How Sinclair, a Conservative TV Giant, Is Ridding Itself of Regulation

The day before President Trump’s inauguration, the top executive of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest owner of television stations, invited an important guest to the headquarters of the company’s Washington-area ABC affiliate. The trip was, in the parlance of the business world, a deal closer.

The invitation from David D. Smith, the chairman of Sinclair, went to Ajit Pai, a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission who was about to be named the broadcast industry’s chief regulator. Smith wanted Commissioner Pai to ease up on efforts under President Barack Obama to crack down on media consolidation, which were threatening Sinclair’s ambitions to grow even bigger. Smith did not have to wait long. Within days of their meeting, Commissioner Pai was named chairman of the FCC. And during his first 10 days on the job, he relaxed a restriction on television stations’ sharing of advertising revenue and other resources — the exact topic that Pai discussed with Smith and one of his business partners, according to records examined by The New York Times. It was only the beginning. Since becoming chairman in January, Pai has undertaken a deregulatory blitz, enacting or proposing a wish list of fundamental policy changes advocated by Smith and his company. Hundreds of pages of emails and other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal a rush of regulatory actions has been carefully aligned with Sinclair’s business objectives.