The Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of local TV stations, serving 81 markets, wants to expand by buying<br />Tribune Media’s TV stations, many of which are in larger markets, like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.<br />For Tribune Media, a deal with Sinclair could be the coda for a company<br />that was the television arm of the Tribune behemoth that published newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.<br />Already the largest owner of local television stations in the United States, Sinclair said Monday<br />that it had agreed to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, beating out other suitors including Nexstar and 21st Century Fox.<br />TV stations owned by Sinclair<br />TV stations owned by Tribune<br />People with knowledge of the bidding said Sinclair had not expressed any plans to compete directly with Fox.<br />Michael J. Copps, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from 2001 to 2011 who is now a special adviser to the<br />nonpartisan consumer group Common Cause, called the planned merger “another blow to the diversity of journalism that we should have.”<br />“It’s symptomatic of what is happening in this market,” he said, “which is fewer<br />and fewer organizations controlling more and more of the information on which our democracy rests.”<br />Sinclair is set to acquire Tribune Media’s 42 stations and its prize asset, WGN America, a network based in Chicago that broadcasts nationwide.
