Local Marketing Agreement - Uses

Uses

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.

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).