Will Chairman Pai Fiddle as Sinclair and Tribune Media Talk Harmful Mega-Merger?
WASHINGTON — The Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest U.S. television-station owner, is reportedly in negotiations to merge with the Tribune Media Co., according to a report Wednesday by Reuters. This deal would create a television broadcaster reaching nearly seven out of every 10 homes in the country.
To gain approval, a deal of this magnitude would require even further loosening of media-ownership limits by Donald Trump’s new leadership at the Federal Communications Commission. Federal law allows a media company to own multiple local TV stations in a given market as long as its combined market share doesn’t exceed 39 percent of the national viewership market. Sinclair, which owns and operates 173 stations and has a national reach of more than 38 percent, is already butting up against that limit. Tribune Media, with 42 stations, reaches more than 43 percent of viewers.
The FCC’s method for calculating this audience reach previously granted a “discount” to television station owners for the UHF stations in their portfolios. It was seen as a way to let broadcast conglomerates add stations to their portfolios without exceeding the federal limit. The FCC in 2016 moved to end that unjustified discount, which lost any technical justification when broadcasters made the switch a decade ago to digital broadcasting.
But even if Chairman Ajit Pai reverses course and keeps this discount in place, as broadcasters have asked him to do, the combined company here would still exceed the 39 percent cap by a wide margin. And without this arcane discount, the merged entity would serve 69.4 percent of the country’s population.
Sinclair executives have already told investors that they’re confident Pai will bend existing ownership limits to usher in a new era of media consolidation. The reported Sinclair-Tribune Media negotiation indicates that the industry is already moving in that direction.
In 2016, Sinclair executives worked in collaboration with Trump’s campaign team to air interviews with the then-candidate in key electoral states where Sinclair has stations, including Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Free Press Deputy Director and Senior Counsel Jessica J. González made the following statement:
“Sinclair is the poster child for bad stewardship of the public airwaves. It’s a conservative TV-station conglomerate with an established track record of taking over stations, gutting news departments and airing right-wing commentary produced outside of the broadcasters’ local communities.
“If he were to approve a Sinclair-Tribune Media merger, Chairman Pai would be acting in direct defiance of the FCC’s ownership rules and against the agency’s central mandate to promote diversity, localism and competition in use of the airwaves.
“Local broadcast television is still the most important news source for people, particularly low-income and Spanish-speaking communities. But in the irresponsible hands of a company like Sinclair, local television can also be a vector for spreading xenophobic and dehumanizing propaganda about communities of color. We are at a critical moment in our nation’s history, where we need a diversity of news sources and an adversarial press to hold this hateful administration accountable.”
