Picture it: you turn on your “local” TV station, expecting weather updates, high school football scores, maybe a feel-good segment about a cat reunited with its owner. Instead, you’re greeted with a syndicated commentary package, an ominous chyron about “chaos in the classroom,” and a panel of people who look suspiciously like the ones you saw last night on cable news. Surprise! That’s not an accident—it’s ownership, consolidation, and political incentive all working overtime while you wonder if it’s still going to rain on Saturday.
This is the great media parlor trick of our era: everything looks different on the surface (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX), but the underlying players are few, their interests clear, and their right-ward drift steady. So let’s lift the curtain on who owns your “Big Four,” who owns the stations that pretend to be “local,” who owns the pipes that carry all of it, and why the gravitational pull toward the political right keeps accelerating.
The Big Four Parents
ABC → The Walt Disney Company
On paper, Disney is the mouse with the house: ABC (network + 8 owned stations), ESPN, Disney Television Studios, Hulu (now fully owned), Disney+, ESPN+, plus the crown jewels of theme parks and animated nostalgia. That adorable mouse is less about Steamboat Willie these days and more about franchising cultural dominance.
Disney likes to present itself as centrist-progressive, but look closer: cost cutting, appeasing regulators, and chasing the safest ad dollars in red states often means sandpapering edges off “controversial” stories. Frozen may teach kids to “let it go,” but newsroom managers are constantly whispering “don’t go there.”
CBS → Paramount Skydance
Fresh off the Paramount–Skydance merger, CBS is now under David Ellison’s umbrella. Alongside the network and its local news division, the group owns Paramount+, Pluto TV, and all the millennial comfort food channels: MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Showtime.
Ellison is Hollywood legacy with Silicon Valley donor vibes. The merger means consolidation, cost-cutting, and an allergic reaction to risky reporting. Investigative desks are expensive; cheaper are “outrage reels” about student protests and viral crime clips. That shift, by design or inertia, leans right.
NBC → Comcast/NBCUniversal
NBC is the house Comcast built: NBC (network + owned stations), Telemundo, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Universal theme parks. If you’ve ever bundled cable, internet, and “security monitoring,” you know Comcast loves control.
National NBC News leans establishment-center-left, but affiliates? Those often belong to conservative-leaning station groups. NBC wants to sell broadband and streaming, not lose ad revenue in Ohio because the local anchor said climate change is real.
FOX → Fox Corporation
The outlier that doesn’t hide. FOX News Channel, FOX Business, FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment, 29 owned stations, and Tubi. Fox is where the editorial line is not just right-leaning, but proudly so, complete with prime-time hosts who call fact-checkers Marxists and treat grievance like a sport.
FOX is what happens when you stop pretending balance is the goal. The broadcast network benefits from the halo: the “Simpsons” audience gets cross-pollinated with FOX News loyalists, and the brand synergy means everyone knows what FOX stands for—rage, profit, and “fair & balanced” as a lifestyle joke.
The “Local” Layer: A Small Club with a Big Grip
National brands may decorate the screen, but most “local affiliates” are owned by five conglomerates:
- Nexstar: 200+ stations, 75% of The CW, NewsNation. The biggest gorilla in the market. “Middle-of-the-road” branding, but coverage angles skew to the right.
- Sinclair: ~180 stations, infamous for “must-run” editorial segments that look like local anchors reading national talking points. Centralization disguised as neighborhood news.
- Gray: 100+ markets, reaching about a third of households. Known for blending nationalized packages into local newscasts.
- TEGNA: 70 stations, heavy NBC/ABC affiliate footprint. Actively courted for acquisition.
- Scripps: 60+ stations, plus Ion and Scripps News.
The result? Millions of Americans consume news that feels local but is framed by centralized editorial priorities. The five companies don’t need to collude; their incentives align. Efficiency means shared scripts, identical graphics, and safe story angles designed not to spook advertisers or state politicians.
Streaming & Direct-to-Consumer: The Big Four’s Parallel Funnel
- Disney: Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+.
- Paramount Skydance: Paramount+, Pluto TV.
- NBCUniversal: Peacock.
- Fox: Tubi.
The packaging changes—“ad-free tier,” “FAST channels,” “exclusive drops”—but the content all rolls downhill into the same safe molds. Prestige originals are window dressing; the big monetizers are reruns, sports rights, and algorithmic “rage-adjacent” clips that keep you from logging out.
Platform Gatekeepers: The Musk/Ellison Factor
- X (formerly Twitter): Elon Musk’s toy, stage, and revenue experiment. He loosened moderation, boosted right-leaning creators, and cast mainstream outlets as enemies. Surprise: grievance travels farther than nuance.
