Sinclair Broadcasting Posts Huge Quarterly Loss After Jimmy Kimmel Censorship

You might recall that right wing propaganda broadcaster Sinclair Broadcasting recently tripped over its own ass after working with the Trump administration to try and censor Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing the President. The flood of outrage at the Disney/FCC/ABC collaborative effort ultimately forced the company to retreat and put Kimmel back on the air.

Even after ABC retreated, Sinclair tried to push its luck and extend the “pre-emption,” but ultimately buckled and got absolutely none of what it asked for (including an apology from Kimmel for doing nothing wrong). Now Sinclair Broadcasting’s latest earnings reports indicate that things aren’t going well for the company, which posted a 16 percent quarterly loss.

It’s not clear how much of the loss was due to Kimmel backlash and cancellations, and the company wasn’t willing to talk about it. More annoyingly, none of the “journalists” on the company’s earnings call asked them about one of the biggest moments in the company’s recent history:

“It’s not clear the extent to which the Kimmel boycott affected Sinclair’s financial results for the quarter; the company did not provide any discussion of the blackout in its earnings press release and the topic did not come up on the call with analysts.”

Most companies carefully screen what kind of journalists are allowed on earnings conference calls, and then screen questions ahead of time so executives don’t have to deal with uncomfortable realities like: “it’s not good business to be weird partisan zealots who engage in censorship of comedians because they made a mild joke about your mad, idiot king.”

There’s a lot trending against Sinclair Broadcasting. For one, the public’s appetite for right wing propaganda pretending to be useful local news is dwindling. Broadcast TV continues to see slow declines as users shift to streaming. And Sinclair is dealing with a blackout of its ABC affiliate stations on YouTube TV due to an ongoing retransmission feud between ABC/Disney and Google.

Sinclair Broadcasting’s lobbying helped install Trump sycophant Brendan Carr at the FCC. As we’ve discussed, Carr doesn’t actually believe in things like corporate oversight or healthy market protection, and is actively helping Trump defang what’s left of media and consumer protection oversight. So it was interesting to see Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley beg for regulatory intervention in the dispute:

“On the earnings call, Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley noted that Sinclair’s ABC stations are currently affected by the Disney-YouTube TV dispute, which has resulted in a blackout of ABC, as well as ESPN and other networks, on YouTube TV since last Friday. Sinclair has 38 ABC affiliates. He blasted both both Google and Disney for the situation, calling them “media giants,” and said local broadcasters are “caught in the middle” of such disputes — which he labeled an “antitrust issue.”

All out of fresh ideas on how to grow its business organically, Ripley is pushing hard for the Trump administration to destroy whatever is left of media consolidation limits so Sinclair can ultimately merge with Tegna and Nexstar and create one big, shitty, right wing company to dominate whatever is left of U.S. local broadcasting.

They want government handcuffed and completely out of their hair when it’s inconveniently preventing them from harming competition and consumers through consolidation and predatory behavior, but then to step in, competently, when it suits their interests. That generally doesn’t work out well for anybody.