Many months ago it was announced that Allbritton Communications would purge themselves of their TV stations and hold on tightly to Robert Allbritton's cherished Politico (aka Tiger Beat on the Potomac). Robert is the son of the late Joe Allbritton (who started Allbritton Communications) who died in December. That didn't take long to dump daddy's hard work and legacy (Riggs Bank long forgotten).
After the FCC approves the sale, Robert and family will get a handsome $985 million payout. Allbritton has stations in Washington DC (an over the Air Channel and a 24 hour news channel), Harrisburg PA, Birmingham Alabama, Little Rock, Tulsa, Lynchburg, Virginia, and Charleston SC.
More to the story
Of course I am sure almost all of you are familiar with Sinclair. They currently have over 60 stations including Tampa, Minneapolis, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Raleigh-Durham, NC, Nashville, stations in Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, couple others in North Carolina, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri. And if you don't know about their shenanigans in presidential politics, head on over to their wiki page and look under Political Views. Isn't it awesome that a company that has such a foothold in so many swing states runs infomercials against Obama in 2012, doesn't allow stations to air nightline running names of dead soldiers, preempts network programming to run a "documentary" that smears John kerry, etc...?
EDIT: Obviously the poll option should be 985 MILLION mcdoubles.