Sinclair will buy Tribune

Sinclair Broadcast Group, already the nation’s largest local TV station operator, wants to be even bigger.

The company announced Monday that it will pay about $3.9 billion for Tribune Media and its 42 stations, which includes KTLA in Los Angeles, WGN in Chicago and WPIX in New York. Tribune also owns stakes in the Food Network and job-search website CareerBuilder.

Sinclair has 173 stations, including KUTV in Salt Lake City and KOMO in Seattle. The deal, plus pending acquisitions, will give it 233, putting distance between it and Nexstar Media Group, which has 170.

Sinclair said it may have to sell some stations to comply with Federal Communications Commission rules, although the FCC has recently loosened rules related to media ownership. Sinclair is also in the process of buying Bonten Media Group, which owns 14 stations, for $240 million.

In all, Sinclair said its stations will reach 72 percent of all U.S. households with a TV once the Tribune and Bonten deals close.

Jeffrey McCall, a media studies professor at DePauw University in Indiana, said buying Tribune will give Sinclair more power to negotiate better deals with cable companies and national advertisers. Adding Tribune’s stations will also expand Sinclair’s reach into major cities that it didn’t have a presence in before, such as New York and Chicago.

Late last year, Sinclair had to defend itself against news reports that it made a deal with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for favorable coverage in its newscasts. In December, Sinclair said that it had no such deal with Trump’s team and that it had given both him and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton “the same opportunities to be interviewed by our local anchors on a regular basis.”