“21st Century Fox today announced a definitive agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media Company to acquire seven television stations for approximately $910 million. The transaction will grow Fox Television Stations’ (FTS) coverage to nearly half of all U.S. households, and its market presence to 19 of the top 20 DMAs, including the addition of key markets that align with Fox’s sports rights.”
You see those same seven TBD stations on the Fox news release.
You also see six of those seven are Fox affiliates, so not much should change for viewers in those cities.
Yet, the Miami/Fort Lauderdale station is a CW affiliate. What will become of it, and also Sunbeam-owned Fox affiliate powerhouse WSVN?
That’s still to be determined.
I’m hearing the possible loss of Fox affiliation is going around the Newsplex (WSVN), but I would hesitate because I don’t think that would be the right decision for anybody: Fox (out to make money) nor the viewers (getting the best public service).
Disclosure: That’s me, circled in red, working at WSVN when the Newsplex debuted in 1994.
The CEO of Fox Television Stations, Jack Abernethy, said,
“This transaction illustrates Fox’s commitment to local broadcasting and we are pleased to add these stations to our existing portfolio. With this acquisition, we will now compete in 19 of the top 20 markets and have a significantly larger presence in the west, which will enhance our already strong platform. This expansion will further enrich our valuable alignments with the NFL, including our new Thursday Night Football rights, MLB and college sports assets. We are also happy to add many talented Tribune employees to our group, some of whom we know well.”
Remember, a much leaner “New Fox” network plans to concentrate more on live events, specifically NFL football.
Several of the stations have NFL football teams in their markets. Others, like San Diego which lost the Chargers, and Sacramento which is near San Francisco, are very close.
The big trophy is Seattle, since the Seahawks are in the NFL, and Fox carries most of its NFC conference away games on Sundays. But now, Fox also has the rights to Thursday Night Football games which feature AFC conference teams just about equally.
Also new today, 21st Century Fox has also entered into new network affiliation agreements with Sinclair and the stations it doesn’t own but still operates.
Plus, Fox will give Sinclair options to acquire two of its stations – Chicago CW-affiliate WPWR for approximately $15 million, since Fox already owns station WFLD – and Austin FOX station KTBC for approximately $160 million, which Fox didn’t sell off years ago when its focus was on the largest markets because KTBC-Channel 7 is the only VHF TV station in Texas’ capital.
Fox actually used to own the Cleveland, Salt Lake City and Denver stations but sold them to a company called Local TV which sold itself to Tribune. So much for Fox actually caring about those communities when it owned those stations, sold them, and now wants them back. I hope the people of Cleveland, Salt Lake City and Denver will challenge Fox’s proposed buy with the FCC.
Of course, where will Fox find that approximately $910 million? I mentioned a much leaner “New Fox” that plans to sell off most of its assets like its studio, cable networks and regional sports networks to Disney – keeping just its network, TV stations, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and FS1/FS2 cable sports channels.
There’s one last new point from the Fox news release:
“Completion of the stations acquisition by 21st Century Fox is anticipated for the second half of this calendar year, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to be coordinated with the closing of Sinclair’s proposed acquisition of Tribune.”
Sinclair had said it expected its merger with Tribune to close in the second quarter of the year.
But companies cannot own stations covering more than 39 percent of U.S. households. Sinclair has used shell corporations with names like Cunningham and Deerfield to control but not technically own more stations than allowed. And the FCC brought back the UHF Discount so the percentage a UHF station (channel 14+) counts towards a company’s ownership cap would only be half for those stations, compared to VHF stations.
That rule started because it used to matter whether a local TV station was VHF or UHF, due to antennas and how old TV sets were not made for the UHF band. But President Trump’s appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai made sure to bring it back weeks before the Sinclair-Tribune merger was announced, and it could not have been possible otherwise, so Pai is under investigation by the FCC’s inspector general.
Ajit Pai (Wikipedia)
Since the merger announcement, there have been many holdups. Most notably is opposition from people who hate Sinclair’s conservative leanings, must-run commentaries on its local stations and its history of forced network preemptions. There are also those who think Sinclair was already too big of a company and adding Tribune to it would make it much larger.
As of now, Sinclair says it owns or operates 193 TV stations, consisting of 614 channels (including digital subchannels) in 89 U.S. markets. Just look at that footprint!
“Pro forma for the Tribune acquisition and related station divestitures, the Company will own, operate and/or provide services to 215 television stations in 102 markets.”
Something tells me that company doesn’t know what to say and brags too much, which makes its opponents angrier.
The Sinclair news release lists all of the stations that will be sold for a merger, and the cities that will have stations as part of the merger.
In fact, I’m not sure Sinclair President/CEO Chris Ripley understands chutzpah, but this is part of his quote:
“After a very robust divestiture process, with strong interest from many parties, we have achieved healthy multiples on the stations being divested. … While we continue to believe that we had a strong and supportable rationale for not having to divest stations, we are happy to announce this significant step forward in our plan to create a leading broadcast platform with local focus and national reach. We expect the combined company to continue to advance industry practices and technology, including the Next Generation Broadcast Platform, and to benefit from significant revenue and expense synergies.”
WSFL was supposed to be spun off and not take part in any Sinclair-Tribune merger, since Fox was supposed to be concentrating on those cities in the NFL’s NFC conference. The Miami Dolphins are in the AFC, and WSFL is a CW affiliate without a news department.
I suggested Fox look at CBS, making money while owning CW affiliates (it owns half of the CW) and also independent stations, while letting outside companies with either stronger reach or good news departments have the CBS affiliations.
I predicted WSFL losing its CW affiliation since CBS owns two stations in the market. There’s the CBS station WFOR-4, and WBFS-33 which became a MyNetworkTV affiliate to please CW partner Tribune, since CBS got the CW in so many other cities back when the WB and UPN combined.
Now, it’ll make perfect sense for CBS to move the CW affiliation to WBFS. Where would that leave WSFL? As a MyNetworkTV affiliate. Is there any problem with that? Absolutely not! Why? Because Fox actually owns MyNetworkTV.
Fox would have a place to air any network programming WSVN preempts, its Fox News would have access to WSVN’s powerful news coverage like it does from any other affiliate, it could say it owns a station in Miami/Fort Lauderdale to give advertisers more scale, and it could program and promote WSFL and its MyNetworkTV shows any way it wants.
That’s how I see the perfect solution.
Of course, nobody is perfect and Fox doesn’t always make the right decisions.
It dropped a good Charlotte affiliate, WCCB-Channel 18, because it wanted to own a station where the NFC Carolina Panthers play. Instead, it bought a nothing station, WJZY-Channel 46, started it from scratch, and took years and a lot of money to build it into anything.
It could do the same thing in Miami and start news at WSFL. That would give viewers another choice for news but be a kick in the face to WSVN and confuse the viewers, since the market is already splintered with popular stations in two languages.
Could Fox buy WSVN? As people in New York’s 6th borough would say, Fugetaboutit! Sunbeam owner Ansin has shown he’ll probably take the station to his grave, with or without any affiliation, so there’s no realistic possibility there.
He lost WSVN’s NBC affiliation in 1989 by refusing to sell that station. It bought WTVJ instead. (Why would Ansin get back into business with NBC in Boston in 1994, rather than Fox, after NBC dropped him in Miami? To make money, of course!)
