Sinclair Pays a Rich Premium to Challenge Fox

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.

Federal probe of Fox News focuses on potential disguising of harassment payout

Federal prosecutors are looking into whether Fox News Channel and its parent company tried to disguise a $3.15 million payment to a former employee who said she had a 20-year affair with the network’s former chairman, Roger Ailes, according to people involved with the investigation.

Investigators in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have focused on a payment to Laurie Luhn, a former Fox booker and event planner who left the company in 2011 with the seven-figure severance package. Luhn later claimed that she had engaged in a consensual but a mentally abusive, relationship with Ailes and that several of his lieutenants facilitated the assignations and were aware of his alleged mistreatment of her.

.. A series of such payments could be considered material not because of their size but because they could raise concerns among investors about the stability of the company’s management or finances.