Many of you will have already seen the insane dystopian Deadspin video of dozens of local TV news anchors all reading the same unhinged pro-Trump propaganda. But if you haven’t, here it is.

My biggest issue here is not that this is pernicious, though that’s part of it. By now, most TV news viewers know what they’re getting when they tune into Fox News. It sucks and I don’t like it, but they play by the rules and mostly preach to the choir. Sinclair is broadcasting local news, and many of the folks tuning in are looking for just that – local news. They don’t expect a propaganda piece, and it’s easy to lose sight of just how little most people think about politics and world affairs. The aim here is to scoop up some of these folks and make them right-wing partisans.

But again, that’s not my biggest objection. The problem here is Trump’s appointed head of the FCC, Ajit Pai. You may remember him from deregulating the Internet a few months ago. It turns out he also made this possible.

The only way a huge network of local stations broadcasting much of the same content is going to be cost-effective is through grabbing a large market share. That’s not even the point of Sinclair – in the vast majority of markets where Sinclair has purchased a station, viewer share has actually gone down. Their point is like the Koch brothers’ points: listen to this and be on our side politically, come what may. But still, you need to be in position to offset the cost of production. That’s where Ajit Pai comes in.

You may remember that part of the plot of the Academy-Award-winning film UHF, starring “Weird Al” Yankovic, involved the villainous rival station owner (Kevin McCarthy) plotting to buy the plucky off-brand UHF station. When another character mentions that it’s illegal to own two stations in the same town, McCarthy demurs, cackling “I guess I’ll have to turn this place into a parking lot!”

That was then. Now, with no actual new regulations passed, Pai has re-read the existing regs to allow this kind of bland malfeasance. Sinclair can now buy up as much market share as they can afford.

The objection here is obvious: Trump has a guy who makes it possible for people to run pro-Trump propaganda to do so on a much larger scale than ever before.

This doesn’t strike me as being in the public interest. To make myself feel better, I think I’ll watch UHF again. At least in that movie, the little guys win. Plus it has a killer soundtrack.