Allbritton Communications facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Allbritton Communications Company

Industry	Media
Fate	Acquired by Sinclair
Successor	Sinclair Broadcast Group
Founded	Washington, D.C. (1975; 50 years ago (1975))
Founder	Joe L. Allbritton
Defunct	August 1, 2014; 10 years ago (2014-08-01)
Headquarters	Arlington, Virginia , United States
Key people	Robert L. Allbritton (CEO)
Services	Broadcasting, publishing

The Allbritton Communications Company was an American company that owned TV stations and newspapers. It was based in Arlington, Virginia. The company was part of a larger family-owned business called Perpetual Corporation.

The company's founder was Joe L. Allbritton. His son, Robert L. Allbritton, was the CEO from 2001 to 2014. Robert Allbritton now owns Capitol News Company, which runs the political news website Politico.

Allbritton Communications was unique because all its TV stations showed programs from just one network, ABC. Most other TV groups had stations linked to different networks.

The company owned eight ABC TV stations, including its main station WJLA-TV in Washington, DC. It also ran NewsChannel 8, a local cable news channel for the Washington, D.C. area. In 2013, Allbritton decided to sell all its TV stations. They wanted to focus only on Politico. The stations were sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group for $985 million. The sale was approved in July 2014. It took a year to approve because of rules about owning too many stations in one area.

Company History

Allbritton Communications started in 1975. Joe Allbritton bought a big part of The Washington Star newspaper company. This included its TV and radio stations in Washington, D.C., Lynchburg, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina.

However, the government agency that controls broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), had rules. They didn't want one company to own both a newspaper and TV/radio stations in the same city. So, Allbritton had to sell some of these properties. He chose to sell the newspaper's non-TV parts. The TV stations in Washington and Lynchburg changed their names in 1977. This was because of FCC rules that stopped TV and radio stations from sharing names if they had different owners.

In 1994, Allbritton's ABC station WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama was sold to another company. This company, New World Communications, was changing many of its stations to become Fox affiliates. WBRC was later sold directly to Fox. But WBRC had to stay an ABC station for a while because of its contract.

Before WBRC became a Fox station, Allbritton bought two other stations, WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV. They made these stations work like extra antennas for WBMA-LP, which was an ABC station. This led Allbritton to make a deal with ABC for all its stations. Because of this deal, some of Allbritton's other stations, like WCIV and WBSG-TV (now WPXC-TV), also became ABC stations.

In 1998, The Walt Disney Company (which owns ABC) tried to buy Allbritton's eight TV stations. The offer was over $1 billion. But the deal didn't happen. Disney decided not to buy the stations the next month.

Selling TV Stations to Sinclair

In May 2013, news came out that Allbritton planned to sell its TV stations. This was because their political news website, Politico, was doing very well. On July 29, 2013, the Sinclair Broadcast Group announced it would buy all of Allbritton's stations for $985 million. Sinclair was especially interested in WJLA-TV's NewsChannel 8. They wanted to use it to start a national cable news channel.

The sale faced problems because of FCC rules. Sinclair already owned or controlled stations in some of the same cities as Allbritton's stations. Owning two stations in the same city is called a "duopoly." The FCC had strict rules about this. Sinclair first planned to sell some of its existing stations to other companies. But these stations would still be managed by Sinclair. The FCC was worried this would break their rules.

Sinclair changed the deal in March 2014. They decided to sell their existing stations in some cities and buy Allbritton's stations instead. For example, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Sinclair chose to keep its own station and sell Allbritton's station, WHTM-TV, to another company.

In Charleston, South Carolina, and Birmingham, Alabama, Sinclair couldn't find buyers for the stations they wanted to sell. So, they suggested shutting down some stations entirely. This would allow them to keep their own stations and move the ABC programming to them.

After almost a year of delays, the FCC approved Sinclair's deal to buy Allbritton on July 24, 2014. Sinclair finished buying the stations on August 1.

Newspapers and Websites

Allbritton launched Politico in 2007. It's a website and newspaper focused on political news. In 2009, Politico became part of a separate company called Capitol News Company, which is still owned by the Allbritton family.

In 2010, Allbritton also launched a local news website for the Washington area called TBD. This site combined the web pages of their TV stations, WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8. Allbritton closed TBD in 2012.

Allbritton owned Washington Evening Star newspaper from 1975 to 1978. Then, another company bought the paper. The Star newspaper closed down in 1981.

Former Allbritton-owned Television Stations

Here is a list of TV stations that Allbritton Communications used to own:

• (**) - This means the station was built and started by The Washington Star Company, which was the company before Allbritton Communications.