Just last year, the same think happened with his WHDH in Boston. Ansin refused yet again, saying NBC offered half what WHDH was worth and trying to steal it. So NBC dropped Ansin a second time and started a new station called NBC Boston, now NBC 10, even though it’s not on channel 10 and NBC is really on WJAR-Channel 10 (owned by Sinclair) in nearby Providence, RI!
One last thing: The Fox Television Stations Group website — which hadn’t posted a list of its stations (What else is it for?) despite me calling them out for it here, here, here, here (so far in no particular order, although I may have missed a couple), and my favorite, here — never posted today’s news. But it does show press releases from Feb. 8, 2017 and Nov. 3, 2016.
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We all know somebody has to pay the people who gather and publish the news in any media format. That’s a given, and anyone who has been in the business knows most employees are not paid nearly what they’re worth. That’s a shame and forcing good people out of the business, especially at a time we need the Fourth Estate to be as tough as ever — especially when reporting on news happening in American government and the world.
The people researching, making contacts and conducting interviews on the front lines need to make a living.
So what’s the best solution?
I really don’t know.
If you read what I post, you see I often use multiple sites for information and different viewpoints, but I don’t pay those sites. Instead, I credit them link to them, and hope they benefit when I — and then you — click for more information.
But if these trusted sites use paywalls, there’s no way any of us would pay multiple sites. How many of us could afford to? Big newsrooms, even if they say they can’t, but you and I won’t have the information we need to be responsible citizens.
Newspapers (on paper) make money through both subscriptions and advertising. So do most cable networks and your cable/satellite company.
Unfortunately, today, it looks like news on the web is going the same way.
TV news websites aren’t the best. Maybe some major group could invest in the rights to some top publications and names, to drive our traffic to their own sites so we could be made more aware of important events. It’s too bad many of the companies that owned broadcast and newspaper/magazine assets split up.
This graphic and all above are clip art
The first company that can do so and really publicize specific detailed content on a daily basis (not just that “we’re free and the newspaper isn’t” or “here are the top stories on our site at this hour”) during newscasts could get new readers who’d share the site with non-readers.
“No one except the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and now probably the Washington Post has come up with a digital product that really in any significant way will replace the revenue that is being lost as print newspapers lose both circulation and advertising … It is very difficult to see — with a lack of success in terms of important dollars rising from digital — it’s difficult to see how the print product survives over time.”
According to Axios, “Local media executives have beensaying for months that their biggest competition for subscriptions and eyeballs is large national newspapers.”
That’s bad for Buffett, who was speaking at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, and his company owns more than 30 newspapers.
That’s especially bad for the rest of us because too much of what we see on local news deals with murders, crashes and fires. They’re often visual. But it’s the local papers that often investigate and dig, outside of ratings periods. If they go down, who will take their place?
There are also two updates on Facebook, which has been under fire since Cambridge Analytica “harvested personal data on millions of Facebook users, without their knowledge, for marketing and political purposes.”
The Post quoted from a statement on the firm’s website that it
has been the subject of “numerous unfounded accusations” and “vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the political and commercial arenas.”
I’m not so sure, and to hell with the letter of the law! How about ethics? I know many other people feel the same way.
That’s because The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the situation, reported “The decision to close up shop followed rising legal fees and a loss of clients over the investigation into their work and use of Facebook data.”
So there!
And The Huffington Post also reported,
“The firm also suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, in March after he was recorded bragging about Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories, influencing more than 200 elections around the world with unethical practices.
“This doesn’t change our commitment and determination to understand exactly what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We are continuing with our investigation in cooperation with the relevant authorities.”
Advertising isn’t just to sell products to make money, but also selling ideas that can win activists money for lobbying and more advertising — and votes.
Eventually, an appeals process will be established and inevitable discrepancies about what’s considered an “issue ad” will be taken up there. That means the list may evolve over time.
Of course, political ads on TV and the radio are heavily regulated since they’re on the public airwaves. That’s especially true for federal offices. This one is not.
That brings me to an article I tweeted earlier today.
Politico reported since the beginning of the year, Fox News has invited central Florida congressman and gubernatorial primary candidate Ron DeSantis on the air “roughly 100 times” while his opponent in the race – Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam – has not been invited even once. That airtime has been compared to $7.1 million in “national publicity value.”
So much for fair and balanced, and anything close to equal time!
Ron DeSantis and Adam Putnam
Remember, this is a Republican primary and what Politico called, “a seemingly endless series of appearances on a news network favored by conservatives.”
Not just conservatives, but supporters of President Trump, who endorsed DeSantis.
Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER!
The race between Adam Putnam and Ron DeSantis will give a strong clue about Trump's hold over the GOP voting base and show whether a large swing state’s governorship can be successfully nationalized via cable news. https://t.co/4gaALKJrlY # via @HuffPostPol
And, “Since announcing his bid in January, DeSantis has been given frequent access to Fox’s best real estate — including Fox & Friends, Laura Ingraham, and the Hannity show.”
Only Ron DeSantis. No Adam Putnam. Not fair. Not equal.
Here is one more comparison.
Putnam is still the GOP frontrunner and has raised more than $20 million.
DeSantis has raised only $7.8 million between his campaign and political committee, but Fox News is probably why “roughly 40 percent of DeSantis’ contributions have come from non-Florida donors,” even though only Floridians will vote in their state’s gubernatorial primary.
Also,
“Of the nearly $4 million spent by Putnam and his political committee on TV ads, hundreds-of-thousands of dollars have been for time on Fox News programs” but “When those ads started to circulate, some of Fox News’ most prominent hosts gave DeSantis cover and tried to tie the ads to Putnam.”
BTW, Sinclair owns or operates Florida stations in West Palm Beach, Pensacola (with Mobile, AL), Tallahassee (with Thomasville, GA) and Gainesville. See map.
SIDEBAR: This isn’t what I planed to write about but Sinclair’s wanna-be merger victim, Tribune, only owns WSFL-39 in Florida. It has been known as “SFL-TV, South Florida’s CW” in recent years, covering the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area. Friday, I reported the station will be spun off and not take part in the Sinclair-Tribune merger, even if it happens. Plus, I showed you the lists of Sinclair and Tribune stations submitted to the FCC document that said so. I stand by everything I wrote and showed.
Notice all the TBDs in the Buyer column. They include WSFL. I explained all the other TBD stations are Fox affiliates, and the ones in NFL football cities will probably be sold to the network itself, which is going to be a lot leaner and stressing live events — especially NFL football — which it will be adding on Thursday nights. That’s if Fox ever comes to an agreement with Sinclair.
WSFL is a CW affiliate without a news department and I dwelled on whether Fox would buy it and dump its Sunbeam-owned powerhouse affiliate WSVN. Again, it’s all here.
The deal was supposed to happen in the second quarter of this year (by June). I just did an internet search and found nothing new from any reliable sources, but I did find something new on the FCC’s website. Yesterday, it published a letter from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s response to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) regarding Sinclair Broadcast’s proposal to acquire Tribune Media. Sen. Durbin and others have been especially concerned about Tribune’s WGN-TV9 in Chicago. The letter was written a few weeks ago but again, just published yesterday.
So I believe nothing has changed, despite seeing a website that appears to be WSFL’s. It’s called SFLTV.com. However, it looks like a generic Florida TV blog, does not look professional, does not have a detailed copyright, news I don’t believe from May 1 and today, and some strange graphics (below). I’m just warning you.
