Sinclair Broadcast Group

Stations from groups including  Fox O&Os, Sinclair, Hearst, Cox and others will air the new show from NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution this fall. The show will be co-hosted by WNBC New York contributor Ben Aaron and Bad Girls Club reality star Tanisha Thomas.

The new deal provides Nielsen’s TV ratings service for all 162 of Sinclair’s owned or operated stations.

The disconnect between the group’s thriving digital business and its stock price peeves CEO David Smith. “If we were just to take out our Web business and compare that to websites that have $2 billion valuation, we’re fundamentally no different than Buzzfeed or Gawker or anything else. We produce news every day on the Internet and we’re not getting credit for it,” he told analysts today. Also on the call, CFO Chris Ripley opened the door to participating in the FCC’s spectrum auction.

The quarterly increase to $614 million is due to acquisitions, political advertising, retransmission consent fees and our digital platform. For the full year, revenues increased 45% to $1.977 billion.

Despite signs that he is considering a run for president, retired pediatric surgeon Ben Carson continues to be showcased on TV stations owned by the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group., including Washington’s ABC affiliate WJLA.

It will be the launch group for Bellum Entertainment’s new half-hour daytime syndicated investigative series set for this fall.

Jennifer Dahl, news director for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Salt Lake City CBS affiliate KUTV, has been named Sinclair’s West Coast group news director. Her new role will see her working with news directors in 12 markets including Sinclair’s KOMO Seattle, KATU Portland, Ore,  KSNV Las Vegas and KUTV Salt Lake City.

Sinclair CEO David Smith says that without a new technical standard that lets broadcasters beam their signals to all devices, they will lose to cable and telcos and become “essentially a three-legged dog in a four-legged dog, fast-track world.”

The Sinclair’s Washington ABC affiliate’s 7 On-Your-Side team will focus on covering consumer problems and government waste.Led by Holly Shannon, the team will also produce content for the co-owned NewsChannel 8 cable channel as well as wjla.com and newschannel8.net.

“We are grieved and shocked at the sudden loss of one of our own,” said David Amy, EVP and chief operating officer of Sinclair Broadcast Group on the death of Gealy, a group manager for multiple markets.

Excluding political, the station group reported local core broadcast revenue was up 42%, while national net broadcast revenues climbed 23%.

Sinclair’s tech guru Mark Aitken urges engineers to make sure they keep their management aware of the threat from OTT video providers. “The broadcast industry really has to unite, at least in a virtual sense, to look at what can we do to become a viable competitor in today’s marketplace,” he says. Advertising dollars have begun to leave the local TV market in favor of new media alternatives, he said. While the shift is small today, if left unchallenged “it will be a sorry state of affairs 10 years from now if we are still around.”

Since Sinclair bought ABC affiliate WJLA Washington and its NewsChannel 8 cable channel, there have been staff defections. Some sources say the Sinclair’s conservative bent and statements by CEO David Smith of advertiser importance are to blame. But, Sinclair’s News VP Scott Livingston says those charges are overblown and the company has plans to step up “unbiased and aggressive reporting” at the station and expand NewsChannel 8 nationally.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s ABC affiliate WJLA Washington (DMA 8), in conjunction with co-owned cable channel NewsChannel 8, will hold a live town hall meeting on Thursday, Oct. 16 entitled Your […]

The deal drives the new broadcast diginet for men to 73% of U.S. coverage following its August launch.

The companies say the successful test shows that “broadcasters will be able to deliver the highest quality content, inclusive of 4K UltraHD live broadcast in a simultaneous transmission to consumers both at home and on-the-go.”

An analysis from Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker says that Sinclair, Nexstar and Media General have the highest median spectrum values as a percentage of enterprise value at 52%, 49% and 27%, respectively.

The broadcast group reups in 13 markets with deals that now extend to 2019 and 2020.

The broadcaster announces syndication agreements and the addition of the Western Athletic Conference, bringing coverage of its American Sports Network to about 83 million homes. It also launches AmericanSportsNet.com.

There’s a new owner and a new approach to the news at WJLA, Washington’s ABC affiliate. Under the direction of its ambitious corporate parent, the station’s news operations have taken a subtle but noticeable turn to the right.

