http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tribune-media-m-a-sinclair-idUSKBN1841HR
U.S. broadcaster Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc said on Monday it would buy Tribune Media Co, one of the largest U.S. television station operators, for about $3.9 billion cash and stock, and assume about $2.7 billion in debt.
[...] The announcement of the deal comes weeks after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to reverse a 2016 decision that limits broadcasters owning stations serving no more than 39 percent of U.S. television households.
A combined Tribune and Sinclair could surpass this cap and face some regulatory challenges which could result in divestitures, analysts said.
Tribune Media. The newspaper assets were spun off years ago into Tribune Publishing, aka Tronc.
Related: Gannett Ends Pursuit of Rival Newspaper Publisher Tronc
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:50PM
> But for TV, who financed the transmitter hardware is very abstract from who decides what some commie on a network TV program says.
The owner of a television station decides what programmes are broadcast from it. It is unlikely that Sinclair will give air-time to communists:
Opponents of the deal have cited examples like Sinclair’s hiring of Boris Epshteyn, a former spokesman for President Trump, as its chief political analyst and the on-air commentary of Mark Hyman, a former Sinclair executive who provides reliably conservative arguments on dozens of Sinclair stations.
-- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/business/media/sinclair-tribune-media-sale.html [nytimes.com]
Mark Hyman — a Sinclair executive and conservative commentator who appears on Sinclair stations — regularly criticized Clinton or highlighted positions favorable to Trump in his on-air commentaries.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-that-nations-largest-owner-of-tv-stations-helped-donald-trumps-campaign/2016/12/22/02924864-c7af-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html?utm_term=.d0310fc726fc [washingtonpost.com]