Five Things You Should Know About Sinclair in wake of Allbritton, WJLA deal

[Commentary] Here are five things I consider worth thinking about as Sinclair moves up into bigger journalistic and political leagues with the deal to buy eight Allbritton stations including WJLA (Channel 7) and the DC 24-hour cable news outlet NewsChannel 8. (Sinclair now owns, operates or helps manage 149 stations reaching 38.2 percent of the country, by its estimate.)

1. WBFF (Fox 45), the Sinclair-owned station in Baltimore. consistently delivers some of the best investigative, enterprise and government watchdog journalism in Baltimore and Maryland.
2. Sinclair's conservative orientation is no secret. The company has long backed conservative candidates and causes. And, as a result, Sinclair management does do some stuff that might be considered, well, hinky.
3. Don't get carried away with the talk of a national cable channel for Sinclair.
4. Sinclair knows how to make money.
5. The real story of all the stations Sinclair has purchased in the last year is in the enormous power it now has in determining political TV advertising in battleground states. From Ohio, to Pennsylvania and Florida, Sinclair is there, and when the candidates come running with their bags of money to blitz the TV airwaves in state, Congressional and the presidential campaigns, they will be coming to Sinclair among a handful of other mega-station-groups. Don't make me laugh with talk about federal regulation. The station groups will control those last-second buys, not the toothless bureaucrats in Washington.