Consumer activist group Allied Progress is portraying Sinclair commentator Boris Epshteyn as the Grinch who stole the airwaves in a holiday mailer it is sending out to try and generate support for blocking the nation's largest broadcast group from getting one size bigger via the Tribune stations purchase.
"All the viewers in viewville/Like local news and free thought/They like them a lot/But Sinclair, which wants a monopoly/Certainly does not," the group wrote in their best-efforts Dr. Seussian prose. (Sinclair exec Mark Hyman is portrayed as Max, the loveable sleigh-hauling pooch-minion of the Grinch.
The one-sheet mailer tells mailer's recipients the FCC and DOJ should stop the merger, saying it would "break" duopoly rules.
According to someone familiar with the mailer, it was sent to members of the media as well as "key members of Congress and their staffs, employees of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust division, and an assortment of other influential decision-makers from media, government, and corporate America."
The source said that more than 10,000 leaflets are expected to hit mailboxes "just in time for the holidays."
