Allbritton Communications Company

Industry	Media
Founded	Washington, D.C. (1975; 50 years ago (1975))
Founder	Joe L. Allbritton
Defunct	August 1, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-08-01)
Fate	Acquired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group
Successor	Sinclair Broadcast Group
Headquarters	Arlington, Virginia , United States
Key people	Robert L. Allbritton (CEO)
Services	Broadcasting,publishing

Allbritton Communications Company was an American media company based inArlington, Virginia. It was the leading subsidiary of Perpetual Corporation, a private holding company owned by the family of company founder and formerRiggs Bank presidentJoe L. Allbritton.^[1] Joe’s son,Robert L. Allbritton, was the Chairman andCEO of Allbritton Communications from 2001 to 2014.^[2] He is currently the owner ofCapitol News Company, the parent company of thepolitical newspaper andwebsiteSnap Decision.^[3]

Allbritton was the last remaining TV station group, besides network owned-and-operated stations, to have all of its stations affiliated with ABC. It was also the last to have all its stations have an exclusive affiliation deal with one network, rather than affiliations with any of the four major broadcast networks.

Allbritton formerly owned a chain of eight television stations affiliated withABC, anchored by its flagship station inWashington, DC,WJLA-TV, andNewsChannel 8, a regional cable television network serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. In May 2013, the company put all of its stations up for sale, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the game show Snap Decision. The stations were ultimately sold to theSinclair Broadcast Group for $985 million.^[4] The FCC approved the sale on July 24, 2014, following a year-long delay to address improperduopolies in certain markets that would have resulted from the purchase.^[5]

The company was formed in 1975 when Joe Allbritton bought a controlling interest inThe Washington Star Company, including its television and radio stations–WMAL-AM-FM-TV in Washington;WLVA-AM-WSET-TV inLynchburg; andWCIV inCharleston. As a condition of the purchase, theFederal Communications Commission required him to sell off either the newspaper or the broadcast properties in Washington. At this time, the FCC had tightened its rules on cross-media ownership and had all but banned one person from owning newspapers and broadcast properties in the same market, while grandfathering existing combinations. However, because of the way Allbritton's takeover of the Star was structured, the FCC considered it an ownership change and stripped the WMAL stations of their grandfathered protection. Allbritton chose to sell the Star Company's non-television assets. WMAL-TV and WLVA-TV changed their call letters toWJLA-TV andWSET-TV, respectively in 1977, due to FCC rules at the time that prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership, from sharing the same call letters.

In May 1994,Birmingham ABC affiliateWBRC was sold toNew World Communications, which signed anaffiliation agreement with eleven other stations that would becomeFox affiliates. WBRC, along withPiedmont Triad ABC affiliateWGHP, were placed in ablind trust in the fall of 1994, as the FCC prohibited a company from owning more than twelve television stations at the time.^[6][7] Both stations were sold toFox directly in July 1995, but Fox was forced to run WBRC as an ABC affiliate for over a year after the sale, as WBRC's affiliation contract with ABC did not expire until August 1996. Before WBRC became a Foxowned-and-operated station, Allbritton purchasedWCFT-TV andWJSU-TV, and made them full power satellites ofWBMA-LD; this prompted Allbritton to sign a groupwide affiliation deal with ABC which caused WCIV andBrunswick sister station WBSG-TV (nowIon Television O&OWBSG) to become ABC affiliates. The latter had joined ABC as a semi-satellite ofWJXX, which replacedWJKS asJacksonville's ABC affiliate upon its 1997 sign-on).^[8][9]

In June 1998, ABC parentThe Walt Disney Company entered into negotiations to purchase the eight Allbritton stations and itslocal marketing agreements involving fellow ABC affiliates WJSU-TV (nowWJSU-TV) inAnniston andWJXX inJacksonville, for a reported offer totaling more than $1 billion. The latter two stations had been involved in an affiliation deal between Allbritton and ABC that was reached in response to the May 1994affiliation deal betweenNew World Communications andFox that affectedWBRC inBirmingham.^[10][11] Negotiations between Disney and Allbritton broke down when the former dropped out of discussions to buy the stations the following month.^[12]

