Sinclair Broadcast to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Baltimore Sun

By Lorraine Mirabella • Contact Reporter (1)
The Baltimore Sun

May 8, 2017, 10:07 AM

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. has acquired Tribune Media Co. for approximately $3.9 billion after prevailing in an auction for one of the largest U.S. television station operators.

The deal, which gives Sinclair ownership or control of TV stations in 72 percent of the U.S., is worth $43.50 per share.
....

The acquisition would be the first major deal between broadcasters since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to reverse a decision that limited the number of television stations broadcasters may buy.
....

Baltimore Sun reporters Carrie Wells and Sean Welsh contributed to this story.

(1) mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Regarding: "Sinclair Broadcast to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion"

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-md-sinclair-tribune-deal-20170508-story.html

[dhill926]

1. ugh....

[rdking647]

2. better than rupert murdoch

[CanonRay]

5. Sir, would you prerer death by burning or boiling?

[rurallib]

7. well stated

A real setback for America either way

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Sinclair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Sinclair

Some conspiracy theorists include Sinclair in the Illuminati bloodlines, but
you'd never know it from the Wiki page.

I first noticed it in Jim Marrs' Rule by Secrecy

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. I don't think that's the same outfit. NT

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Marrs

references Saint-Clair on page 310 as having commanded Knights Templar at the Battle of Bannockburn,
citing a book by Gardner. They are also mentioned on page 320 as being among the founder of the Templars,
but the reference is the Dossiers secret not a widely accepted source.

He also mentioned elsewhere, as I'm sure I read it because that's how I recognized the Sinclair name, that
in the New World Saint-Clair became contracted to Sinclair.

Marrs is speculative history, tracing links over thousands of years, and seems to think that's how capital
got passed forward. Populations were so small a thousand or even 500 years ago that many people today
can trace their lineage to some tangential connection. The landed gentry just kept setting up their heirs
well. Land built castles, industrialization dug coal and later oil, etc etc.

Sinclair Broadcasting is a conservative operation I think it's safe to say.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. If your name determines your outcome in life, then how come Jimmy Buffett

isn't a multi-billionaire?

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Because they're not related in a direct linear fashion?

"But really: Are they related? FORTUNE believes, but cannot prove beyond a doubt, that Warren and Jimmy are kin. It was Warren's sister Doris, the family genealogist, who first raised the subject. Two years after mailing out questionnaires to all 125 Buffetts in the U.S., she got a call from a curious Jimmy. "He said, 'I want to be related to your family because they're rich and famous,' " Doris recalls. "And I said, 'That's funny, we want to be related to you because you're rich and famous.' " Doris' research has unearthed three possible ancestral links: John Buffett, a poor 17th-century pickle farmer from Long Island; a Newfoundland sailor whom Jimmy honors in "Son of a Son of a Sailor"; and Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, which is inhabited by hundreds of Buffetts (as well as a good many descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty). When Doris and Jimmy discovered that Norfolk Island used to be a penal colony, however, they lost hope: Centuries of inbreeding have blurred family lines."

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/06/21/21706/index.htm

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. If your basis for "Sinclair Broadcasting is a conservative operation" is the name, then, no

Trying to use a patronymic surname as a basis for determining politics is completely ridiculous. As an example, Upton Sinclair.

Look up the founder of the company, and you find that Sinclair was his middle name. Now, perhaps that comes from the surname of his mother or some woman born 'Sinclair' who married an ancestor, but in that case you're expanding it to anyone descended from a Sinclair. Go back 500 years and that would be pretty much everyone in Scotland, and most of England too.

The founder's surname was 'Smith'. Are you going to try to judge his politics from having the most common surname in the British Isles?

[bucolic_frolic]

13. No, not at all

I've cited the sources I've read. I didn't invent the link that the authors made.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. Maybe the authors are wrong

I didn't say, and they didn't say, Sinclair Broadcast Group or Sinclair Broadcasting
was descendant from Sinclair or Saint-Clair.

I'm a conduit of vastly incomplete information I guess. I don't want to muddy
the waters, let me know if you think I should delete all my posts here.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. The bits about the clan do seem to muddy the waters

but the links you give in #15 are relevant. Sinclair Broadcasting Group is very conservative, but that's not because of any link to the clan.

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Citations of conservative tilt

http://www.billionairesforbush.com/dc/sinclair.htm

http://www.alternet.org/story/20208/sinclair%27s_shame

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/sinclair-known-for-conservative-political-tilt/

[not fooled]

9. Aren't they RW fake Xtian extremist media?

There's this gem:

Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.

[link:http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764|][link:http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764|]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764[link:http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764|]

[Blue_Tires]

10. Telecom Act of 1996 is the gift that keeps on giving

[muntrv]

16. That and repealing the Fairness Doctrine.

[muntrv]

17. Sinclair is to TV stations what Clear Channel is to radio stations.

Bleah!

[mwooldri]

19. Yucky in some media markets then...

Interesting to see how this will play out, especially with the FCC planning ownership changes, and a reduction in the number of television broadcast licenses due to the 600 mhz auctions.

Take the Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point media market. Presently we have:

WFMY (CBS - Tenga), WGHP (Fox - Tribune), WXII (NBC - Hearst), WCWG (CW - some llc), WGPX (Ion - Ion) WUNC (PBS, UNC), WLXI (independent, religious), WXLV (ABC - Sinclair) and WMYV (My Network - Sinclair).

The auction resulted in WCWG and WLXI handing in their licenses. The Sinclair purchase of Tribune will mean they own 3 out of the 6 commercial networks left. Under present FCC rules the enlarged Sinclair would have to rid itself of either WGHP or WXLV. There is nothing in the FCC rules that prohibit Sinclair from taking the ABC affiliation from WXLV and moving it to a .2 of WGHP (presently Fox/Tribune)... and then selling WXLV less an affiliation agreement. Though it would be better off for Sinclair to sell WXLV and the ABC affiliation perhaps to Disney/ABC, especially since they own WTVD next door in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill. In my opinion that would be the best outcome if the Sinclair purchase of Tribune went ahead.