Tribune Terminates $3.9 Billion Merger With Rival Sinclair (wsj.com) 54
The merger that once seemed all but inevitable has fallen apart. According to The Wall Street Journal, Tribune Media has terminated its merger agreement with rival TV station-owner Sinclair Broadcast Group (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The company is also suing Sinclair for failing to make sufficient efforts to get their $3.9 billion deal approved by regulators. From the report: The suit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, alleges that Sinclair breached the merger agreement by engaging in "unnecessarily aggressive and protracted negotiations" with regulators over their requirement that Sinclair divest stations in certain markets to obtain approval, Tribune said in a statement. The deal structures Sinclair proposed, which Tribune said were done to allow it to maintain control over stations, created risks for the deal in violation of the merger agreement. Tribune is seeking financial damages.
The collapse of the deal and lawsuit mark a stunning turn of events for a deal that when it was announced in April of 2016 seemed certain to receive regulatory approval. "Our merger cannot be completed within an acceptable time frame, if ever, Tribune Media Chief Executive Peter Kern said in a statement. "This uncertainty and delay would be detrimental to our company and our shareholders. Accordingly, we have exercised our right to terminate the merger agreement, and, by way of our lawsuit, intend to hold Sinclair accountable." The merger hit the rocks last month when FCC commissioners voted to send the proposed sale to a judge. "FCC chairman Ajit Pai raised 'serious concerns' about Sinclair's selloff of 21 stations it had proposed in order to remain under station ownership limits post-merger," Engadget reported last month. "Had Sinclair declined to sell off some stations, its 173 broadcast stations in 81 markets, combined with Tribune's 42 stations in 33 markets would reach 72 percent of U.S. TV households."
The collapse of the deal and lawsuit mark a stunning turn of events for a deal that when it was announced in April of 2016 seemed certain to receive regulatory approval. "Our merger cannot be completed within an acceptable time frame, if ever, Tribune Media Chief Executive Peter Kern said in a statement. "This uncertainty and delay would be detrimental to our company and our shareholders. Accordingly, we have exercised our right to terminate the merger agreement, and, by way of our lawsuit, intend to hold Sinclair accountable." The merger hit the rocks last month when FCC commissioners voted to send the proposed sale to a judge. "FCC chairman Ajit Pai raised 'serious concerns' about Sinclair's selloff of 21 stations it had proposed in order to remain under station ownership limits post-merger," Engadget reported last month. "Had Sinclair declined to sell off some stations, its 173 broadcast stations in 81 markets, combined with Tribune's 42 stations in 33 markets would reach 72 percent of U.S. TV households."
Read the Lawsuit (Score:3)
If you haven't, you should read the text of the lawsuit that Tribune filed against Sinclair. I can only wonder what they were thinking.
http://www.tribunemedia.com/wp... [tribunemedia.com]
Re: Read the Lawsuit (Score:1)
Absolutely nuts. Sinclair actually responded to a DoJ recommendation with "sue me" and then threatened to file a lawsuit against the DoJ. Sounds like good legal help is hard to find.
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Reading the filing it really looks to me that Sinclair was angling to get into a legal fight with the FCC, get to the Supreme Court and get another Citizen United type decision. All so they can spew their dogma laden drivel at as many people as possible.
Re:Read the Lawsuit (Score:4, Interesting)
Meh, the idiot box, like it's audience is dying of old age. Seems pretty normal infinite greed corporate approach though, nothing unusual, with psychopathic ego on full display. I am exposed to free to air TV once a week when I visit by eighty odd year old mother, I have not watched any for years, in my own home. One of the surprising changes it makes in your life, loud video advertisements have become extremely offensive to me, I can no longer tolerate them, if fact they put me right off the advertised product, rather than sell it to me. It seem you must need to be continually exposed to them, to adapt to and tolerate them.
Re:Read the Lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the surprising changes it makes in your life, loud video advertisements have become extremely offensive to me, I can no longer tolerate them, if fact they put me right off the advertised product, rather than sell it to me. It seem you must need to be continually exposed to them, to adapt to and tolerate them.
Can confirm. Forgot the Fire TV stick on a recent trip where we stayed in a hotel room for a night. Made liberal use of the mute button but the experience was still offensive. Commercials have always pissed me off, though, except when I was a kid and they were for toys. Then I was just pissed off about being poor.
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No doubt they had Hillary pre-bribed. Another unexpected win from 2016!
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Still looking for a non corrupt explanation for the sudden drop in bribeflow into the Clinton global fund after she lost.
Anybody?
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That's just an admission I'm right.
Still no non corrupt explanation even offered.
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My facts are on the record. Nobody denies the CGF's bribe flow went to virtually zero, right when the bitch has time for her charity work.
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^^ Open corruption being excused, because vagina.
Keep it up. That's how we get more Trump.
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You're saying it was the flaming liberal Tribune side that bribed the Clintons...certainly possible, but I'd still guess 'both'.
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And the Tribune is flaming left...the money is still green.
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And the Tribune is flaming left...
What nonsense. You'd have to be further to the right than the John Birch Society and the Federalist Society to think the Tribune is "flaming left."
That's fine with me (Score:2, Insightful)
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank God (Score:1)
Sinclair is a propaganda tool worse than CNN. Full of fake news and lies ordered from the top down.
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Glad WGN was spared (Score:4, Informative)
As a lifelong Chicagoan, I'm glad that the venerable WGN-TV and WGN AM 720 didn't fall to Sinclair. These stations are an invaluable source of independent, local news reporting.
Editorial at the Sun-Times [suntimes.com] says it well.
Clinton really screwed this up (Score:3)
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Re: Clinton really screwed this up (Score:2)
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some of you are clueless about sinclair (Score:1)
Sinclair's stations have been known for featuring news content and programming that promote conservative political positions, and have been involved in various controversies surrounding politically-motivated programming decisions,[170][3] such as news coverage and specials during the lead-ups to elections that were in support of the Republican Party.[171][172][170] A study by Emory University political [wikipedia.org]
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Since 99% of the stations in any given market are far-left socialist authoritarian, the "conservative direction" is just a move towards objectivity and reason.
The problem with this idea is that 1) letting businesses run everything doesn't work and 2) the right-wingers are far more authoritarian than the left-wingers. They want to regulate everything, not just business, and then they lie about wanting to regulate business. They want to pick the winners and losers too, they just want to pick them differently.