CBS, Fox, Sinclair Lose Bid to Dodge TV Ad Price-Fixing Claims

CBS Corp., Fox Corp., and other leading broadcasters must face claims they inflated local TV advertising rates through illegal information exchanges at a time when competition from other forms of media should have been driving them down, a federal judge in Chicago ruled.

Although the suit doesn’t include a “smoking gun,” given how “improbable” it is “that an antitrust defendant” would “openly” scheme to suppress competition, the “plaintiffs clearly connect the dots between " their circumstantial evidence of “the alleged information exchange and the rise in price,” Judge Virginia M. Kendall wrote.

In addition to CBS and Fox, ...