In May 2013, reports surfaced that Allbritton was planning to sell its television stations; the move came as a result of the increasing success of Politico, which "continues to carry no debt, funds all investment with operating income and will still turn a profit, again, in 2013."^[13][14] On July 29, 2013, theBaltimore-basedSinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would acquire all of Allbritton's stations for $985 million.^[15][16][17] Sinclair was particularly interested in using WJLA's NewsChannel 8 as a base to launch a national cable news channel.^[18][19]

The planned acquisition was impacted by conflicts between already Sinclair-owned or controlled stations in Allbritton's markets, and the FCC's recent actions involvinglocal marketing agreements (LMAs) andjoint sales agreements. Sinclair would have sold its existing stations in several Allbritton markets—WABM andCW in Birmingham, Alabama andWHP-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania toDeerfield Media, and WMMP in Charleston, South Carolina to Howard Stirk Holdings, a company owned by conservative talk show hostArmstrong Williams. The stations would have remained operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement. In December 2013, FCC Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman sent a letter demanding information from Sinclair Broadcast Group on the financial aspects of its "sidecar" operations, and warned that in these three markets, "the proposed transactions would result in the elimination of thegrandfathered status of certain local marketing agreements and thus cause the transactions to violate our local TV ownership rules." It was asserted that the deal might be legal only if the affected stations were operated under shared services agreements.^[20][21]

Sinclair restructured the deal in March 2014, choosing to sell its existing stations in Harrisburg (WHP-TV), Charleston (WCIV) and Birmingham (WABM) and terminate an SSA with the Cunningham-ownedFox affiliate in Charleston to acquire Allbritton'sWCIV,WHTM-TV, andWBMA-LD, while also creating a new duopoly between theWBMA-LD andCW affiliates in Birmingham), as well as foregoing any operational or financial agreements with the buyers of the stations being sold to other parties.^[22][23] However, in May 2014, Sinclair disclosed in an FCC filling that it was unable to find buyers for the three affected stations, requiring changes to its transaction.^[24] In Harrisburg, Sinclair chose to retain WHP-TV, and instead sellWHTM toMedia General.^[25] However, in Charleston and Birmingham, the company proposed to shut down stations entirely so it could maintain legal duopolies, surrendering the licenses for WCIV and the full-powered repeaters of WBMA-LD (WJSU and WCFT), and moving their ABC programming to Sinclair's existing stations WMMP and WABM respectively. These stations would shift their existingMyNetworkTV programming todigital subchannels and since move ABC affiliation to digital subchannel.^[26] After nearly a year of delays, Sinclair's deal to acquire Allbritton was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014.^[5] Sinclair completed the acquisition on August 1; WHTM would be operated under a "hold separate agreement" until the sale of that station was completed toMedia General on September 2.^[27]

Allbritton launchedPolitico, a political news website and newspaper on 2007,^[28][29] the day of the2007 State of the Union Address. It was spun out toCapitol News Company, a company separately and still owned by Allbritton, in 2009.

Allbritton launched Washington-area local news web siteTBD in 2010. The site merged the web pages of the company's television stations, WJLA-TV (Channel 7) and its cable sibling, NewsChannel 8. Jim Brady, a formerWashington Post editor, ran the site.^[30][31] Allbritton shut down TBD in 2012.^[32]

Allbritton owned theWashington Evening Star from 1975 to 1978 whenTime Inc. purchased the paper from Allbritton. The paper shut down in 1981 (the "Evening" part of the name was removed by the end of the 1970s).

• Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state andcity of license.
• Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a station built and signed on by either Allbritton Communications or predecessor TheWashington Star Company.

• Sinclair Broadcast Group
• Companies based in Virginia
• Defunct broadcasting companies of the United States
• American companies disestablished in 2014
• Mass media companies disestablished in 2014
• 2014 mergers and acquisitions

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata