The Growth of Sinclair's Conservative Media Empire

Sinclair is the largest owner of television stations in the United States, with a hundred and ninety-two stations in eighty-nine markets. It reaches thirty-nine percent of American viewers. It’s unclear whether Sinclair is attempting to influence the politics of its viewers or simply appealing to positions that viewers may already have—or both.

There are regulations that prevent any single company from controlling too large a share of the press, in order to protect competition and the free exchange of ideas. Sinclair has achieved its formidable reach by exploiting loopholes in these regulations. None of this would have been possible without the willful blindness of the Federal Communications Commission. Andrew Schwartzman, a telecommunications lecturer at Georgetown Law School [and Benton Foundation Senior Fellow] who has been involved in litigation against Sinclair, said that Sinclair “pushed the envelope and the rules aggressively, time after time after time,” and that the company had “an unparalleled track record of getting away with stuff.” Although the collapse of the Tribune deal was a setback for Sinclair, CEO David D. Smith's ambitions to build a conservative media empire have not diminished.