The Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of local TV stations, serving 81 markets, wants to expand by buying
Tribune Media’s TV stations, many of which are in larger markets, like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
For Tribune Media, a deal with Sinclair could be the coda for a company
that was the television arm of the Tribune behemoth that published newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.
Already the largest owner of local television stations in the United States, Sinclair said Monday
that it had agreed to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, beating out other suitors including Nexstar and 21st Century Fox.
TV stations owned by Sinclair
TV stations owned by Tribune
People with knowledge of the bidding said Sinclair had not expressed any plans to compete directly with Fox.
Michael J. Copps, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2011 who is now a special adviser to the
nonpartisan consumer group Common Cause, called the planned merger “another blow to the diversity of journalism that we should have.”
“It’s symptomatic of what is happening in this market,” he said, “which is fewer
and fewer organizations controlling more and more of the information on which our democracy rests.”
Sinclair is set to acquire Tribune Media’s 42 stations and its prize asset, WGN America, a network based in Chicago that broadcasts nationwide.
