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MAGA's Little Helpers: Sinclair, Nexstar and the Consolidation of Broadcast TV Pete Tucker ([link removed])


Salon: Kimmel’s suspension shows media censorship is a structural problem

Jeff Cohen (Salon, 9/20/25 ([link removed]) ) traces media's censorship problem to "the 1980s and 1990s, when presidents of both parties and Congress decided to put the nation’s media system in the hands of a small number of ever-larger corporations."

When Jimmy Kimmel made his dramatic return ([link removed]) to ABC’s airwaves on September 23, I was eager to be one of the over 6 million who tuned in. Only I couldn’t, at least not on TV.

That’s because the local ABC station in the DC area, WJLA, is owned by ([link removed]) the Sinclair Broadcast Network. And the right-wing network refused to air the Jimmy Kimmel Show! on any of its 38 ([link removed]) ABC affiliates.

Every few years, a controversy like Kimmel’s suspension erupts and Sinclair is briefly in the headlines. (The last big one was in 2018, when Sinclair made its anchors across the country read from the same Trumpian script, which looked like a “proof-of-life hostage video ([link removed] instructing local TV anchors,opinion%2C%22 she told David) .”) Then the news cycle moves on, and Sinclair slinks out of sight…where it seems to only grow stronger.

In the wake of Kimmel’s (innocuous ([link removed]) ) comments following right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s death ([link removed]) , Sinclair wasn’t the first ABC affiliate owner to suspend his show. That honor goes to Texas-based Nexstar, which made the move ([link removed]) earlier the same day on September 17.

Nexstar’s announcement came only hours after Trump FCC chair Brendan Carr ([link removed]) publicly threatened ABC stations if they didn’t yank Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr famously said.

Nexstar had financial incentive to accede to Carr’s demand. Already the largest network of local TV stations—with 200 ([link removed]) nationwide—Nexstar is looking to grow even bigger by gobbling up a competitor, Tegna, for $6.2 billion ([link removed] YORK (AP) %E2%80%94 Nexstar,share of Tegna's outstanding stock.) . But there’s a problem with this deal: It’s illegal.

Prior to 1996, when President Bill Clinton teamed up with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich to pass the “corrupt” Telecommunications Act ([link removed]) , “a company could own only 12 TV stations nationwide—not 200,” wrote FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Salon, 9/20/25 ([link removed]) ).

Today, a company can’t own stations reaching more than 39% of US households. This law prevents a company from directly accessing most American homes via TV—which seems like a reasonable safeguard against, say, an authoritarian putsch.

But this sort of media consolidation is precisely what Trump is aiming for, so long as his friends are in charge, as they increasingly are.


** ‘100% MAGA-related’
------------------------------------------------------------
WaPo: Kimmel’s suspension confirms what many suspected after Colbert’s cancellation

Lili Loofbourow (Washington Post, 9/18/25 ([link removed]) ): "Billionaires are accelerating their efforts to consolidate control over media platforms and the president is eager to help them do so, provided they shut down his critics."

In July, Trump’s FCC approved ([link removed]) the $8.4 billion sale of Paramount, which owns CBS, to Skydance Media, which is owned by the son of Trump confidant Larry Ellison, the co-founder of software giant Oracle and second-richest person alive.

Shortly before the sale, Paramount announced it was canceling the Late Show With Stephen Colbert beginning in May. “Many suspected that Colbert’s head was a gift to Trump by the company’s new owner, David Ellison,” the Financial Times (9/27/25 ([link removed]) ) reported.

Trump celebrated the announcement, then quickly pivoted to another late-night host who regularly poked fun at him. “Jimmy Kimmel is next,” Trump tweeted ([link removed]) .

Presently, Trump is steering another major media property into the maw of his cronies. While specifics on the forced sale ([link removed]) of TikTok are hard to come by, investor Ashwin Binwani told Bloomberg (9/26/25 ([link removed]) ) it “could be the most undervalued tech acquisition of the decade.”

TikTok’s Trump-approved owners likely include Larry Ellison, as well as Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch ([link removed]) , owners of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

When asked if TikTok will now bend the knee to him, Trump said the expected thing: “Every group…will be treated very fairly.” But that was only after he said ([link removed]) the quiet part out loud: “I always like MAGA-related. If I could, I’d make it 100% MAGA-related.”

To be clear, such media consolidation has been a problem long before ([link removed]) Trump came on the scene. But Trump has hastened this consolidation, while making no secret that he’s doing so in service of his own interests. Which brings us back to Nexstar.

If it buys Tegna, Nexstar will surpass the 39% ownership limit by a country mile, creating a company with direct television access to 80% of US homes, more than double ([link removed]) what’s legally allowed at present.

From Trump’s point of view, what’s not to like? Nexstar is led by a conservative, Perry Sook ([link removed]) , and the company has shown it is willing to play ball by suspending Kimmel on a moment’s notice. In light of this, the only surprise would be if Trump’s FCC doesn’t OK the merger.


