Sinclair-Owned ABC And NBC Stations Preempt Networks To Carry Trump Primetime Speech

UPDATED with more details: ABC and NBC stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting ended up airing President Donald Trump’s primetime speech on Thursday, after ABC News and NBC News said earlier in the day that they would only carry the address on their streaming sites.

Trump’s address tonight began at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT and lasted about 25 minutes. As expected, the brunt of the remarks were regarding elections, and claims that included China obtaining voter registration data and the “deep state” withholding that intelligence from him.

The topic was the main reason for the news networks, including CNN, to put toinght’s speech coverage on their streaming news sites.

Sinclair used its own feed of the speech from the White House and preempted NBC and ABC programming to air tjhe remarks via its The National News Desk.

Fox also carried the speech, as did CBS, though for the latter CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil preceded the address by telling viewers, “Honestly, much of what the president has said on this topic is false.”

During the speech, Trump called out ABC and NBC, claiming without evidence that they and others in the media “want to continue this fraud for whatever reason.

“They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left,” he continued. “They can’t have a great country, and that’s true. You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion dollar in value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting.”

Sinclair has the right to preempt networks on their stations. Notably, they were among the station groups that made the decision not to air Jimmy Kimmel Live! last fall after remarks from Kimmel about the death of Charlie Kirk during a monologue. ABC ended up suspending Kimmel and production on a show for a week before reinstating him.

Sinclair says on its website it owns or operates and/or provides services to 177 TV stations in 79 markets.

Nellie Andreeva and Ted Johnson contributed to this report.