Sinclair Renews Five Fox Affiliations

Sinclair Broadcast Group on Wednesday announced a multi-year deal with Fox Broadcasting that renews affiliation agreements for all five of Sinclair’s Fox affiliates that were at the end of their terms.

The affiliations renewed were for:

• WACH Columbia, S.C.
• KFOX El Paso, Texas
• KRXI Reno, Nev.
• WFXL Albany, Ga.
• WSBT South Bend, Ind.

“We are pleased we have reached this agreement with Fox, which includes the ability to participate in vMVPD deals,” said Barry Faber, Sinclair’s EVP for distribution and network relations. “We have had a long-standing relationship with Fox and this renewal reflects the mutually beneficial network-affiliate model, which marries together the network’s prime time and sports programming with our stations local news and syndicated content. We look forward to continuing to discuss with Fox the renewals of other affiliations which are up at the end of this year and in 2018.”

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker liked the news. “While this appears to be small in the scheme of things (recall Sinclair Broadcast Group will also be negotiating with Fox for a renewal of a bunch more Sinclair-owned Fox stations at the end of this year, Tribune-owned Fox stations mid-2018 and the affiliation transfers related to the Tribune deal), we view today’s news and the specific commentary in the associated release as a good sign that the two companies are working together.

“We also like the fact that Sinclair has entered into an vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) agreement with Fox, allowing Sinclair’s stations to be included in streaming bundles — we believe this agreement applies to current and future vMVPDs.”