Things were not perfect under Fisher Communications' management, to be sure. Resources were tight, made even more lean by management hoping to appeal to potential suitors. But what issues existed were largely viewed as the same realities facing all media and there was some comfort in Fisher’s local roots.

But during the conference in Las Vegas, chatter spread that there was a bidding war going on for the station. Who was competing was only speculation, but one manager at the time told a colleague, “Anybody but Sinclair.”

Sinclair was not the household name back then as it has become in recent months. But for those in TV, it was already well known. “When you heard the word Sinclair, if you’d been in the business long enough, you knew it couldn’t be good,” said one longtime KOMO staff member. They were known for being conservative, a reputation they’d earned through pushing the “swift-boat” story, which questioned the war-record of 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry.

But it went beyond political beliefs. “Stuff started to circulate, stories about Sinclair and how they had handled things,” said another longtime senior staff member. “That they were a good ol’ boys network and they had very little diversity.”

More than that, they were known as formulaic, unconcerned with the nuances of local markets. Sinclair, more than any other media conglomerate, was seen as a departure from the local connection KOMO was so proud of.

Then the purchase happened in Spring of 2013, days after the conference. And when it did, some on the staff began to panic. “Everyone was kind of dismayed when it was Sinclair,” said the former senior staff member.

It wasn't until Donald Trump that viewers had ever wondered who Sinclair was. But for the newly-pilloried staff of KOMO — met in recent months and days by social media demands that they quit — the complicated relationship is several years old. Staff have chafed at the new ownership while also understanding the weak job prospects of a dwindling media landscape.

Shortly after the purchase was approved, Sinclair executive chairman David Smith got on a plane from the headquarters in Maryland, along with a team of about 13 of the company’s most senior members. The entire KOMO staff filed into a spare studio to see their new bosses sitting in a row, confirming some fears: They were all white men, save for the HR director, who was a white woman. “You’re talking to a diverse staff,” said one former employee. This does not bode well, this person remembered thinking.

Current and former KOMO employees, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, speak with pride about their station, especially in the pre-Sinclair days. “There was a lot of pride in the work and there were a lot of awards in the work,” said the senior staffer. “Our work was an excellent product.”

At the time, it would be Sinclair’s largest purchase to date, several calling it a new “jewel” in the conglomerate’s purse. Staff wanted their new corporate owners to acknowledge that.

But the corporate executives failed in that first meeting. Instead they talked at length about the station in Waco, Texas, a city one sixth the size of Seattle. “We were left with the dismay of, these people have no clue about Seattle, they have no clue about the size of the market, they have no clue about what we do here,” said the former senior staff member. “It’s embarrassing to compare us to Waco, Texas….On a scale of 1-10 the meeting was a zero.”

Many employees left feeling, What have we done?

That first meeting was so bad, in fact, Smith returned a short time later to offer, not an apology so much as an explanation. “You keep doing your thing and we’ll leave you alone,” he said.

But the “must-runs” that have become so notorious in the last year — pre-produced, heavily partisan content Sinclair stations are required to run — were already well-known within the broadcast world. One employee had colleagues at other Sinclair stations who, before the KOMO sale, had warned about these segments. Most famously, there was the swift-boat story, but there were editorials from a Sinclair executive, Mark Hyman, who liked calling college students “snowflakes.”