BACK TO THE STORY: Politico also reported, “A Fox News spokeswoman did not return a request seeking comment on why DeSantis is a regular guest or why Putnam has not been on the network this year.”
Another similarity: Ron DeSantis almost in Sinclair Broadcast Group style!
I’m reporting Politico put DeSantis’ name in the first line of its story, while Putnam’s didn’t appear until the tenth paragraph!
And no Democrats’ names appear at all!
Also not mentioned: Two-term Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) will be leaving Tallahassee behind to take on U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL).
Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson
By the way, speaking of equal time, the Federal Communications Commission’s Equal-Time Rule specifies that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it, in news or advertising. It was created in §18 of the Radio Act of 1927 because the FCC was concerned broadcasters could easily manipulate the outcome of elections by presenting just one point of view, and excluding other candidates. (Like Fox News is doing? What lets them do it, in a moment.) The rule was later superseded by the Communications Act of 1934.
“Once a cable system allows a legally qualified candidate for public office to use its facilities, it must afford ‘equal opportunities’ to all other candidates for that office to use its facilities. The cable system may not censor the content of a candidate’s material in any way, and may not discriminate between candidates in practices, regulations, facilities or services rendered while making time available to such candidates. Candidate appearances which are exempt from the ‘equal opportunities’ rules include appearances on a bona fide newscast, bona fide news interview, bona fide news documentary, or during on-the-spot coverage of a bona fide news event.”
Bona fide newscast? Bona fide news interview? I just report. You can decide.
If I remember correctly, back in the day, Oprah’s talk show was considered news under this policy; not any others.
That’s different from the Fairness Doctrine (1947-1987) “that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance (not candidates) and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC’s view—honest, equitable, and balanced.”
One very last thing and it’s the last thing you see on posts: the comments. Did you know I’m constantly updating articles in that section?
It’s not easy to find on the regular generic CohenConnect.com homepage you turn to when you want to see the latest articles (if you don’t subscribe with your email address or WordPress account). WordPress makes you go below the sharing and liking, and below all the categories and tags for the post you just read, and you’ll find a place for comments at the very end, just before the previous article begins.
After an article, WordPress makes you go below the sharing and liking, below the related posts (which it chooses, along with the categories beneath them), below all the categories and tags for the post you just read, below a link to the article before (and after, unless it’s the latest), and that’s where you’ll find any comments.
So keep checking the bottom of an article out if you were really interested, even weeks after publishing, and you know what to do in some rare case you don’t think I’m right!
Besides, who do you trust more, WordPress or Facebook?
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I’ve avoided writing much about Sinclair Broadcast Group trying to buy Tribune Media because I’ve been busy and I don’t want to jinx any possibility the merger will fall through.
But there has been some news, and the biggest for a local TV market could be Miami/Fort Lauderdale (of course!).
Of course, I’m referring to Sinclair Broadcast Group doing everything it can to spread its conservative information campaign to most of the U.S. that the company doesn’t already reach.
But the deal announced in May, 2017, still hasn’t happened.
To follow through, it would need government approval: from the Justice Department for antitrust worries and the FCC to approve ownership limits. (And Sinclair may have already gotten “help” from FCC chairman Ajit Pai, who was selected by President Trump. Pai is now under investigation by his own agency’s inspector general. Keep reading.)
Ajit Pai (Wikipedia)
The $3.9 billion deal would still require a number of stations to be sold. The questions partially responsible for holding things up were how many, and in which cities? About six weeks ago, I explained TV ownership limits are very complicated, with four rules in play: 1. national TV ownership, 2. local TV multiple ownership, 3. the number of independently owned “media voices” – 4. and at least one of the stations is not ranked among the top four stations in the DMA (that’s the “designated market area” or city, and ranking based on audience share), and at least eight independently owned TV stations would remain in the market after the proposed combination.
Plus, there have been literally thousands of complaints from activists who know how important this is. Click here to see 4,497 total FCC filings since July 5, 2017, including 891 in the past 30 days. THANK YOU if your name is on the list! Keep reading for directions on how to say no.
Now, click here to see some of the “33 concurrently filed applications on FCC Form 315 that seek the Commission’s consent to a transaction,” back in July, 2017, and what the companies consider “Public interest benefits of the transaction.” You’ll soon know better if you actually believe there are public interest benefits! You’ll also notice the companies fighting for every last station they could, to grow even larger.
These are the stations currently owned by Sinclair that would be divested only if the merger goes through…
and these are the stations currently owned by Tribune.
So now we know who is expected to own the stations a Sinclair-Tribune combination would not be allowed to keep. Unfortunately, it’s not as clear as the charts above that list call letters and cities.
First, the official licensee could have a different name but we know we’re dealing with stations owned by Sinclair and Tribune.
Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation is the most controversial. It calls itself “an independent television broadcast company that, together with its subsidiaries, owns and/or operates 20 television stations in 18 markets across the United States.”
“The Smith family, which includes brothers David, Robert, Frederick, J. Duncan and a flurry of family trusts, is worth a combined $1.2 billion, Forbes estimates, based on the family members’ ownership of stock in publicly traded Sinclair Broadcasting, share sales over the past 15 years, dividends and some private assets,” it read.
“Revenues have increased 281% over the last decade to $2.7 billion in 2017, while Sinclair’s share price has increased 367% over the same period, pushing its market capitalization up to a recent $3 billion. All of this growth has occurred under the control and oversight of David Smith, 67, the chairman and former CEO of the company, as well as the son of the company’s founder Julian Sinclair Smith,” it continued.
Forbes quoted Daniel Kurnos, an analyst at Benchmark Capital, as saying, “Sinclair plays some of the hardest ball of anyone,” from acquiring stations to negotiating advertisement pricing and retransmission fees, which are some of the highest in the business.
SIDEBAR: Wednesday, The TV Answer Man Phillip Swann reported PlayStation Vue removed Sinclair-owned local stations affiliated with Big 4 networks from its streaming lineup without an explanation. Just Tuesday, subscribers got an e-mail that live channels would be replaced May 1 (that day) with an On-Demand version.
Sinclair said it pulled the stations and blamed “Sony (for) failing to comply with certain contractual provisions.” It didn’t elaborate but urged Sony subscribers to consider other video distributor options, including Sony competitor YouTube TV.
Sony hasn’t commented.
The Baltimore Sun reports, “Sony describes PlayStation Vue as a live streaming TV service for up to five devices at once that offers sports, news and other programs along with premium channels and a cloud DVR.”
BACK TO THE STORY: Under David Smith, who wouldn’t comment for the article, Sinclair went from three cities – Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Columbus – to what it is today.
Sinclair today, without Tribune
“To ‘purely make money’ in a scale-oriented business, David bought up as many broadcast stations as possible. First he concentrated on secondary markets, like Memphis, St. Louis and San Antonio, where operation costs were cheaper than in places like New York or Chicago.
“‘I believed that certain things were going to happen in the television industry, the most important being consolidation,’” David told Forbes in 1996.
So much for public service!
But then came the controversial Cunningham, arguably rigging the system.
“In the 1990s, the company pioneered a technique to circumvent an FCC rule limiting ownership of more than one TV station per metro area. David’s mother, Carolyn Smith, started another business, Cunningham Broadcasting. Following Carolyn’s death in 2012, most of the ownership of Cunningham Broadcasting shifted to a family trust, which is included in the overall Smith family valuation.”
