Sinclair Broadcast Group

In April 2023 Sinclair Broadcast Group announced a reorganization in which a new holding company, Sinclair, Inc. will become the publicly-traded parent of Sinclair Broadcast and its subsidiaries. Sinclair, which has little name recognition but beams local television stations into a quarter of American homes, covers plenty of standard local news, including fires, shootings and traffic. But it has also used its 173 television stations to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda since the presidency of George W. Bush. Among its subsidiaries is ONE Media LLC, a technology division focused on business opportunities from the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, as well as Compulse, a marketing technology and managed services company, and the Tennis Channel. As part of the April 2023 reorganization, these other businesses and assets will be held by New Sinclair through a new subsidiary to be known as “Sinclair Ventures.” Sinclair’s broadcast footprint is from mostly smaller markets to some of the country’s largest cities, including Chicago and New York. Founded in 1971 by Julian Sinclair Smith, an electrical engineer who understood the growing importance of broadcast television, Sinclair has expanded from one station serving Baltimore to 173 stations and 81 markets across the country. Much of that growth has come under the helm of Mr. Smith’s son David, Sinclair’s longtime chairman. Under the younger Mr. Smith, one of four brothers who together control the broadcaster’s voting stock, Sinclair has spent more than $7 billion since the mid-1990s on acquisitions. Despite Sinclair’s expansion in the last two decades, the nature of its holdings — a vast array of stations spread across markets and network affiliations — has meant that the company has never achieved the name recognition, or clout, of national broadcasters.