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Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, the company is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations after Nexstar Media Group, owning or operating 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets, covering 40% of American households.
Sinclair is the largest owner of stations that are affiliated with Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, MyNetworkTV, The CW, and The CW Plus. Sinclair owns four digital multicast networks, Comet, Charge!, The Nest, and Roar, and the sports-oriented cable network Tennis Channel. In June 2021, Sinclair became a Fortune 500 company, having reached 2020 annual revenues of US$5.9 billion, equivalent to $7 billion in 2024.
The company is widely regarded as politically conservative, and has been noted for featuring politically motivated programming decisions that promote conservative political positions. This has included news coverage and specials in the lead-up to elections that are in support of the Republican Party.
The company's roots date back to the late 1950s, when electrical engineer Julian Sinclair Smith and his wife Carolyn B. Smith, owning 34.5% of the shares, along with a group of shareholders, formed the Commercial Radio Institute, a broadcasting trade school in Baltimore, Maryland. In March 1958, Commercial Radio Institute applied to build an FM radio station in Baltimore. In April 1959, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the construction permit – for the estimated US$25,964 (equivalent to $280,100 in 2024) construction project – . Sinclair's first station, WFMM-FM (now WPOC), signed on the air in February 1960. In 1967, Smith, as Chesapeake Engineering Placement Service, partly owned by the name-shortened Commercial Radio Inc., applied for and was granted, a construction permit for a new UHF television station in Baltimore, expected to be operating by September 1968 on channel 45, no call sign yet assigned.
Channel 45, with the call sign WBFF, joined on April 11, 1971. By that time, Chesapeake Engineering Placement Service had changed its name to Chesapeake Television Corporation. The Commercial Radio Institute, by then a division of Chesapeake Television Corporation, founded WPTT (now WPNT) in Pittsburgh, in 1978, and WTTE in Columbus, Ohio, in 1984. All three stations originally were independents. In 1986, WBFF and WTTE became charter affiliates of the Fox Broadcasting Company at its launch. The Fox affiliation in Pittsburgh went to higher-rated WPGH-TV, which was purchased by Sinclair in 1990.
Chesapeake's first foray into local news came in the early 1980s when it launched a newscast on WPTT, a rarity at this time for stations not affiliated with the then-major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). This newscast was called WPTT News. In the opening segment, the letters "news" were formed from a compass indicating the four cardinal directions. This opening segment, featuring then-anchorman Kevin Evans, appeared briefly, and was audible, in the movie Flashdance during a scene where Jennifer Beals' character returns home and turns on the television.
The presentation was relatively low-budget, with the anchor simply reading copy, with no field video shots other than the weather read over a stock video shot denoting the conditions outside. It was not a factor in taking ratings away from then-market laggard WIIC-TV, now WPXI, much less solid runner-up WTAE-TV and then-locally owned Group W powerhouse KDKA-TV. As WBFF did not air newscasts until 1991 and WTTE would not air any newscasts from its 1984 sign-on until Sinclair purchased ABC affiliate WSYX in 1996, this marked the company's only foray into local news for years, a genre it became much more involved in from the mid-1990s on.
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 Sinclair Broadcast Group. In 1990, David 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 stations and of companies that owned groups of stations.
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Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, the company is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations after Nexstar Media Group, owning or operating 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets, covering 40% of American households.
Sinclair is the largest owner of stations that are affiliated with Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, MyNetworkTV, The CW, and The CW Plus. Sinclair owns four digital multicast networks, Comet, Charge!, The Nest, and Roar, and the sports-oriented cable network Tennis Channel. In June 2021, Sinclair became a Fortune 500 company, having reached 2020 annual revenues of US$5.9 billion, equivalent to $7 billion in 2024.
The company is widely regarded as politically conservative, and has been noted for featuring politically motivated programming decisions that promote conservative political positions. This has included news coverage and specials in the lead-up to elections that are in support of the Republican Party.
The company's roots date back to the late 1950s, when electrical engineer Julian Sinclair Smith and his wife Carolyn B. Smith, owning 34.5% of the shares, along with a group of shareholders, formed the Commercial Radio Institute, a broadcasting trade school in Baltimore, Maryland. In March 1958, Commercial Radio Institute applied to build an FM radio station in Baltimore. In April 1959, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the construction permit – for the estimated US$25,964 (equivalent to $280,100 in 2024) construction project – . Sinclair's first station, WFMM-FM (now WPOC), signed on the air in February 1960. In 1967, Smith, as Chesapeake Engineering Placement Service, partly owned by the name-shortened Commercial Radio Inc., applied for and was granted, a construction permit for a new UHF television station in Baltimore, expected to be operating by September 1968 on channel 45, no call sign yet assigned.
Channel 45, with the call sign WBFF, joined on April 11, 1971. By that time, Chesapeake Engineering Placement Service had changed its name to Chesapeake Television Corporation. The Commercial Radio Institute, by then a division of Chesapeake Television Corporation, founded WPTT (now WPNT) in Pittsburgh, in 1978, and WTTE in Columbus, Ohio, in 1984. All three stations originally were independents. In 1986, WBFF and WTTE became charter affiliates of the Fox Broadcasting Company at its launch. The Fox affiliation in Pittsburgh went to higher-rated WPGH-TV, which was purchased by Sinclair in 1990.
Chesapeake's first foray into local news came in the early 1980s when it launched a newscast on WPTT, a rarity at this time for stations not affiliated with the then-major networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). This newscast was called WPTT News. In the opening segment, the letters "news" were formed from a compass indicating the four cardinal directions. This opening segment, featuring then-anchorman Kevin Evans, appeared briefly, and was audible, in the movie Flashdance during a scene where Jennifer Beals' character returns home and turns on the television.
The presentation was relatively low-budget, with the anchor simply reading copy, with no field video shots other than the weather read over a stock video shot denoting the conditions outside. It was not a factor in taking ratings away from then-market laggard WIIC-TV, now WPXI, much less solid runner-up WTAE-TV and then-locally owned Group W powerhouse KDKA-TV. As WBFF did not air newscasts until 1991 and WTTE would not air any newscasts from its 1984 sign-on until Sinclair purchased ABC affiliate WSYX in 1996, this marked the company's only foray into local news for years, a genre it became much more involved in from the mid-1990s on.
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 Sinclair Broadcast Group. In 1990, David 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 stations and of companies that owned groups of stations.
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