So Cunningham really isn’t independent, as its website claims!
“The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is raising questions at the FCC about whether Sinclair Broadcasting is exercising control over a minority-headed TV group with which it has struck a series of local marketing agreements (LMAs).
“In a July 1 filing at the FCC, Rainbow/PUSH said it plans to study whether the LMA deal between Sinclair’s KABB(TV) San Antonio and Glencairn’s KRRT(TV) Kerrville, Tex., violates the commission’s prohibition against common ownership of two local stations. (The rules were more strict then.)
“‘Rainbow/PUSH has not had an opportunity to fully research this matter, and thus preserves here the question of whether Glencaim is the alter ego of Sinclair,’ the group told the FCC.”
“Sinclair Broadcasting exercised illegal control of business partner Glencairn Ltd., the FCC found Monday after three years of investigating the companies’ relationship.
“Each company was fined $40,000 but escaped tougher sanction sought by civil rights groups-a government rejection of Sinclair’s request to buy 14 stations from Sullivan Broadcasting.
“The commission’s three Republicans judged that the companies were liable for misinterpreting FCC policies, but found they did not intentionally mislead the agency about compliance.
“Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps wanted the FCC to pursue a tougher sanction and voted to designate the station sales for hearing in front of an administrative law judge.
“Sinclair has repeatedly ‘stretched the limits’ of FCC ownership rules, he said.”
So we know Cunningham, set to buy Tribune stations in Dallas and Houston, appears to be a shell company, and we can make bets who will operate and control it if the Sinclair-Tribune deal ever comes to fruition.
“Cunningham Broadcasting owns the FCC broadcast licenses and operates through various management agreements with Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. WNUV-TV in Baltimore, Maryland; WTTE-TV in Columbus, Ohio; WMYA-TV in Anderson, South Carolina; WRGT-TV in Dayton, Ohio; WVAH-TV in Charleston, West Virginia; WDBB-TV in Bessemer, Alabama; WBSF-TV in Flint, Michigan; WGTU-TV in Traverse City, Michigan; KBVU-TV in Eureka, California; KCVU-TV in Chico-Redding, California; WEMT-TV in Greeneville, Tennessee; WPFO-TV in Portland, Maine; WYDO-TV in Greenville, North Carolina; and KRNV-TV & KENV-TV in Reno, Nevada.”
Looking at its list of stations — something the Fox Television Stations Group never posted on its own website despite me calling them out for it here, here, here, here (so far in no particular order, although I may have missed a couple), and my favorite, here — you may realize Sinclair recently bought Bonten Media Group (Disclosure: I used to be Digital Media Manager at the former Bonten’s WCYB but left before the sale.) but Cunningham bought the stations Bonten operated. Notice those stations listed on the website have no websites of their own. And I’ll get back to Fox later. I’ll bet they can’t wait!
Another dead giveaway is that Cunningham is based at 2000 W. 41st Street, Baltimore MD 21211 and coincidentally, Sinclair flagship WBFF-45 (Fox affiliate) has the same address!
Deerfield, with apparently no website of its own (so see Wikipedia’s take), is another of the shell companies, formed in 2012 but not involved in the proposed Tribune transaction.
“For years (before 2012), Fox Television Stations’ WUTB Baltimore gave Fox considerable leverage in its sometime contentious affiliation negotiations with Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“If Sinclair ever got out of line, Fox could threaten to yank its affiliation from Sinclair’s flagship station WBFF Baltimore and move it to WUTB.
“But last May, Fox relinquished that leverage when it extended its affiliation with WBFF and 18 other Sinclair stations for five years starting Jan. 1, 2013, and granted Sinclair an option to buy WUTB.
“Sinclair is now exercising that option by assigning it to a third party, Deerfield LLC.
“According to an FCC filing seeking approval of the deal, Deerfield is buying WUTB and allowing Sinclair to run the MNT affiliate through joint sales and shared services agreements.
“The deal gives Sinclair a virtual triopoly in Baltimore where it also operates CW affiliate WNUV, which is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, Sinclair’s longtime duopoly partner that is controlled by trusts for the children of Sinclair’s controlling shareholders.”
But Sinclair and Deerfield were already in cahoots.
“to buy six television stations from Newport Television LLC for $412.5 million and agreed to buy Bay Television Inc. for $40 million. … Sinclair also agreed to sell the license assets of its San Antonio station KMYS and its WSTR station in Cincinnati to Deerfield Media Inc. Sinclair will also assign Deerfield the right to buy the license assets of WPMI and WJTC in the Mobile/Pensacola market, after which Sinclair will provide sales and other non-programming services to each of these four stations under shared services and joint sales agreements.”
“Sinclair Broadcast is getting six stations in five markets for $412.5 million:
— Cincinnati (DMA 35) — WKRC (CBS)
— San Antonio, Texas (DMA 36) — WOAI (NBC)
— Harrisburg-Lancaster (DMA 41) — WHP (CBS)
— Mobile, Ala.-Pensacola, Fla. (DMA 60) — WPMI (NBC) and WJTC (Ind.)
— Wichita, Kan. (DMA 67) — KSAS (Fox)
“Sinclair is also acquiring Newport’s rights to operate third-party duopoly stations in Harrisburg, Pa. (CW affiliate WLYH), and Wichita, Kan. (MNT affiliate KMTW). Those rights include options to buy the stations. …
“While Sinclair was buying, it was also selling.
“It said it would spin off its CW affiliate in San Antonio (KMYS) and its MNT affiliate in Cincinnati (WSTR) to Deerfield Media Inc., presumably to comply with the FCC ownership limits. In the deal, Deerfield also picks up an option to buy two of the stations it is acquiring from Newport, WPMI-WJTC Mobile, Ala.-Pensacola, Fla.
“Sinclair said it intends to ‘provide sales and other non-programming services to each of these four stations pursuant to shared services and joint sales agreements.’
“In yet another deal, Sinclair said it is buying WTTA Tampa-St. Petersburg from Bay Television Inc. for $40 million. Since 1998, Sinclair has operated WTTA pursuant to a local marketing agreement.”
And that was the start of the Deerfield connection!
Even more telling is that Deerfield’s WUTV moved from Channel 24 (24.1) to 45.2, which is a subchannel of Sinclair’s WBFF! The website doesn’t tell why. It just explains to viewers watching over the air with an antenna how to rescan, but the reason is really the FCC’s recent spectrum auction.
BACK TO OUR STORY: So for those of you in Baltimore, do you need to reach the newsroom, are you looking for a job (Would they hire me for my investigative work?), or interested in inspecting the FCC public file of any of the three stations? All the information is the same, from address to phone numbers, and we already established three stations in one city are not allowed!
“its broadcast ownership rules every four years. …
“This is one of the reasons why my company, Howard Stirk Holdings, LLC (HSH), has sued the FCC. As an African American licensee of two television stations, I believe that by refusing to complete its 2010 quadrennial review, the FCC has unlawfully withheld taking an action required by Congress and the law, and thus is arbitrarily and capriciously retaining burdensome regulations that are no longer in the public interest.”
Williams was angry the FCC “adopted a new rule restricting joint sales agreements (JSAs) between television broadcasters in the same market.”
He claimed, “It effectively slams the door shut on an important gateway to enhancing localism, viewpoint diversity, and opportunities in broadcast television ownership by minorities and underrepresented groups.”
But there’s more.
