years, but following an appeal to the Federal District Court in Washington DC, the FCC finally caved and released those files, a treasure trove of an extremely complicated shell game. (I detailed the full story for Project Censored here.)

Later in 2023, Gawdiak passed away. In early 2024, Goldfield signed on to take his place in the case.

Lo and behold, on June 27, 2025, the FCC finally responded [PDF] by agreeing with the arguments from Sinclair's attorneys that "Goldfield missed her opportunity to participate in the proceeding when she failed to file by the September 1, 2020, deadline and that permitting the substitution here would 'make a mockery of the Commission's deadlines and processes.'"

(As if the FCC waiting four years 10 months and 27 days to respond to a legal petition doesn't alone make a mockery of Commission deadlines and processes.)

In the bargain, the FCC subsquently allowed Sinclair to renew its Baltimore licenses.

But it ain't over until it's over. July 28, 2025, Belendiuk, the original attorney on the case, filed an Application for Review of the FCC's "decision." He raises the following three questions:

      1. Did the FCC Media Bureau err in denying the Motion, given Gawdiak's inability to survive the      almost five years the Commission waited to act on the Petition?
      2. Did the Media Bureau err in failing to address the Petition as an informal objection to the Applications?
      3. Did the Media Bureau err in granting the Applications without addressing the substance of the Petition?

It is entirely possible the FCC will not be the ultimate arbiter of this case. It could go to the U.S. Court of Appeals. (If we live that long.)

Aside: In April 2025, public interest watchdog and advocacy group Frequency Forward and Wisconsin member Randy Bryce put still more pressure on Sinclair when they filed their own Petition to Deny the license transfer applications of Wisconsin and other TV station licenses held by Sinclair Broadcasting, using much of the information gleaned from my FOIA.

The FCC swiftly denied that challenge on July 1, 2025. Says petitioner Bryce, who ran for Congress in the Badger State in 2018 and is running again next year: "It's outrageous that the FCC has been changed from a nonpartisan entity to a political arm of the extreme right. Their purpose should be to protect free speech, not stifle it."

* * *

APTRA, RTNDA, PRNDI and Emmy-winning Sue Wilson worked at CBS, PBS, NPR and Fox before directing the documentary Broadcast Blues, writing the blog Sue Wilson Reports and founding the Media Action Center. Reach her at SueWilsonReports@gmail, or via Bluesky or Twitter.  

Petition at FCC to Examine Sinclair Broadcasting Character Qualifications to be a TV Licensee

 

 

April 14, 2025

Today, Frequency Forward, a public interest watchdog and advocacy group and member Randy Bryce of Caledonia, Wisconsin filed a legal petition at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny the license transfer applications of five TV station licenses held by Sinclair Broadcasting, founded and operated by David D. Smith.

This legal Petition “alleges that Sinclair lacks the requisite character to hold FCC licenses.” It cites Sinclair Broadcasting’s formation of shell corporations, principally Cunningham Broadcasting and Deerfield Media, Inc. to skirt federal law (allowing one broadcaster to reach no more than 39% of the national TV viewing public and FCC rules prohibiting one broadcaster from licensing or controlling more than two TV stations in a single TV viewing market without prior FCC approval.)

Frequency Forward attorney Art Belendiuk says, “Frequency Forward has demonstrated that Sinclair Broadcasting controls more television stations than permitted by the FCC rules. Sinclair has worked to actively conceal the full extent of its control over these stations, making repeated misrepresentations to the FCC and statements that lack candor. It has gone so far as to make material misrepresentations to questions asked in the course of the FCC’s investigation into the extent of its control over these front companies.”

The FCC requires broadcasters are to be of good character to qualify to hold a license to broadcast to the public. The Commission brought this character issue to the forefront in 2017 when then Republican FCC Chair Ajit Pai found misrepresentations by Sinclair on the proposed $3.9 billion merger for Sinclair to acquire broadcast licenses held by Tribune Broadcasting. An approved merger would have resulted in Sinclair having operational control over stations available in 72 percent of all households with a TV set in the United States. FCC Chair Pai called for a Hearing Designation Order based on those representations.

From today’s Petition:

Before the HDO was issued Sinclair withdrew the Cunningham and Fader applications. Nonetheless, the Commission concluded: “that material questions remain because the real party in interest issue in this case includes a potential element of misrepresentation or lack of candor that may suggest granting other, related applications by the same party would not be in the public interest.”

In reviewing the proposed transfers, the Commission concluded: “The record raises significant questions as to whether those proposed divestitures were in fact ‘sham’ transactions.”

