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 station or TV station owned by another licensee. In essence, it is a sort of lease or franchise.

Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the licensee is still completely legally responsible for the station, including fines for profanity outside of safe harbor hours. An LMA must also include the entire station's facilities (studio and all), as the FCC prohibits subleasing of only the frequency rights or transmitter plant.^[1]

LMAs have been criticized because they could allow companies to circumvent FCC rules on how many radio or television stations they can control in any one market. However, the FCC addressed this issue and now stations under LMA are counted toward the ownership cap in a given market.^[2]

[edit] Sales agreements

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; however, TV station JSAs are not counted towards ownership caps, although the FCC is considering changing this.

In one recent Canadian dispute, Rogers Communications and Newcap Broadcasting had a joint sales agreement pertaining to CHNO-FM in Sudbury, Ontario, but community interests and the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting presented substantial evidence to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that in practice, the agreement was a de facto LMA, going significantly beyond advertising sales into program production and news gathering. LMAs in Canada cannot be implemented without the CRTC's approval, and in early 2005, the CRTC ordered the agreement to cease.^[3]

[edit] See also

• Concentration of media ownership

[edit] References

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