“Armstrong Williams talked about the impact of a March 31, 2014, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that television station owners cannot control more than one station in the same local market via the use of joint sales agreements and shared services agreements, often known as “sidecar” deals. Mr. Armstrong, who owns two TV stations through a sidecar agreement with Sinclair Broadcasting, argued that the ruling could cause minority owners, and small station owners more generally, to be forced out of existence.”
“The FCC, backed by the Obama administration Justice Department, argues that broadcasters have used the shared-service, or “sidecar,” arrangements to circumvent long-standing rules against owning multiple television stations in a single market, allowing them to raise ad prices and weaken market competition.”
Williams and his supporters suggest a more partisan motive: his conservative views.
In fact, it seems every article in HSH’s News section mentions Sinclair or those joint sales agreements designed to get by without abiding by the FCC’s ownership rules!
In other words, he was a great partner for Sinclair since he’s a minority (but without the views of most other minorities) and they’re both making money by using each other!
Howard Stirk Holdings’ website’s Content Creation page calls it “a leading broadcast television company” but have you heard of it before starting this article? The page doesn’t say how many TV stations it owns or operates on its own. Even the page to search job openings offers no links (except the top navigation which doesn’t say much), and that includes its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Then I went to Wikipedia and read Williams helped Sinclair buy Barrington Broadcasting in late 2013, so he got stations in Flint, MI, and Myrtle Beach, SC, but they remain operated by Sinclair. They’re actually his only stations run by Sinclair and remember, at the time, his company was accused of “acting as a ‘sidecar’ of Sinclair to skirt FCC ownership rules.”
But that was then.
A year later, he actually, really bought three stations from Sinclair: one in Charleston and two in Alabama.
“Howard Stirk Holdings, run by Armstrong Williams, has agreed to acquire WCIV Charleston for $50,000. Sinclair picked up WCIV, an ABC affiliate, when it acquired Allbritton. While Howard Stirk is acquiring the license, among other assets, it and Sinclair will share some aspects related to the station, and Sinclair will provide services.
“‘We’ll continue some of the wonderful business relationships we have with them,’ said Armstrong Williams, principal at Howard Stirk Holdings.”
WCIV’s services came up because of a tangled web of local marketing agreements. There were ownership conflicts over licenses and other assets of three stations.
Sinclair owned MyNetworkTV affiliate WMMP-36 for years. Then, in 2001, it bought and spun off Fox affiliate WTAT-24 to Glencairn (to become Cunningham) and crafted a local marketing agreement between the two stations. That got Sinclair fined Sinclair $40,000 for illegally controlling a duopoly.
But in 2013, Allbritton sold its entire television group, including ABC affiliate WCIV-4, to Sinclair, which intended to sell WMMP’s license but still control it. Thus, three stations!
Unfortunately for Sinclair, WMMP had that local marketing agreement with WTAT. So Sinclair decided to cut ties from WTAT, keep the more established WCIV and sell WMMP.
But Sinclair told the FCC it couldn’t find a buyer for WMMP, so it would shut down WCIV and keep WMMP because its facilities were better — but move WCIV’s affiliation and all its programming to WMMP. Then, WMMP’s programming including MyNetworkTV would move to a subchannel.
Instead, Sinclair filed to have WCIV’s license sold to HSH to avoid shutting it down. Thus, the low price of $50,000. Then, the two stations swapped licenses, Sinclair let Williams’ WCIV share studio space at WMMP’s facilities and Williams explained he hoped to “continue some of the wonderful business relationships we have with [Sinclair]” through the deal — but operated independently from Sinclair.
“Howard Stirk Holdings has agreed to acquire KVMY, the Las Vegas MyNetworkTV affiliate, for $150,000. Armstrong Williams is the principal at Howard Stirk, which is closely aligned with Sinclair. The price reflects $25,000 for the equity assets, including the FCC license, and $125,000 for the transmission assets.
“According to the following, Howard Stirk ‘acknowledges that it is not buying the Business of KVMY-TV as a going concern.’” (There was a call letter and affiliation change, but Howard Stirk Holdings runs several digital subchannel networks on the signal.)
“In September, Sinclair agreed to acquire NBC affiliate KSNV Las Vegas for $120 million. It also owns CW outlet KVCW.
“Last year, Howard Stirk Holdings acquired the license and other assets to WCIV Charleston from Sinclair for $50,000.”
So they’ve been in business several times, and it may not be over.
Some more about Williams: In 2004, the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law on his nationally syndicated TV show and urge other black journalists to do the same. USA Today reported the campaign was part of an effort to build support among black families and Williams was “to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts” and interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show. Williams said he understood critics could find the arrangement unethical, but “I wanted to do it because it’s something I believe in.”
Two years ago, The Washington Post reported Williams settled a sexual harassment and retaliation suit filed by a former salesman at a DC Jos. A. Bank. Court records reportedly showed the complaint alleged Williams had sought sexual favors after befriending and mentoring the other man. That man did get jobs at the Washington Times and then at a Howard Stirk Holdings TV station, but he lost that job.
It wasn’t Williams’ first such situation.
In 1997, Williams’ former personal trainer-turned-producer sued him, contending he “repeatedly kissed and fondled him for almost two years,” before being fired. Williams claimed he was fired for incompetence. That case was also settled.
Bottom line: As of now, Howard Stirk Holdings owns seven stations. Two are in the same Anniston-Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, Ala., market, and Williams’ first two are still run by Sinclair. Now, after other purchases, he’s expecting to buy three more if the Sinclair-Tribune merger happens.
Then there’s Standard Media Group.I hadn’t heard of them either. Its website says Standard General was founded in 2007 and is pretty much an investment advisor, but getting into the broadcasting business. We’ll see how long that lasts. Investment firms are more likely to sell than others with broadcasting in their blood, especially ones who invest in their communities.
Now, if the deal goes through, it’ll fulfill its “goal of swiftly building a substantial broadcast television group with a strong and diverse voice” that includes four state capitals.
The stations are Fox affiliates except where noted: Oklahoma City, Grand Rapids, York PA, Greensboro NC (ABC), Richmond, Sinclair’s role in a Wilkes Barre Fox-CW-MyNetworkTV triopoly, and Des Moines.
You may have noticed Meredith Corp. on the list of buyers. TVSpy noted Meredith “has signed a deal to acquire KPLR (CW) from Tribune for $65 million, pairing it with KMOV (CBS) which Meredith has owned since 2013. … Sinclair already owns KDNL (ABC) and will also own KTVI (FOX) in the market.” Great for owners’ synergies. Bad for the number of independent voices in such a big city. Which do you care more about?
Of the other big city stations, Tribune’s legendary WGN-TV9 is supposed to go to WGN TV LLC but that’s really code for Steven Fader, a Maryland auto dealer and business associate to Sinclair chairman David Smith, for a mere $60 million. Sinclair would also have an option to buy WGN-TV outright within eight years and you know it’s counting on the FCC to relax its ownership rules even more within that time frame!
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which for months has denied any interest in challenging Fox News while awaiting approval of a merger with Tribune Co., is gearing up to do just that https://t.co/HF2hpT7j05pic.twitter.com/kCE7iUCa4J
“Sinclair Broadcast Group, which for months has denied any interest in challenging Fox News while awaiting approval of a merger with Tribune Co., is gearing up to do just that.”
