There will be no great affiliate swaps for the Sinclair Broadcast Group owned-and-managed stations that presently serve as ABC television network affiliates. A multi-year deal has been reached that extends affiliations across all Sinclair stations to August 2022, including station affiliation agreements that had been scheduled to expire at the end of 2017.
The new pact includes those ABC-affiliated stations that Sinclair provides sales and other services to under joint sales agreement.
Furthermore, contingent upon the closing of Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune Media, ABC and Sinclair approved an extension of Tribune’s ABC affiliation agreements in New Orleans, Wilkes Barre-Scranton, and the Quad Cities market in Illinois and Iowa. They will be “co-terminus” with Sinclair’s ABC affiliations.
The owned stations which had 2017 expirations dates are WJLA-7 in Washington, D.C., WBMA-TV and WABM-TV in Birmingham, KATV-TV in Little Rock, KTUL-TV in Tulsa, WSET-TV in Roanoke, WCIV-TV in Charleston, S.C., and KHGI-TV and KWNB-TV in Lincoln, Neb.
The stations to which Sinclair provides services are WHAM-13 in Rochester, N.Y. and WGTU-TV and WGTQ-TV in Petoskey-Traverse City, Mich.
“We are pleased to extend and renew our agreements with ABC, a longtime partner and provider of some of broadcast television’s most popular entertainment, news and sports programming,” said Barry Faber, Sinclair’s EVP/Distribution and Network Relations. “The renewals reflect the value of the symbiotic relationship between ABC’s programming and the local news and syndicated content we provide.”
Sinclair’s 34 ABC affiliates in 30 Markets, including the nine listed above, cover 14% of the U.S. and serve 16 million households.
