Deadline has reported that Sinclair CEO, Chris Ripley, made his thoughts about the ongoing negotiations between Disney and YouTube TV abundantly clear, believing both companies could be violating antitrust laws.

According to Deadline, during this quarter’s earnings call on Wednesday, Ripley told the Wall Street Journal that government regulators should conduct more thorough investigations when examining network-affiliate relations. He stated that carriage issues between multichannel video programmers such as YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV create “antitrust issues” and “hurt local viewers and local journalism.”

Via Deadline, Disney, along with ABC stations, went dark on YouTube TV last Thursday, leaving 10 million subscribers without access. The battle between media giants has been one of the most contentious in recent years. Disney and ABC are not the only networks currently in the midst of tense negotiations with YouTube, as Hispanic broadcast network Univision has been unavailable on YouTube TV since September.

Deadline has reported that Sinclair has experienced negative effects from the rapid expansion of YouTube TV, such as blackouts of its regional sports affiliates. Traditional network affiliate relationships were at the top of Ripley’s mind. Ripley’s mention of FCC investigations did not provide specific details, but he was perhaps referring to the FCC probe into negotiations between Comcast and NBC Universal. FCC chairman Brendan Carr had stated the investigation was due to NBC attempting to exert leverage over smaller affiliates by utilizing their “public interest obligation”.

“As local broadcasters, we have no say in whether our content and the content we pay to air will be distributed to local viewers. This was clearly not the intent of the Telecommunications Act (of 1996), and seems to be, from our perspective, an antitrust issue as well. This dispute, and others like it, continue to hurt local viewers and local journalism, and the ecosystem of global journalism. So as we and many broadcasters have discussed with the FCC and antitrust regulators, we believe this practice needs to be stopped,” Ripley said via Deadline. 

According to Deadline, he expounded that ABC and other broadcasters  “should not be able to dictate to us whether we can or cannot distribute content to YouTube TV.”

According to Deadline, Ripley did remark that the FCC has been investigating practices by networks that are seen as harmful to local affiliates. “We’re seeing those hurtful practices play out in front of our eyes as viewers, are missing local news, and local sports. Particularly concerning is that consumers are now being forced to buy more streaming services from one of the parties in the dispute to get the content that they literally already paid for. We call on Congress, the FCC, and antitrust regulators to further review this and stop the harm to local broadcasters and local viewers.”