Sinclair is likely a name you may not know unless you looked into who owns your local TV station. Although it has been around for some time it often goes unnoticed but now that is changing.
Recently Sinclair agreed to buy Tribune Media, the company behind WGN America and 42 over-the-air TV channels. This deal means Sinclair will own 233 over-the-air TV stations across America covering 72% of all Americans.
Sinclair is now the largest owner of ABC, FOX, CW, and MyTV affiliate stations in the United States. It is the second largest CBS affiliate owner and the third largest NBC affiliate owner. It owns stations for every major broadcaster including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, The CW, and MyTV.
Sinclair is also the company that owns many sub channels such as Comet, TBD, and Charge! including an ad-hoc sports programming distributor called American Sports Network. This sports network airs games for Conference USA, the Colonial Athletic Association, Big South Conference, Southern Conference, and the Patriot League. Sinclair, as of 2016, is also the new owner of the Tennis Channel.
So why is this good news for cord cutters?
By now you are likely a bit worried whether Sinclair will use this power to help or hurt cord cutters; however, so far Sinclair has been very cord-cutting friendly.
In the past it has released free online streams of its sub channels such as Comet on almost every streaming player. Now Sinclair has announced plans to invest in the new 3.0 over-the-air TV standard. This standard will bring new and better features to free over-the-air TV such as free on-demand content.
For now Sinclair has to wait for final FCC approval of the deal, but a strong over-the-air TV ownership is good for cord cutters, because Sinclair has been and can be the strong voice for over-the-air TV cord cutters need.
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