By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, November 2012
In mid-November 2012, FishbowlLA picked up an LA Times report by DC reporter Jim Puzzanghera: the FCC was set to grant the Tribune Company a set of critical media-cross-ownership waivers — letting Tribune emerge from bankruptcy with its newspaper-and-television cross-ownership intact, including the LA Times and KTLA in the same market.
Then
The FCC’s media-cross-ownership rules generally restricted a single company from owning both a major newspaper and a television station in the same market. The Tribune Company owned both the LA Times and KTLA Channel 5; the company was emerging from a multi-year bankruptcy proceeding (the result of the disastrous 2007 Sam Zell leveraged buyout).
Now
The Tribune Company split in 2014 into separate broadcast and publishing entities. The LA Times was sold to Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2018; KTLA was acquired by Nexstar Media Group in 2019. The cross-ownership the 2012 waivers preserved no longer exists.
The 2017 FCC repeal of the cross-ownership ban (upheld by the Supreme Court in 2021) substantially eliminated the regulatory framework the 2012 Tribune waivers had been navigating.
The 2012 piece reads now as a small documented moment of the late-Tribune-Company era.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.