Williams Filing JSA Waivers This Week

In an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators series, Armstrong Williams said he had instructed his lawyers to apply for waivers of the Federal Communications Commission's just-approved policy making joint sales agreements attributable as ownership interests. He said he is confident he will get them because he is active and involved in running the television stations, something he could not afford to be doing without the joint sales agreements (JSAs).

Williams has JSAs with Sinclair for the two stations he owns in Flint (MI), and Myrtle Beach (SC). Williams says Sinclair's big pockets were a blessing without which he could not have gotten access to the capital -- through J.P. Morgan -- to buy the stations, which he did as part of a spin-off deal of stations by Sinclair when it bought the Barrington group. Williams said that without Sinclair's backing, he would go belly up in a matter of months, though he later said if he did not get the waiver and had to unwind the JSAs he would find a way to reinvent himself that included owning the TV stations. He said if he had to negotiate as a standalone, cable operators would just drop him from their systems. "It is important that we have someone with a proven track record in broadcasting and programming to be there for us and to fight for us." He said he was very confident he would get the waiver.