“Even though Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley has said a 24-hour national news network is not in the works, his boss (David) Smith seems to like the idea of a few hours of prime time opinion programming to challenge Fox News.”
Fox News is carried in more than 90 million homes, compared to 80 million for WGN America which Sinclair would own if regulators approve, and 55 million for the Tennis Channel which Sinclair already owns.
If your cable or satellite company doesn’t offer either of those last two, then expect it to get a call when any deal with Sinclair is about to expire.
Politico quotes “a person familiar” saying “Smith has been holding meetings with potential future employees, including former Fox News staff members, and laying out a vision for an evening block of opinion and news programming that would compete with Fox’s top-rated lineup.”
So, the discussions are over “a block of at least three hours, but also potentially up to six. Smith is settled, though, on basing his new operation in Washington, D.C.” That’s because the company already owns local station WJLA-7, where it produces some of its national content.
Wikipedia
One apparent Sinclair target is former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who left the network in Sept., 2016, and then had a short stint at MSNBC before signing on with Voice of America. Van Susteren wrote in an email she has spoken with Smith.
“If the Sinclair deal happens, I might talk to him further. … but it would have to be something that would not take me from VOA,” Van Susteren said.
“Other potential hires are former Fox anchor Eric Bolling and reporter James Rosen,” who both left Fox under sexual harassment allegations. Neither admitted whether they met with Smith or other Sinclair executives.
Eric Bolling, via Twitter
James Rosen, via Twitter
Bill O’Reilly, via FoxNews.com
Talks with former Fox host Bill O’Reilly reportedly fell apart.
The slant of a national news block hasn’t been decided. We know where Sinclair stands, politically, but TVNewser notes, “There are already national challengers from the right, including Newsmax TV and OAN.”
And in the nation’s largest market, Tribune’s WPIX-11 is now off the market. It was supposed to go to Cunningham for a mere $15 million. That’s pennies on the dollar, and it would’ve been run by Sinclair. Now, it’ll just go to Sinclair so it’s not on the list.
But what about those TBDs (to be determined)? They are all owned by Tribune: the Fox affiliates in San Diego, Seattle/Tacoma, Cleveland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City and Denver, and the CW affiliate in Miami/Fort Lauderdale.
And you may have noticed Rupert Murdoch’s Fox conglomerate was not listed as one of the buyers, but that’s sure to change.
Jessell of TVNewsCheck was more direct, saying all Sinclair
“has to do now is wrap up its negotiations with Fox. I don’t know what’s delaying that deal, except that neither Fox nor Sinclair is famous for making concessions. Once Sinclair does that, it can finalize its application and the FCC can complete it long-stalled review.”
Those greedy bastards are going to end up screwing everything up for themselves (which I’d love to see happen), and you’ve only read about half of the plans, so far!
First, Fox actually used to own the Cleveland, Salt Lake City and Denver stations but sold them to a company called Local TV which sold itself to Tribune. So much for Fox — selling stations and then buying them back later — caring about communities. IMHO, that company can’t make a case for a second chance at ownership.
But now, 21st Century Fox plans to sell off most of its assets like its studio, cable networks and regional sports networks to Disney – keeping just its Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, its FS1/FS2 cable sports channels, adding to its TV stations, and its network, which will focus on live events, especially NFL Football. The new, smaller company is being referred to as New Fox.
That’s the reason Fox has tried to own stations in cities that have NFC conference football teams since it got the rights to most of their away games in 1994 – and even trade or sell other stations for them – despite the fact a regular season of 16 games could mean the home audience would see its team play about 12 games a year on its local Fox station, unless the team makes the playoffs.
Fox even got its hands on Cox’s KTVU in San Francisco (with an NFC team, the 49ers, and the AFC Oakland Raiders across the bay will now be moving to Las Vegas in 2020) and give Cox its own stations in Boston (the New England Patriots are AFC) and Memphis (no NFL team).
What has changed is Fox bought the rights to Thursday Night Football, which should split games between NFC and AFC teams. That means Fox has become more interested in AFC team cities, even though there’s no pattern as to which teams play on Thursdays.
Football teams have moved, but the cities Fox wants are Seattle (especially because it’s NFC), and Cleveland, Denver and Miami (because they have AFC teams). San Diego and St. Louis no longer have teams, so Fox isn’t interested in Tribune’s Fox affiliates in those cities.
Seattle, Cleveland and Denver should be easy. The stations are already Fox affiliates so prime-time programming and the amount of news shouldn’t change. And Fox has leverage because it can threaten to take away its affiliation from those stations, lowering their value, if they’re sold to another company.
Remember what Fox did in Charlotte? It dropped a good affiliate, WCCB-Channel 18, because it wanted to own a station where the NFC Carolina Panthers play. Instead, it bought a nothing station, WJZY-Channel 46, and started it from scratch. And it had to do that a second time when it tried to be too different and less traditional the first time! (And, for disclosure: It got a great new news director who is a former colleague.) Remember, Charlotte pretty much sits on the North Carolina-South Carolina line. Old timers are pretty traditional. Was the move worth it for Fox?
Miami is a different story. Fox has a very good affiliate, WSVN-7, owned by Ed Ansin’s Sunbeam Television. (Disclosure: I got my start in journalism there.) It gives Fox great coverage of breaking news in South Florida. Several people at Fox News Channel used to work there. The ratings are great. So what’s the problem?
The Miami Dolphins play there, and as an AFC team, they show up on Fox on a few Sundays and may now also be seen on Fox on Thursdays.
But the station that’s available is Tribune’s WSFL-39, a CW affiliate without a news department despite a few morning attempts. WSVN owner Ansin has shown he’ll probably take the station to his grave, with or without any affiliation, so there’s no realistic possibility there.
Should Fox dump WSVN and start from scratch with WSFL? Would it be worth the effort?
Unlike Charlotte, WSVN is a #1 station. And Miami is a very different place. There’s big news regularly and the two main Spanish stations do better than most of the English! People who aren’t bilingual can’t watch all the available stations, which really limits its size, making it actually smaller than the 16th largest market. We’ll have to see who wants WSFL, since a Sinclair-Tribune merger can’t include it due to FCC ownership rules.
One thing I’d say for sure is that WSFL loses its CW affiliation because CBS and Warner Brothers (Time Warner) own the network, and CBS doesn’t only own WFOR-4 (CBS station) and but also WBFS-33 (MyNetworkTV affiliate) and the CW does better.
Staying with this possibility, WSFL could become the new MyNetworkTV affiliate, and MyNetworkTV is owned by Fox.
It’s not so unusual for a network to own stations but not air the network on them.
Let’s take CBS, for example. It owns independents in New York (WLNY-55) and Los Angeles (KCAL-9). In Dallas, WTXA-21 is also independent.
In Miami, WBFS ended up with MyNetworkTV to please Tribune since CBS got the CW in so many other cities when the WB and UPN combined. It’s similar in Boston where WSBK-38 airs MyNetworkTV, but that’s expected to change since Sunbeam’s WLVI-56, which used to be owned by Tribune, airs the CW.
Single CBS-owned stations in Atlanta, Seattle and Tampa air the CW while affiliates owned by other companies air CBS programming.
And in Indianapolis, CBS’ WBXI-47 airs Decades, while the actual CBS affiliation changed from one outside company to another. CBS dumped a strong WISH-8 and went to half of Tribune’s duopoly, independent WTTV-4, over a disagreement with the former Media General.