- TikTok U.S.: Now structured with U.S. investors in control, with Oracle (Larry Ellison’s shop) holding the key technology contract. When Ellison’s influence is in the room, national security talk gets louder while anti-corporate critiques fade.
These platforms shape what people see before they ever click “local news.” Their biases—whether libertarian-right, anti-institutional, or donor-aligned—become invisible defaults.
Why the Drift Rightward Is Real—and Accelerating
- Ownership incentives & donor politics
Fox is explicit; Sinclair and Nexstar are subtler but no less impactful. Billionaires like Musk and Ellison lean right, donate right, and shape distribution rules accordingly. - Local consolidation = message discipline
When five groups own most affiliates, “local” disappears. The incentive: don’t offend conservative audiences, regulators, or advertisers. The effect: more “crime,” more “chaos,” fewer stories about labor rights or corporate malfeasance. - Regulatory drift & courts
National reach caps and loopholes like the “UHF discount” let groups scale beyond limits. Courts gut rules like the “Top Four” prohibition on owning multiple big stations in one market. The fewer owners, the more homogeneity. - Ad market economics
Outrage is cheap. Investigative journalism is expensive. When you’re cutting costs, you prune the costly desks first and feed the beast with culture-war panels and viral fear bait. - Platform amplification
X boosts long grievance videos; TikTok under Ellison’s eye avoids scrutiny that would upset U.S. business elites. The result: conservative framings spread faster, progressives get throttled. - Neutrality theater
ABC, NBC, and CBS play “mainstream” on national broadcasts. But affiliates, where most viewers actually consume news, lean right. It’s like putting a progressive slogan on the box while filling it with conservative product.
The Big Illusion: Balance in Theory, Right in Practice
Critics will say: “But NBC has Rachel Maddow! ABC airs investigative specials! CBS still does 60 Minutes!” Sure. National shows sometimes lean left, but their reach is shrinking. The decisive battleground is the affiliate station in Columbus, the recommended clip on TikTok, the must-run commentary segment at 6 p.m. That’s where narrative repetition happens—and those spaces skew right.
And when affiliates threaten to preempt or delay network programming that offends local audiences? Networks blink. The affiliate leash pulls the supposed parent.
Common Claims vs. Realities
- “Nexstar and Sinclair own all affiliates.” Not literally. But together with Gray, TEGNA, and Scripps, they own enough to shape the “local” experience for a giant chunk of Americans.
- “Musk and Ellison don’t control everything.” True, but they control two major distribution pipes and one studio group. Influence beats monopoly.
- “ABC/NBC/CBS balance FOX out.” On paper, maybe. In practice, the last-mile to households is increasingly shaped by right-leaning ownership structures and platforms.
Why It Keeps Tilting
- More consolidation: Nexstar eyeing TEGNA, Paramount Skydance looking for efficiencies. Bigger owners = fewer editorial checks.
- Policy inertia: As long as caps and loopholes stay fuzzy, corporations will push. Once stations consolidate, nobody unwinds it.
- Financial stress: Sports rights inflation + cord-cutting = lean into cheaper outrage cycles. Those cycles reliably skew right.
- Platform biases: X and TikTok U.S. reward grievance and avoid topics that spook donor-aligned elites.
- Affiliate veto power: When local owners push back, networks fold. That tilt accumulates.
The Landscape at a Glance
- Disney → ABC → Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+.
- Paramount Skydance → CBS → Paramount+/Pluto TV.
- Comcast/NBCUniversal → NBC → Peacock.
- Fox Corporation → FOX → Tubi.
Local Gatekeepers: Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, TEGNA, Scripps.
Platform Gatekeepers: Musk (X), Ellison (Oracle/TikTok U.S.).
Policy Backdrop: Deregulation, reach cap loopholes, weakened local ownership rules.
Directional Outcome: Right-leaning tilt hard-wired into ownership, distribution, and financial incentives.
So What?
The right-ward drift isn’t an accident or a single channel’s bias—it’s structural. Ownership incentives, affiliate consolidation, ad economics, and platform dynamics all converge on the same outcome: grievance sells, investigative risk doesn’t, and billionaires aligned with the right call more of the shots.
Every time you hear your anchor say, “Our top story tonight,” remember: that “choice” was shaped by five affiliate owners, four conglomerates, two billionaire tech moguls, and one regulatory shrug. Local may look local, but it’s nationalized, standardized, and leaning right.
The result isn’t FOX vs. MSNBC. It’s a system where “neutral” defaults are conservative by design, where outrage is the business model, and where the invisible hand of media ownership keeps nudging the country further to the right while viewers still think they’re just checking tomorrow’s forecast.