If people anticipated a big drop in stock value among the groups most involved in joint sales agreements, in light of the FCC's ruling on them March 31, it does not appear to be happening quite yet.
Sinclair is up 2.11% on the day to $27.09.
Nexstar is up 3.85% to $37.52.
LIN, which has a planned merger with Media General, is up .72% to $26.50.
Media General, meanwhile, is up .49% to $18.37.
The FCC voted March 31 to make joint sales agreements (JSAs) of more than 15% of a station’s ad sales attributable under ownership rules. The vote was 3 to 2, with the Republican commissioners highly critical of the decision.
Why didn't Wall Street seem to flinch based on the news out of Washington? The vote wasn't all that surprising, for one.
"Our quick take from today's webcast is that there really were no surprises re. JSAs or retransmission consent," wrote Marci Ryicker of Wells Fargo Securities.
We'll see how the stocks hold up the day after.
The FCC also voted 3-2 to launch a combined 2010/2014 quadrennial media ownership rule review that tentatively concludes that the prohibitions on newspaper-broadcast crossownership rules should not be lifted, even while it concedes the growth of broadband competition. The Republicans pushed back on that too.
