The telecom company that owns Anchorage, Alaska, CBS affiliate KTVA is trying to stop Gray Television from buying that city’s NBC affiliate KTUU and MyTV affiliate KYES .
The Alaska Dispatch News reports telecom company General Communications Inc. petitioned the FCC in mid-November, saying “Gray Television, a Georgia-based company, was attempting to take control of Anchorage’s television market. GCI claimed Gray’s purchase of both stations would be a breach of FCC policy.”
Two years ago we reported that a group of Alaska broadcasters tried to block Denali Media Holdings, a subsidiary of GCI, from buying KTVA and two other Alaska stations for similar reasons. Denali eventually was OK’d to buy KTVA, KATH in Juneau and KSCT in Sitka, Alaska.
In their petition to block the purchase, the owners of ABC, CBS and FOX affiliates throughout Alaska told the FCC, “Grant of these applications would result in the combination of ownership of television stations in two of the three television markets in Alaska with ownership of the largest, indeed in many cases the exclusive, provider of terrestrial cable and broadband service to much of Alaska’s population.”
In September, Gray announced it was buying Schurz Communications, the owner of KTUU.