The attorney challenging the newsroom merger of KGMB9, KHNL and K5 television stations said she was "disappointed" the Federal Communications Commission did not put an immediate halt to the deal.

But Angela Campbell, director of the First Amendment and Media Law Project at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law, said the FCC has responded relatively quickly by requesting important financial information about the controversial newsroom merger.

"This deal is in clear violation of existing FCC rules and the federal communications act," Campbell said.

In October, Raycom Media of Alabama, which owns KHNL and K5, merged its newsroom operations with KGMB and terminated nearly a third of the stations' employees.

Media Council Hawaii said the deal violates FCC law barring multiple ownership of stations in a single market and attempts to circumvent the FCC's review of ownership changes of local television stations.

Campbell, who is in town this week to speak at the council's annual meeting, said Raycom and KGMB's owner MCG Capital of Virginia could be forced to unravel the deal or could lose their stations' broadcast licenses if the FCC finds that the newsroom merger violates federal law.

Raycom officials were not available for comment.

In the past, the company has said the newsroom merger is legal because there's no change of ownership and the stations' broadcast licenses do not change hands.

Raycom also has said the merger is needed to prevent one or two of the stations from going under amid an unprecedented 30 percent decline in the local television advertising market.

But the local media council noted that the shared services agreement between the stations calls for Raycom to pay MCG more than $22 million over seven years under a loan agreement, which makes the deal essentially a sale.

The newsroom merger also includes quarterly interest payments and annual principal payments by Raycom.

Chris Conybeare, media council's president, said the council is exploring new ownership models should the FCC unravel the deal.

He cited the Green Bay Packers football team as one potential model. The NFL team operates as a nonprofit organization that's owned by the local community.