• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 8 hours ago

News that Sinclair Inc. -- one of the two biggest owners of U.S. TV stations -- bought an 8% stake in midsized TV station operator E.W. Scripps should not come as a surprise to anyone.

But the bigger question is where any legacy TV station owners will go from here -- in terms of modern media, non-legacy business growth.

With the expectation the Federal Communications Commission will almost certainly relax the 39% rule limiting total station ownership in terms of reaching U.S. TV households, the bigger question is what bigger ownership will look like -- in terms of real competition from modern digitally focused media operators.

Projections range from intensifying massive competition against small TV station groups to driving down costs and amping up advertising revenues, as well as putting carriage pricing pressure on legacy and virtual pay TV providers.

This also includes starting up more national TV networks and/or platforms of their own -- especially as parent companies legacy TV networks (including ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) continue to pull away from local TV business to include their own streaming and digital business that may not have financial connections with local TV station affiliates.

In the bigger picture, Nexstar Media Group -- another big TV station group -- is still working on its deal to complete the purchase of another midsized TV station company, Tegna, for $6.2 billion.

Like Sinclair, Nexstar also is trying to curry favor with the FCC in the hopes of seeing a relaxation of the 39% rule.

Both Sinclair and Nexstar sided with the Trump Administration and the opinions of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr when they briefly pulled ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from their schedule due to controversy following Kimmel’s remarks on the death of activist Charlie Kirk.

Scripps owns 60 local U.S. TV stations in 40 markets. Tegna has 64 TV stations in 51 markets.

Consider that next-level business for Nexstar and Sinclair could push even further to "nationalize" local news -- something Nexstar has started up with its own News Nation cable TV news channel.

But is this enough? Why create more legacy TV networks -- of any type -- when legacy pay TV consumers are "cord-cutting/trimming" and leaving in droves?

It seems their chief competitors for TV stations remain locally focused efforts of three big digital-first companies: Meta, Google, and Amazon -- with some growing consideration around TikTok -- when it comes to advertising revenues.

Distribution revenues? TV stations can’t be all that happy that increasing modern pay TV distributors are also shifting their emphasis.

YouTube TV’s just-completed Walt Disney deal enables YouTube to offer Disney’s new ESPN streamer to its customers for free.

So that said, what does buying up more TV stations really bring to the table?