** ‘Always in deal mode’
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Atlantic: Nexstar and Sinclair Lost Their Game of Chicken

James Surowiecki (Atlantic, 9/27/25 ([link removed]) ): "Whatever the benefits of appeasing the FCC and Donald Trump, the costs of rejecting Kimmel were soon going to be dwarfed by the costs of losing viewers."

Like Nexstar, Sinclair also had financial incentive to jump when the FCC chair said to, since the company is “always in deal mode and in need of regulatory OKs,” the New York Post (9/25/25 ([link removed]) ) noted.

Indeed, if the Nexstar/Tegna merger falls through, Sinclair is ready to scoop up ([link removed]) Tegna’s 64 stations for itself, which would make it larger than Nexstar. Of course, that deal would also make a mockery of the TV ownership limit, and would therefore also need the FCC’s blessing.

But even without the financial incentive, I think Sinclair might still have suspended Kimmel. That would certainly be consistent with the network’s long and partisan track record (FAIR.org, 8/1/24 ([link removed]) ).

With that history in mind, when I saw reports on September 17 that Nexstar had suspended Kimmel, I knew Sinclair couldn’t be far behind.

True to form, Sinclair not only followed suit, but one-upped Nexstar by demanding Kimmel “make a meaningful personal donation ([link removed]) ” to both Charlie Kirk’s family and his far-right ([link removed]) organization Turning Point USA. (David Smith ([link removed]) , Sinclair’s longtime leader, personally donated ([link removed]) $250,000 to the group last year.)

Nexstar and Sinclair were flexing in once unimaginable ways in part because they have grown unimaginably big over the past two decades. Today, Nexstar and Sinclair together own around 25% ([link removed]) of all ABC affiliates. And combined with Gray, the third-largest station group, they own around 40% of all local stations nationwide.

“That consolidation has given them more leverage over the networks than local stations once had,” wrote James Surowiecki (Atlantic, 9/27/25 ([link removed]) ). When Nexstar and Sinclair suspended Kimmel’s show, “they effectively chose to play a game of chicken with ABC.”

But the station groups blinked first. Three days after ABC returned Kimmel to air, Sinclair and Nexstar relented and did the same. It was “a striking about-face,” the New York Times (9/26/2 ([link removed]) 5) reported.


** In Trump's good graces
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Variety: How Long Will Sinclair and Nexstar’s Jimmy Kimmel Blackouts Last? Why Disney and ABC Have the Upper Hand in the Standoffs

Todd Spangler (Variety, 9/24/25 ([link removed]) ): "Disney was faced with the choice of bringing Kimmel back (angering those on the right who felt the host crossed a red line) or showing him the door (pissing off those on the left who felt it was failing to support free speech)—and the company decided that supporting Kimmel was the better option."

To grow bigger, Sinclair and Nexstar need to stay in Trump’s good graces to ensure FCC approvals. To survive, however, their ABC affiliates need national programming, especially live sports, the NFL in particular.

Along with political advertising, live sports ([link removed]) are one of the only things keeping the TV industry from flatlining amid widespread cord-cutting. And the national broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox—all have major contracts to broadcast pro sports, which their affiliates rely on to attract viewers and sell ads.

If Sinclair and Nexstar had continued to suspend Kimmel’s show, ABC could have retaliated by withholding other national programming from their affiliates, including Monday Night Football, which would have severely hurt their bottom lines.

ABC’s financial exposure from an extended standoff, on the other hand, wasn’t as great, since Nexstar’s and Sinclair’s ABC affiliates are all outside the top 20 markets, with the exception of WJLA in DC and KOMO in Seattle. ABC was also buffered by owning and operating its own stations in four of the top five markets—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia (Variety, 9/24/25 ([link removed]) ).

Even if Sinclair and Nexstar could hold out for a year, an analyst told Variety, Disney, which owns ABC, “would be out only a few million dollars.”

That’s nothing compared to the $4 billion ([link removed]) in valuation Disney lost over the six days it suspended Kimmel. During that time, “Disney saw more than 1.7 million paid streaming cancellations” across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN, Marisa Kabas (Bluesky, 9/29/25 ([link removed]) ; Handbasket, 9/23/25 ([link removed]) ) reported.

Disney, for its part, is also doing a careful dance, as it too wants to stay on Trump’s good side—in part to ensure its merger ([link removed]) with the sports streaming service FUBO goes through. This helps explain Disney’s willingness to hand Trump $16 million ([link removed]) in December to settle his frivolous defamation case against ABC, as well as its suspending Kimmel after Nexstar and Sinclair forced its hand.

“Kimmel is the beginning,” Danilo Yanich, a professor of public policy at the University of Delaware, told FAIR. Now that Nexstar and Sinclair have established a precedent for pushing a network around, “Kimmel is not the end.”


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