From Wikipedia:
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (
SBG) is a publicly traded
American telecommunications conglomerate which is controlled by the family of company founder
Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the
Baltimore suburb of
Cockeysville, Maryland,
[2] the company is the second-largest
television station operator in the
United States by number of stations (after
Nexstar Media Group), owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the
South and
Midwest, and is the largest owner of stations affiliated with
Fox,
ABC, and
The CW. Sinclair also owns four
digital multicast networks (
Comet,
Charge!,
Stadium, and
TBD), sports-oriented cable networks (
Tennis Channel and
Fox Sports Networks), and a
streaming service (
Stirr), and owns or operates four radio stations in the
Pacific Northwest. Among other non-broadcast properties, Sinclair also owns the
professional wrestling promotion
Ring of Honor and its streaming service
Honor Club.
Sinclair has faced scrutiny from some media critics, as well as some of its station employees, for the
conservative slant of their stations' news reporting and other programming decisions, and how the company's rapid growth has aided the airing of content that supports these views.
[3][4][5] Sinclair has also faced criticism over business practices that circumvent
concentration of media ownership regulations, particularly the use of
local marketing agreements, accusations that the company had been currying favor with the
Trump administration in order to loosen these rules
[6] and about its management lacking diversity and being totally controlled by a single family.
[7] Critics including former
CBS Evening News anchor
Dan Rather have described Sinclair's practices as being "an assault on our democracy" by disseminating what they perceive to be
Orwellian-like propaganda to its local stations.
[8][9][10]
A 2019 study in the
American Political Science Review found that "stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market."
[11][12]