Sinclair Inc., the parent company for Rhode Island’s WJAR, is taking over the infrastructure and operations for one of its rival market stations, ABC6 (WLNE), Jessica Bellucci, company spokesperson, confirmed to Rhode Island Current on Friday morning.
The local market share agreement between Sinclair and ABC6’s parent company, Standard Media Group, lets Sinclair take over the equipment, operations and infrastructure for the second broadcast station, without changing the license ownership. The transaction closed Friday morning, Bellucci said.
“Sinclair is committed to producing distinctive content that delivers value and strengthens the connection to the local communities we serve,” Bellucci said in an email. “WJAR and WLNE represent the best of local broadcasting in the region, and we look forward to building on that legacy to continue to serve viewers across Southern New England.”
Bellucci declined to answer additional questions.
However, beloved local TV meteorologist Kelly Bates posted on social media Thursday that she and other ABC6 workers had lost their jobs due to the new agreement.
“It happened again,” Bates said in a Facebook video. “Our station was just bought by the station that I worked for previously and that parent company has decided I am a redundancy and needed to go.”
Bates spent most of her two-decade career at WJAR. She left the station in September 2021 amid a contract dispute, sparking outrage from Bates’ supporters, according to news reports. She returned to the airwaves less than one year later, scooped up ABC6.
Standard Media Group did not respond to inquiries for comment Friday. The company still listed ABC6 as one of its local stations on its website.
The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training has not received any notices for layoffs at ABC6, Samuel Aboh, an agency spokesperson, confirmed Friday. Under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, companies are required to let state and local officials know in advance about mass layoffs or facility closures.
A non-license agreement lets the two stations bypass longstanding federal regulatory restrictions that seek to prevent monopolies in local broadcast markets. However, a single company owning two local stations, including licenses, might not be out of the question, either.
In July 2025, a federal appeals court threw out part of the Federal Communications Commission’s longstanding regulations that restricted ownership in a local broadcast market to no more than one station. Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, continues to push for further deregulation of broadcast regulation and ownership limits.
This story will be updated.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
