General Discussion

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

.... Sinclair Broadcast Group is a publicly traded American telecommunications company that is controlled by the family of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, the company is the largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations, and largest by total coverage; owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country (233 after all currently proposed sales are approved) in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest. Sinclair also owns four digital multicast networks (Comet, Charge!, Stadium, and TBD) and one cable network (Tennis Channel), and owns or operates four radio stations in the Pacific Northwest. Among other non-broadcast properties, Sinclair also owns the professional wrestling promotion Ring of Honor and its streaming service Honor Club.

Sinclair has faced scrutiny from media critics, as well as some of its station employees, for the conservative slant of their stations' news reporting and other programming decisions, and how the company's rapid growth has aided its dissemination of content that appeal to these views.[2][3][4] Sinclair has also faced criticism over business practices that circumvent concentration of media ownership regulations, particularly the use of local marketing agreements, and accusations that the company had been currying favor with the Trump administration in order to loosen these rules. ....

Smith's son David D. Smith began taking a more active role in the company in the 1980s. In 1985, the Chesapeake Television Corporation changed its name to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. In 1990, David Smith and his three brothers bought their parents' remaining stock and went on a buying spree that eventually made it one of the largest station owners in the country, through the purchases of groups such as Act III Broadcasting (in 1995) and River City Broadcasting (in 1996). ....

Sinclair had experimented with using a centralized news organization called News Central that provided prepackaged news segments for distribution to several of the group's stations. These segments were integrated into programming during local news broadcasts. Mark E. Hyman, a high-ranking executive at Sinclair, also created "The Point", a series of conservative editorial segments that were broadcast on stations operated by the group that maintain news departments. ....

Cunningham Broadcasting
Cunningham Broadcasting (formerly known as Glencairn Ltd.) is a station holding company affiliated with Sinclair Broadcast Group via a relationship with the company's owners. Per a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cunningham is owned by the estate of Carolyn C. Smith, the estate of Sinclair's controlling shareholders' parent, and trusts for the children of Sinclair's controlling shareholders. All six Cunningham stations have local marketing agreements with Sinclair-owned/managed stations. Based on these arrangements, Glencairn/Cunningham has served merely as a shell corporation with the sole purpose of evading FCC ownership rules.

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