Sinclair 2018: Even having a friend in the Oval Office couldn't save this troubled year

In december 2017, the Sinclair Broadcast Group was riding about as high as a media company can ride these days. The company was poised to close on a $3.9 billion deal for Tribune Media that would make it the most powerful broadcast group in the nation with more than 200 stations and, finally, a presence in such big time markets of New York and Los Angeles. It clearly had a friend in the White House in Donald Trump, and it looked like the president’s support was going to make the deal a slam dunk for Federal Communications Commission approval with a little help from FCC Chair Ajit Pai, who was greasing the skids by rolling back ownership cap rules.

But what a difference 12 months have made in the life of Sinclair. In August the deal to take over Tribune not only turned to dust, but it ended with the Chicago-based company suing Sinclair for $1 billion for breach of contract. The FCC had sent the Sinclair deal to its doom by ordering further review after essentially accusing the company of shady behavior in the information it did — and did not — share with the regulators about its plan to sell stations in Chicago and Texas. Sinclair has taken a PR pounding this year for some of the things it has done onscreen, no doubt about it. But I wonder if the deeper takeaway at the end of the year doesn’t involve what happened off-screen with the FCC’s repudiation of the Trump-like crony capitalism that the Baltimore broadcaster was proposing in those sidecar arrangements on stations like WGN. Between the Tribune suit and the FCC action, would you be eager to go into business with Sinclair after the way Tribune and the FCC characterized its behavior?