A last possibility if Fox is determined to buy a Miami station is ABC affiliate WPLG-10. That station, stable under Post-Newsweek (now Graham Media) for decades, was sold to Berkshire Hathaway as its only broadcast property. We’ve talked about synergies (BH, as an “only child,” has none) and know Warren Buffett wants to turn a profit, so we can imagine Fox dumping WSVN for WPLG, but can’t assume ABC will take its affiliation to WSVN. Remember how CBS didn’t do that in 1989? But that’s highly unlikely.
Deadline noted, “For decades, the maximum reach by one single owner has been 39 percent, but the Federal Communications Commission has been re-evaluating the cap.”
More specifically, rather than gutting rules like a good conservative would ordinarily do, the FCC under Pai brought the UHF discount is back. That rule started because it used to matter whether a local TV station was VHF or UHF, due to antennas and how old TV sets were not made for the UHF band. So the FCC decided the amount towards a company’s ownership cap should only be half for those stations, compared to VHF stations. It was ended because today’s technology means it doesn’t matter anymore.
Regarding the UHF discount’s revival, The New York Times wrote, “A few weeks later, Sinclair Broadcasting announced a blockbuster $3.9 billion deal to buy Tribune Media — a deal those new rules made possible.” (Oh, and led to Pai’s investigation. But luckily, Harry Jessell of TVNewsCheckwrote critics of station consolidation say it “now serves only to allow groups to circumvent the intent of Congress, which was to limit groups to 39%” and they’ve “challenged the perpetuation of the UHF discount in court (D.C. Appeals Court), and seem to have made some headway in their oral arguments.”)
“Sinclair’s top lobbyist, a former F.C.C. official, also communicated frequently with former agency colleagues and pushed for the relaxation of media ownership rules. And language the lobbyist used about loosening rules has tracked closely to analysis and language used by Mr. Pai in speeches favoring such changes.”
An FCC spokesman representing Mr. Pai countered the allegations of favoritism were “baseless,” and
“For many years, Chairman Pai has called on the F.C.C. to update its media ownership regulations. … The chairman is sticking to his long-held views, and given the strong case for modernizing these rules, it’s not surprising that those who disagree with him would prefer to do whatever they can to distract from the merits of his proposals.”
However, “Pai said he would factor the potential court decision into the FCC’s decisionmaking.”
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) told Pai the spin-off of WGN-TV Chicago to the owner of a car dealership owned by Sinclair’s executive chair, “stretches the definition of divestiture under the plan to something unrecognizable” and the planned divestitures make a mockery of FCC rules.
Pai denied Rep. Quigley’s request to hold off on a decision on Sinclair until the UHF discount court decision, saying that was a case of clashing hypotheticals — both what the court would do with the discount and what the FCC would do with the proposed merger.
“Sinclair is telling the FCC that its coverage after spinoffs from its merger with Tribune will be just 58.7%. But that’s for regulatory purposes. (In other words, with the revived UHF discount that only counts channels 14 and up as half the audience of the market.) In the real world, where it matters, Sinclair’s national reach will be 66.3% — a full two-thirds of TV homes.”
But he said Sinclair is telling the FCC
“the coverage of the group will be just 58.7% and, with the UHF discount, below the statutory 39% cap. But those percentages are for regulatory consumption, not the real world.”
So there’s a 7.6-point disparity, the difference between 58.7% and 66.3%. How’d that happen? And don’t forget about the part, “with the UHF discount, below the statutory 39% cap.”
Jessell explained Sinclair
“is claiming 58% because it is not counting stations in three big markets — WGN Chicago, KDAF Dallas, KIAH Houston — that it is spinning off to closely affiliated companies. Without those markets and the discount in effect, Sinclair’s reach will be just 37.39%, safely below the 39% cap.”
Plus, with Dallas and Houston (but not Chicago), “Sinclair has put additional distance between itself and Cunningham” but will “have an option to buy the stations should the FCC ever ease the rules to allow it.”
So this is Jessell’s bottom line:
“So, again, for regulatory purposes, Sinclair’s reach will be 58.7% without the discount and 37.39% with it.
“But I don’t think that is reality. Those are not the numbers that Sinclair will be showing national advertisers, MVPDs, vendors and others with which it does business.
“In the real world, Sinclair will have a lot of control over Chicago and some control over Dallas and Houston, and its effective national reach will be 66.3%. (For the record, its reach with the UHF discount will be 41.1%, two points over the cap, but that will not matter because regulators will not be counting the three markets.)”
Then Jessell questioned Fox’s counting, assuming it’ll buy Miami, Cleveland, Sacramento as well as Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City and possibly San Diego.
He calculated Fox reaches 36.8% of homes, but just 24.3% with the UHF discount. If it buys up all seven stations, its reach will grow to 45.9% but, well below the cap at just 30.4% with the discount.
But where will Fox find the money to buy the stations it wants? That’s another story!
Last year, Disney made a $52.4 billion offer to buy most of Fox, including its stake in the European pay TV company Sky.
But The Hollywood Reporter said on Wednesday, “Back in 2004, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts bid $54 billion to acquire The Walt Disney Co.” At the time, Comcast hadn’t bought NBCUniversal but Disney did own ABC. It was a 22 percent more than Disney was worth then, but former CEO Michael Eisner said no anyway.
Now, even though NBCUniversal has performed well, some say Roberts wants revenge by offering the same $52.4 billion as Disney for most of 21st Century Fox.
There could also be a bidding war overseas. Sky had agreed to let Fox, a 39 percent shareholder, buy the portion it doesn’t already own – and that Disney agreed to buy from Fox in December. Comcast could ruin those companies’ plans.
Then, in January, a UK regulator advised the government to block Fox’s bid to buy the remaining 61 percent of Sky because it would give one family – the Murdochs – too much control over media in Britain.
So Murdoch had preferred Disney as the buyer, afraid the Comcast offer came with more regulatory risks. Then, Disney offered to buy Sky News just to help Murdoch buy full control of Sky News’ parent company, the broadcaster Sky. But CNN reported Fox made a new pitch to win approval for Sky by selling Sky News to Disney, and another proposal that would’ve legally separated Sky News from the rest of Sky to ensure its editorial independence.
Then, last month, The Hollywood Reporter reported, “The U.K. Takeover Panel … ruled that Walt Disney must make a mandatory offer to buy full 100 percent control of Sky if and when it completes its planned acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox, including Fox’s stake in Sky.”
Then, according to Deadline, “Disney will have 28 days from the completion of its $66 billion acquisition of Fox to make a $15 offer for all the shares of Sky if Fox’s own $15.7 billion takeover of Sky is not complete by then, or if Comcast’s rival offer has not been accepted. It also (decided) this would not be required if another third party has acquired 50 percent of Sky by then.”
But last week Comcast made its $31 billion bid for Sky official and that’s 16 percent higher. Deadline reported that caused Sky directors to withdraw their recommendation of a Fox takeover bid.
This all comes along with many mergers and acquisitions across the industry.
In fact, a decision on this may not come until a judge determines whether to let AT&T buy Time Warner. The Justice Department has been fighting against it with an antitrust case. Closing arguments just finished and a decision is expected June 12.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, last week Fox said it’s “considering its options” on Sky and is believed to be prepping a sweetened bid. But Comcast is known for (usually) getting what it wants.
But back to Sinclair, which hasn’t been doing itself any favors.