Sinclair Broadcast Group today announced that it has signed its first syndication deal for the company’s Ring of Honor Wrestling. Gannett’s MNT affiliate WATL Atlanta (DMA 9), will air ROH […]

Sinclair Broadcast Group today announced that it has closed on its purchase of WGXA (Fox/ABC) Macon, Ga., from Frontier Broadcast Holdings. At the same time Sinclair also announced that it has closed on its sale of WHTM (ABC) Harrisburg, Pa., to Media General Inc.

The addition of Intermountain West’s NBC affiliate will give Sinclair three stations in the market. One will be sold, with the programming moved to subchannels of the remaining two.

The broadcaster tells the FCC that it should condidition approval of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger on requiring equal retrans terms and agreeing to binding arbitration to settle disputes. It also wants Comcast’s NBC to be capped at asking for no more than 50% of station retrans revenue for reverse comp.

The group, founded and chaired by Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., says the FCC erred in rejecting its request that an FCC hearing be held to look into allegations that Sinclair’s use of sidecar companies flouted FCC station ownership limits.

The former Allbritton exec will oversee the group’s stations in Tulsa, Okla.; Little Rock, Ark.; Roanoke-Lynchburg, Va., and others markets to be determined.

Sinclair Original Programming will be headed by COO Arthur Hasson. The unit will focus on creating shows primarily for the group’s MNT and CW affils in addition to business-to-consumer content such as infomercials and direct response commercials.

Dan Mellon takes over at WJLA Washington and co-owned NewsChannel8, while Tony D’Angelo will lead WSYX Columbus, Ohio.

Now that its Allbritton purchase is done, Sinclair CEO David Smith says he’s eager to start taking on Fox News Channel and MSNBC with NewsChannel 8. And on another initiative near and dear to Sinclair — ATSC 3.0 — Smith said Sinclair is working on a plan to transition to the new standard that costs virtually nothing and is transparent to the public.

Excluding political, the station group reported local core broadcast revenue was up 47%, while national net broadcast revenues were up 36.3%, boosted by political.

Rick Lipps, the former GM of WCBD Charleston, S.C., will also be in charge of sales and other non-programming related services of WRSP and WBUI in the same market.

The commission says that Sinclair satisfied concerns about the deal violating ownership rules by selling its Harrisburg station and giving up its licenses to stations in Birmingham and Charleston, shifting programming to other stations it already owns. Sinclair will end up with ABC affiliates in six additional market after the $958 million deal is done.

To be carried on many of Sinclair stations, the new program service has rights deals with various NCAA Division I conferences to offer the live, local games from more than 50 schools. Doron Gorshein heads the efforts.

The Wall Street Journal reports Sinclair Broadcast Group has moved one step closer to closing its long-pending $985 million purchase of the Allbritton family’s television holdings on Tuesday, after agreeing to settle an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department. The settlement was reached in the wake of Sinclair’s agreement, announced last month, to sell one of the stations it is buying from Allbritton, ABC affiliate WHTM Harrisburg, Pa., to Media General for $83.4 million. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.

The two-year agreement returns the Sinclair NBC affiliate to Buckeye systems in Toledo, where it’s been dark for seven months.

Beginning Sept. 1, Sinclair Broadcast Group will add a Fox affiliation to a subchannel of its NBC affil WTOV Wheeling, W.Va.-Steubenville, Ohio (DMA 159). In addition to the Fox network lineup, the new channel will air syndicated shows including Steve Harvey, Family Feud and Celebrity Name Game, and by Jan. 1, 2015, a 10 p.m. local newscast. Over-the-air households will need to rescan their tuners. WTOV also airs MeTV on another subchannel.

In an internal memo, a Sinclair executive said that former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson would be working as a “freelance independent investigative reporter.” One television critic, with fondness, called Sinclair a “mini-Fox-News,” and others have noted the company’s conservative leanings. The recent oeuvre of Attkisson — heavy on Obama administration screw-ups and scandals — may well have appealed to the broadcaster. There are some unanswered questions. Here they are.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has hired former CBS Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson to work as an investigative reporter for the company. Attkisson left CBS News after she said that the network kept spiking her stories.

The purchase of the Harrisburg, Pa., ABC affiliiate from Sinclair is part of Sinclair’s promise to the FCC to smooth the way for approval of Sinclair’s purchase of all of Allbritton’s stations.