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Exclusive: Sinclair approaches Tribune Media about possible deal - sources

RadioPatrol said:
True but Sinclair has a history of using third party tv station license holders like Cunningham and Deerfield to take ownership of the divested TV Stations while Sinclair Step in and produce local newscasts for them. And yes its to get around the ownership rules.
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Where's the outrage from these groups like Prometheus who challenge everything radio companies do?
 
TheBigA said:
Where's the outrage from these groups like Prometheus who challenge everything radio companies do?
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https://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?701734-KDND-amp-Stolz-The-saga-continues

You mean Ed Stoltz of Sacramento who attempted to derail the CBS Radio/Entercom deal last year for the Sacramento Clusters?

Well whenever we talk about "Media Companies abusing their power" certain groups mainly go after Fox, Disney, National Amusements (Owners of CBS, Viacom and Entercom, and Comcast and yes Public interest is at play here. I rarely here "Public Interest groups" go after Sinclair, Nexstar, Raycom, Gray, Hearst, Scripps and Meredith though.


Note Sinclair, Nexstar and Raycom are most notable for using third party license holders to get around ownership rules.

Nexstar uses Mission Broadcasting to get around the rules
Raycom uses American spirit media to get around the rules of ownership.
 
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-sinclair-sale-wgn-tv-tribune-20180226-story.html

Here is an update on the Sinclair Tribune deal and its effect on WGN Specifically

inclair Broadcast Group is selling WGN-TV to a Maryland auto dealer but would remain in control of the station in what critics say is a bid to skirt ownership limits and win federal regulatory approval for its proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media.

That means “Terrorism Alert Desk” and other programming staples of politically conservative Sinclair may yet be headed to Chicago’s airwaves.

Under the terms of the $60 million station sale, filed Wednesday with the Federal Communications Commission, Sinclair would provide everything from programming to advertising sales to the buyer, essentially running WGN-Ch. 9 through a services agreement.

The licensee of WGN would be a newly formed company headed by Steven Fader, a longtime business associate of Sinclair Executive Chairman David Smith. Sinclair will have an option to buy back the station for the same price, subject to adjustments, within eight years.


The services agreement puts Sinclair in charge of advertising sales and gives it the right to provide local news and other programming to WGN. Sinclair would keep 30 percent of all ad sales and receive a $5.4 million monthly service fee for operating the station during the first year, with annual increases and performance bonuses.

Fader is CEO of Atlantic Automotive Corp., a Towson, Md.-based auto dealership group in which Smith holds a controlling interest, according to Sinclair financial statements. Fader also is chairman and co-founder of private equity firm Atlantic Capital Group.


He could not be reached Thursday for comment.

Hunt Valley, Md.-based Sinclair agreed to buy Chicago-based Tribune Media in May, creating what would be the largest ownership group in the U.S., with 233 TV stations, before any required divestitures. The deal has been facilitated by the FCC’s easing of ownership restrictions last year, but the combined company would still exceed a 39 percent cap in national audience reach.

Sinclair announced last week that it would sell Tribune stations WGN and WPIX-TV in New York, as well as stations in nine other markets, to get under the ownership cap.

On Wednesday, Sinclair filed a similar application to sell WPIX to Cunningham Broadcasting Corp. for $15 million, with an option to buy it back, and an agreement to provide advertising sales and programming to the station.

Cunningham Broadcasting is owned by the estate of Carolyn Smith, the mother of the Sinclair chairman.

It remains to be seen whether such an ownership workaround passes muster with federal regulators, including the FCC and the Department of Justice.

The Coalition to Save Local Media, a broad range of industry and advocacy groups opposed to the Sinclair-Tribune merger, issued a statement earlier this week calling out the station sales plan as “smoke and mirrors.”
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So Sinclair is selling stations to companies in which the CEO has controlling interests. How is that not illegal?

It seems to me that ownership is ownership. He has to sell his interest in those companies (including his mother's estate) in order for this to pass.

Otherwise it just makes mockery of these ownership laws. Entercom's David Field could just create some outside company and sell all his extra stations there instead of being forced to set up a trust.
 
Sinclair is good at the shell game I was surprise that Cunningham didn't buy WGN I really thought they be the ones to buy it along with WPIX audio dealership is the defacto WGN owner you can't make this stuff up.
 
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s.../05/could-meredith-buy-who-tv-kdsm/394843002/

Update Meredith is rumored to get WHO-TV and KDSM from Tribune/Sinclair

http://www.adweek.com/tvspy/is-meredith-interested-in-buying-sinclair-stations/201479

Meredith Corp. is looking to buy some Sinclair Broadcast Group television stations as that conglomerate finalizes a merger with Tribune Media.

Steve Lacy, executive chairman of the Meredith board, told an audience at a media conference Monday morning that he would ask the company's board of directors later in the day for permission to bid on certain Sinclair television properties.

Sinclair has announced plans to divest from some of its TV stations to stay in line with Federal Communications Commission rules on media ownership as it wraps up a $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media, which owns the Chicago Tribune and TV stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Yahoo Finance reported that Sinclair plans to divest at least one station in eight markets, including Des Moines, where it owns Fox affiliate KDSM. Tribune owns NBC affiliate WHO in Des Moines.

"We’re going to bid for what we want as opposed to what they say they want to sell," Lacy said Monday.

Meredith would leverage debt to acquire Sinclair properties just weeks after it closed on a $2.8 billion purchase of Time Inc. But Lacy said the company still has about half a billion dollars in leeway to make future purchases. And with the high cash flows associated with TV stations, such buys "don't hurt our leverage all that much."

Meredith will stay disciplined in any bidding war, Lacy said.

"We establish a starting point and we establish an end point for each one of the stations and as the price gets too high, we just walk away," he said.
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Sinclair presently owns WGME-TV (CBS) channel 13 of Portland, ME. I was always loyal to Tegna-owned WCSH-TV (NBC) channel 6 of Portland.

Here in Hartford/New Haven, Sinclair could own WTIC-TV (FOX) channel 61 of Hartford and operate WCCT-TV (CW) channel 20 of Waterbury.

I believe Sinclair used to own WGGB-TV (ABC) channel 40 of Springfield, MA.
 
Looks like Sinclair is selling one of the PA station that is an overlap with Tribune when they wanted to keep both but decided not to guessing the DOJ was playing hardball with Sinclair. As Sinclair wanted to have their cake and eat it to wanting everything in the Tribune merger but the DOJ stuck to their guns and Sinclair dragged it's feet why this merger is taking so long should have divested the stations they needed in order to get this merger done sooner than later.
 
RadioPatrol said:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/07/media/sinclair-broadcasting-promos-media-bashing/index.html

Here is an update over Sinclair and its practices in the newsroom. Yes its promos hyping up themselves before the merger is done.
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I just read that, and from what I read, I cannot understand for the life of me why Sinclair would accuse those news outlets who are not as far to the right as they are of not wanting to report the news without bias (never mind that Sinclair insists that the news reporting on their stations must have strong right-wing bias, and that they also insist that their editorials that judge the left must be treated as though they were actual news reporting).
 
Actually the last two posts were opinions on the deal, not updates on the status. The FCC really needs to wrap this up.
 
Honestly, I think this is gonna fall through. Just too many groups oppose this deal for MANY different reasons

Sorry mr. President but you don't get your own network.....
 
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