• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, March 26, 2010

The Sinclair station group has struck an affiliation deal with ABC that includes sharing retransmission consent payments with the network. The arrangement covering nine stations runs through mid-2015.

Sinclair operates the ABC stations in St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio, and has been aggressive at extracting retrans payments from cable and satellite operators. It will now pass on some of that cash to continue offering "Grey's Anatomy" and "Dancing with the Stars."

However, executives indicated they expect to play hardball in negotiations with distributors in order to mitigate the impact of those payments.

Barry Faber, Sinclair's executive vice president, stated: "Although the agreement includes a license fee, based in part on retransmission consent revenue, we believe that the pass-through to the networks of a reasonable portion of the fees ... is a necessary and appropriate way to make sure that the networks continue" to invest in programming."

Belo, which has the ABC station in Dallas, is negotiating an affiliation renewal with ABC that will likely follow the Sinclair template.

Sinclair's ABC footprint covers about 5% of the country.