FCC puts Silver King deal on hold. (Federal Communications Commission, Barry Diller Tele-Communications Inc. bid for Silver King Communications)(Brief Article)

It approves sale of 12 stations to TCI/Diller, but delays implementation to investigate complaints

Barry Diller's bid to assume control of the Silver King Communications station group has won FCC approval, sort of.

The FCC last week OK'd the deal but immediately stayed its effectiveness to investigate charges that Silver King exceeded FCC ownership limits. The action will keep Diller and TeleCommunications Inc. from taking control of the 12 Silver King UHF station licenses' until the commission decides what to do about complaints from Urban Broadcasting Corp. that Silver King exercised control over WTMW(TV) Arlington, Va./Washington even though the company did not count the station among its 12 owned licenses.

The commission received the complaint after deciding to grant the TCI/Diller application to acquire the stations. TCI's Liberty Media arm and Diller last summer announced plans to acquire the stations through a joint venture, Silver Management Co., in which Liberty holds nearly all the equity and Diller holds the voting stock.

The commissioners signed off on the arrangement, citing Diller's planned role in the company. "Mr. Diller's prior record in the industry demonstrates that he is fully capable of independently controlling and running Silver King," FCC Commissioner Susan Ness said in a separate statement.

But Urban Broadcasting's charges against Silver King's previous management prompted the FCC to stay the license transfer. In a March 6 letter to the commission, Urban Broadcasting President Theodore White said that Silver King, while holding a 45% nonvoting stake in his company, for several years has exercised "excessive influence over Urban's finances, personnel and programing."

"Urban's allegations potentially raise serious issues of misrepresentation and/or lack of candor by both Urban and Silver King," the commission said. Late last year, Hammond, Ind.-based Jovon Broadcasting filed a similar complaint against Silver King, but later withdrew its petition to avoid holding up the license transfer.

The commission said it will treat Urban's objection as a petition to reconsider its approval of the Silver King license transfer. The FCC gave Urban until March 15 to file more evidence of its charges and gave the buyer and seller 10 days after Urban's filing to submit their responses.

A spokesperson for Diller said the stay will not affect plans to shift programing on the stations. They now carry the Home Shopping Network, but the TCI/Diller application lists plans to shift to entertainment, news, information and sports. Last month, Diller said he hopes to have the stations start as "full-service" local broadcasters in June or July of next year.