Amanda Bynes Hot: Strategic Marketing

Strategic Marketing Biography

In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (or local management agreement, or LMA) is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee. In essence, it is a sort of lease or time-buy.
Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, a local marketing agreement must give the company operating the station under the agreement control over the entire facilities of the station, including the finances, personnel and programming of the station. Its original licencee still remains legally responsible for the station and its operations, such as compliance with relevant regulations regarding content.
Occasionally, "local marketing agreement" may refer to the sharing or contracting of only certain functions, in particular advertising sales. This may also be referred to as a local sales agreement (LSA) or a joint sales agreement (JSA). In the U.S., JSAs for radio stations are counted toward ownership caps.The most common use of an LMA in television broadcasting is to create effective duopolies between stations, allowing the consolidation and sharing of resources between them such as facilities, personnel, advertising sales, and programming. The sharing of resources between stations in this way can allow more streamlined and cost-effective operations of multiple stations.[1]
Local marketing agreements also allow duopolies where they are not legally possible; FCC regulations only allow one company to own more than one station in markets where there are at least 8 distinct broadcast television stations. As such an operational agreement does not transfer ownership of the station's license, this can allow a broadcaster to operate more than one station in a market, even where there are too few stations to allow one, or to allow one between the top two stations in a market (which is prohibited in all markets).[2]The use of LMA's has been considered controversial by many broadcasters and public interest organizations. Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Broadcasting Group have been singled out as broadcasters utilizing LMA's as part of their business models the most—the two broadcasters have financed holding companies (such as Cunningham and Mission Broadcasting respectively) whose only purpose are to acquire television stations in smaller markets outright so that they can be operated through an LMA by a station in the same market owned by its respective company.[1][2]

Strategic Marketing