Local marketing agreement
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In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (or local management agreement, or LMA) is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio station or TV station owned by another licensee. In essence, it is a sort of lease.
Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the licensee is still completely legally responsible for the station, including fines for profanity outside of safe harbor hours. An LMA must also include the entire station's facilities (studio and all), as the FCC prohibits subleasing of only the frequency rights or transmitter plant.
LMAs have been criticized because they often allow large companies, such as Clear Channel Communications in the United States or Rogers Communications in Canada, to flout rules of how many stations they can control in any one market. In San Diego, Clear Channel even operates AM station XETRA and FM stations XHITZ, XHOCL, and XHRM, all licensed to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico by Mexican companies. These LMAs are all in addition to the stations actually FCC-licensed to San Diego, where Clear Channel already owns the maximum allowed by U.S. law.
Occasionally, "local marketing agreement" may refer to the sharing or contracting of only certain functions, in particular advertising sales. This may also be referred to as a local sales agreement or LSA. In one recent Canadian dispute, Rogers and Newcap Broadcasting had a local sales agreement pertaining to CHNO in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, but community interests and the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting presented substantial evidence to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that in practice, the agreement was a full LMA, going significantly beyond advertising sales into program production and news gathering. LMAs in Canada cannot be implemented without the CRTC's approval. In early 2005, the CRTC ordered the agreement to cease.