The broadcaster is paying a 26 percent premium for its rival after the Trump administration relaxed a wave of regulations. Tribune gives Sinclair more heft to mount a challenge to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.
.. With the addition of Tribune’s 42 TV stations, Sinclair will cover more than 70 percent of households in the United States. That will transform it into the largest local broadcast owner by far.
.. Longer term, the big question is whether Mr. Ripley is starting a ratings war with 21st Century Fox. Mr. Murdoch’s media conglomerate is embroiled in a series of sexual-harassment scandals that have troubled its United States news network, which has a conservative-leaning viewership.
.. The broadcaster already has a good relationship with the administration of President Trump; his adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, even said the Trump campaign had struck a deal with Sinclair for better coverage, according to Politico, which the company has denied.
.. Mr. Ripley also has a few former Fox stars he may woo, including those who left under a cloud — not least Bill O’Reilly.
Drugmakers Find Competition Doesn’t Keep a Lid on Prices
Makers of Viagra, Cialis show how rivals tend to raise prices in tandem, a reason for the surge in U.S. prescription-drug spending
Pfizer Inc. raised the list price of Viagra by 13% in June. Less than a week later, Eli Lilly & Co. pushed up the price of its competing pill Cialis by the same percentage.
.. A common six-pill prescription of Viagra or Cialis lists for around $300 today—more than double the price five years ago
.. “Not only have these pharmaceutical companies raised prices significantly—sometimes by double digits overnight—in many instances the prices have apparently increased in tandem,” the pair wrote. The FTC and Justice Department declined to comment.
Turn Your AMP Up To 11: Everything You Need To Know About Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages
Will other search engines direct mobile traffic to AMP articles? (Perhaps not search engines that want to do business with Apple.) Will social networking apps preload AMP documents when users post links to articles, in order to make rendering nearly instantaneous? (Probably not Facebook.) Will mobile browsers start looking for
linktags withamphtmlrelationships? (Chrome, maybe, but probably not mobile Safari.) And will aggregators and news readers out there build specifically for lightning-fast AMP content? (Time to resurrect Google Reader!)
Airlines Under Justice Dept. Investigation Over Possible Collusion
But recently, airline executives have begun speaking more openly at industry conferences and with Wall Street analysts about so-called capacity discipline — industry jargon for limiting flights.
.. Now, with bigger planes and fewer flights, the major carriers reported record earnings in the first quarter of this year.