Although the deal was scuttled, the presiding Judge, in terminating the hearing, made it clear these character issues would need to be litigated in a future proceeding:

That is not to say that Sinclair’s alleged misconduct is nullified or excused by the cancellation of its proposed deal with Tribune. Certainly, the behavior of a multiple-station owner before the Commission “may be so fundamental to a licensee’s operation that it is relevant to its qualifications to hold any station license.” 

That broad inquiry, however, would be more appropriately considered in the context of a future proceeding in which Sinclair is seeking Commission approval, for example, involving an application for a license assignment, transfer, or renewal. At that time, it may be determined that an examination of the misrepresentation and/or lack of candor allegations raised in this proceeding is warranted as part of a more general assessment of Sinclair’s basic character qualifications to be a Commission licensee.

This proposed transfer from of licenses from Sinclair to Rincon Broadcasting provides the opportunity for the FCC to thoroughly examine these issues per its own Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin’s demand.

The Petition details a shell game Sinclair has played over decades to skirt the law and FCC rules. It states the Smith family came up with a scheme to form broadcasting companies Deerfield Media and Cunningham Broadcasting, hire and control the supposed CEO’s of those companies, and then operate those TV Stations licensed by Deerfield and Cunningham through fraudulent Joint Sales Agreements (JSAs), Shared Service Agreements (SSA’s), and Local Marketing Agreements (LMAs).

The Petition brings up many examples of the Smith family’s machinations to hide the family’s real interest in multiple broadcast stations they legally could not control. For example, upon the Smith family matriarch’s death, Cunningham Broadcasting’s former banker Michael Anderson became the successor trustee to Carolyn Smith; Anderson later acquired all the voting shares of Cunningham. But

The nonvoting shares continue to be held by trusts for the benefit of Carolyn Smith’s grandchildren. Each of Carolyn Smith’s four sons holds an option to acquire the voting shares of Cunningham.

Similarly, in the scuttled Tribune merger which rose eyebrows at the FCC for including a proposed sale of Superstation WGN to Sinclair for a mere $60 million, 

The sale of WGN also came with an option agreement, giving Sinclair the opportunity to buy the station back at the same price anytime within the next 48 years.

The Petition also cites the fact that the same attorneys represent Sinclair, Cunningham and Deerfield.

Thomas & Libowitz, P.A. is Sinclair’s corporate law firm and represents the three companies on many of their corporate filings. Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman, LLP represents Sinclair, Cunningham and Deerfield, as FCC counsel. Pillsbury’s name appears on numerous FCC filings on behalf of these companies. A lawyer cannot represent multiple clients in the same matter if there is or likely to be a conflict of interest.”

The results of an October 28, 2020 Freedom of Information Act request by this author seeking the FCC Media Bureau’s four HDO Investigation documents it used in determining that Sinclair should not go through a hearing are referenced in detail.

Categorically, the HDO Investigation documents do not support the Bureau’s claim that Sinclair acted in good faith. On the contrary, they support the Commission’s initial conclusion that Sinclair is in de facto control of Cunningham and other Sinclair operated front companies. In fact, they provide further evidence that Sinclair was willing to dissemble to maintain it control over the front companies.

…A review of the FOIA documents makes it clear that Sinclair was neither honest nor forthcoming with the Bureau’s investigation of the designated misrepresentation and real party in interest issues. Sinclair’s responses to the LOI add another layer of deceit to its growing list of false statements, concealments and misrepresentations. 

The FCC Media Bureau scuttled Chair Pai’s hearing and instead imposed a Consent Decree and fine of $48 million on Sinclair (included the unpaid 2017 $13.4 million fine imposed on the broadcaster for masquerading advertising content as news.)

The Media Bureau had no authority to issue the Consent Decree. The real party in interest and misrepresentation issues remain unresolved before the FCC. Accordingly, the FCC should designate the referenced applications for hearing to resolve the substantial and material questions of fact whether Sinclair is in de facto control of Cunningham, Deerfield and its other front companies and whether Sinclair has the requisite character qualifications to remain a Commission licensee. Petitioner maintains that the evidence clearly shows that it does not.

The license transfers being challenged are Sinclair KHQA Hannibal MO, KTVO Kirksville, MO, WICS Springfield, IL, WICD-TV Champlain, IL, and WVTV Milwaukee, WI. The licenses are proposed to be transferred to Rincon Broadcasting Group LLC. Rincon is principally owned by Todd Parkin, who formerly served as Vice President of Ad Sales and Strategy for Sinclair’s Bally Sports networks.

In a press release from Frequency Forward, attorney Belendiuk states, “These companies are not independent broadcasters; they’re fronts for Sinclair. Chairman Brendan Carr has said he’s committed to treating all broadcast licensing matters fairly and balanced, and we hope he approaches this case with the same urgency and determination he’s shown in his first months as Chair.”