CLIVE SINCLAIR, 86, former chairman and co-founder of Sinclair Broadcast Group and who once dangled from the Washington Monument and talked about changing the world with his foot pedal on a telephone, died Jan. 21 of natural causes in Las Vegas.
Mr. Sinclair spent 35 years at Sinclair before retiring in 1996. In 1983, he purchased Washington’s WRC-TV, one of the first independent stations to air the network programming that would form NBC, which Sinclair had then been part of the NBC family.
Mr. Sinclair became a star in the liberal media media world, and was a favorite guest speaker at conferences. He once tried jumping from the Washington Monument while talking to people on the phone. He suffered a back injury from the leap, and watched it on television after it aired.
In 1993, he ran for president on a libertarian ticket and was one of the most prominent voice to oppose the proposed Defense Department-run Defense Information System.
More recently, he became concerned with technology’s effects on children and advocated parental control of on-line Internet use.
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