The Sinclair Shell Game
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Sinclair is moving the shells around again, and as usual, the FCC is letting them play the game.
The Commission has officially greenlit the license transfers of three stations—WEYI (Saginaw), WGTU (Traverse City), and WHAM (Rochester)—directly into the hands of Sinclair subsidiaries.
If those station call letters sound familiar, it’s because Sinclair has already been pulling the strings behind the scenes for years through "sidecar" companies like Cunningham Broadcasting and Deerfield Media. Now, thanks to some favorable court rulings, they are bringing the stations officially under the corporate roof.
For years, Sinclair used a complex web of subsidiaries and management agreements to technically bypass ownership caps. Now, the mask is coming off. The "new" owners are:
WEYI-TV (Saginaw, MI): Moving from HSH Flint to Sinclair subsidiary WEYI Licensee, LLC.
WGTU (Traverse City, MI): Moving from Cunningham Broadcasting to Sinclair subsidiary WGTU Licensee, LLC.
WHAM-TV (Rochester, NY): Moving from Deerfield Media to Sinclair subsidiary WHAM Licensee, LLC.
Previously, these deals would have hit a wall due to FCC rules preventing one company from owning two of the top four stations in a single market. But thanks to the Zimmer Radio court ruling—which gutted those protections—Sinclair is now free to consolidate openly.
Not everyone is applauding the move. DirecTV fought the transfers tooth and nail, arguing that this isn't about "synergy" or "localism"—it’s about leverage.
In its filing, DirecTV argued that by officially owning these top-rated stations, Sinclair gains even more power to demand "extortionate" retransmission fees. When Sinclair squeezes the cable and satellite providers for more cash, that cost gets passed directly to the viewers' monthly bills.
While Sinclair offered up the usual corporate buzzwords about how these "synergies" would allow them to invest in news and expand programming, DirecTV pointed out the obvious: Sinclair provided zero measurable proof of how this benefits the public.
Instead of a diverse local media landscape, viewers are getting more of the same: fewer owners, higher bills, and a corporate shell game that always ends with Sinclair winning.
