Nexstar Facing License Challenge To 14- Stations

A former television company is challenging Nexstar Media Group’s application to renew broadcast licenses for more than a dozen stations over apparent false statements made by Nexstar to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The challenges were first reports by The Desk.

The matter concerns documents that Nexstar and other broadcasters are required to provide to the FCC as part of each station’s public inspection file, which includes records about political content and advertising aired on licensed stations.

The FCC gives broadcast stations and their owners a certain amount of time to upload public inspection files on a regular basis. Records related to political content and advertising are supposed to be furnished to the FCC once every 90 days.

But a company called WNAC LLC says Nexstar not only didn’t furnish the appropriate political records within the required time frame, but falsely claimed otherwise when it applied to renew the TV licenses of 12 stations between last year and early this year.

WNAC LLC comprises former industry stakeholders who operated WNAC-TV (Channel 64, Fox), a Providence-based broadcast station that was acquired by Mission Broadcasting in 2020. Mission Broadcasting stations are wholly operated by Nexstar through shared service agreements, a business arrangement that is at the center of two separate disputes at the FCC.

WNAC LLC’s complaint leans on several actions taken by the FCC last year that found Nexstar had violated agency rules a number of times over the past two years, resulting in proposed fines that ranged from $3,000 to over $180,000.

The fines were related to rules beyond the public inspection file requirement — in one case, seven Nexstar stations were found to have violated advertising and children’s programming rules — but WNAC LLC says they prove that Nexstar is negligent in upholding its obligations as a licensed broadcaster.