So much for localism at a company that already owns or operates an astounding 193 TV stations, in 89 cities, covering a huge part of the American population. (You’ve read the different takes on the numbers.)
This is criticism from The New York Times…
from the PBS NewsHour…
from USA Today…
and even Russia Today…
and Al Jazeera English.
But Sinclair fought back against CNN’s criticism (and banned comments from YouTube!):
FTVLive’s Scott Jones showed a memo from Portland, OR – I’m sure one of many around the country – ordering employees not to complain.
Notice KyAnn’s name. KyAnn Lewis was the news director until Scott reported today she was fired. No details why, especially in the middle of the May ratings period.
“many TV local news stations are focusing more on national politics and have taken a rightward slant over the past year. And that move is stemming from ownership of the stations, not the demands of a local audience.”
Poynter noted, “The study comes just as many are raising concerns about a coordinated effort by one major owner of TV stations that forces its anchors to record a segment about ‘the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.’” And you know who that is.
The researchers examined 7.5 million transcript segments from 743 local news stations and saw huge differences between other stations, and outlets owned by the nation’s largest local broadcasting chain, Sinclair Broadcast Group.
“The authors found Sinclair stations, on average, carried about a third less local politics coverage and a quarter more national politics … (including) commentaries the stations are forced to run by former Trump official Boris Epshteyn.”
Researchers warned,
“The ‘slant scores,’ based on repetition of ideologically linked phrases, increased by about one standard deviation after acquisition by Sinclair as compared to other stations in the same markets. … And this programming could spur nationalistic and polarizing movements, ‘be expected to reduce viewers’ knowledge of the activities of local officials’ — and hurt accountability, especially “given the decline of local print media.”
So while everything plays out, from fighting the UHF discount in court, to negotiating spinning off stations, to Fox getting money to buy stations (while keeping its Sinclair affiliates), to counting how long the deal has taken (since May, 2017), to counting how long the steps still to be taken will last, the two companies’ bosses have no public complaints or worries.
Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley:
“After a very robust divestiture process, with strong interest from many parties, we have achieved healthy multiples on the stations we are divesting. …While we continue to believe that we had a strong and supportable rationale for not having to divest stations, we are happy to announce this significant step forward in our plan to create a leading broadcast platform with local focus and national reach. The combined company will continue to advance industry technology, including the Next Generation Broadcast Platform, and to benefit from significant revenue and expense synergies.”
Tribune CEO Peter Kern to employees:
“There is no reason to assume that this change won’t be for the better. … So try to focus, as you have always done, on the business at hand—delivering outstanding local journalism and great content for our audiences and communities, collaborating with your colleagues, and driving results for our customers.”
Enough of big media controlling everything from corporate headquarters! This is what happens when it does. Locals should be in charge of local programming, following the rules of the FCC for using OUR public airwaves!
OK, since you read everything, I’ll give you John Oliver here!
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This is my 90th blog post and like most journalists, I identify mistakes all over and somehow — often through publicity — try to get them fixed. But not on this milestone. There’s too much good to write about.
I also want to point out the page CohenConnect Headlines Sitemap has a list of all the blog posts I’ve written and published over the past 3+ years, in chronological order. Nobody — early readers nor myself — can remember everything I’ve done and there hadn’t been a place to look. The right side of what you’re reading (or bottom on mobile) just show the past 10 and the most popular. A regular “sitemap” of category words is well below, on the bottom of the right side (or the bottom on mobile). But the “search” box also works very well, contains both categories and tags, and maybe more.
So staying positive, let’s honor some heroes with this post. These days, there are too few and far between. I remember years ago, while working at WCAU in Philadelphia, Larry Mendte saying on the air with such certainty, “Heroes never admit they are,” or something to that effect.
I’ll start by setting something straight. Two survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Florida posed for a picture with the caption Prom 2018, but they won’t be going together.
That’s despite what Pink News in the UK reported Tuesday, to the disappointment of Cameron Kasky and David Hogg’s many fans.
The publication describes Kasky “lovingly hugging Hogg, who contrasts Kasky’s sloppy smile with a stair which pierces your soul.”
Monday, Kasky posted the picture on Twitter. Click here for that original article, which may not be true, but contained a lot of positive reaction from hopeful supporters.
“Rebecca Boldrick, Hogg’s mother, told TMZ.com that Hogg has another date for the prom.
“Jeff Kasky, Cameron’s dad, told TMZ, ‘Cameron and David love each other very much, as do the 20 or so other kids that are part of their group, but not in a romantic type of way.’”
Then, Cameron’s mother, who has been a friend for about 40 years, posted a picture of the two of them titled “My date” Tuesday night. I’m not naming her because she has not put her name out in the public.
You watched Kasky dress down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in a CNN town hall for refusing to refuse contributions from the National Rifle Association. In fact, what it took for Cameron to try to get a simple “yes” or “no” answer to his question from a sitting U.S. senator and former presidential candidate from his own state was amazing!
Fellow survivor Hogg also became a gun control advocate and activist against gun violence, but he has been more controversial. New to Florida — his family moved from L.A. at the start of high school — he chose to attend Stoneman Douglas because of its TV production classes.
Hogg may be most famous for what The Washington Post called his “dust-up with Fox News host Laura Ingraham,” who used this tweet to “make fun of the teen’s public lament about being rejected by colleges to which he had applied.”
David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY
(It really won’t matter because he plans to take next year off after high school to campaign in the midterm elections.)
The next day, Ingraham apologized to Hogg but not anybody else she’d put down over the years, including LeBron James, and by then it was too late.
Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David…(1/2)
… immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how "poised" he was given the tragedy. As always, he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion. WATCH: https://t.co/5wcd00wWpd (2/2)
So, knowing how TV and news are businesses that revolve around money (Where have you heard that multiple times before?), he urged his 700,000+ Twitter followers to boycott Ingraham’s advertisers.
Pick a number 1-12 contact the company next to that #
The Washington Post noted, Hogg called the apology an insincere “effort just to save your advertisers.”
Then, “In a matter of days, Ingraham lost more than a dozen advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Ruby Tuesday and Miracle-Ear.”
The following message was issued earlier today to employees of Liberty Mutual Insurance by David Long, Chairman and CEO: pic.twitter.com/FVyIBZrnC0
“It’s disturbing to know that somebody can bully so many people and just get away with it, especially to the level that she did. … No matter who somebody is, no matter how big or powerful they may seem, a bully is a bully, and it’s important that you stand up to them.”
He even went as far as to compare the tweet and Ingraham’s criticism of him, saying they “were in line with bullying statements she had made about others: a conflict with gays while she was at Dartmouth in 1984 and, recently, responding to LeBron James’s political statements by saying that the NBA star should ‘shut up and dribble.’”
“I’m glad to see corporate America standing with me and the other students of Parkland and everybody else. Because when we work together, we can accomplish anything.”
Then Ingraham took a week off. Fox claimed the vacation had been planned.
Hogg, now 18, has already made political change.
When Leslie Gibson, who was running unopposed for the Maine House of Representatives, described fellow Parkland student Emma González as a “skinhead lesbian,” Hogg called for somebody to challenge the Republican. He got not one but two other candidates, and Gibson dropped out of the race in response to public reaction critical of his comments.
“The Zionist Organization of America is calling on Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg to change the name of his forthcoming book, as it believes that the title shows ‘shocking insensitivity to Holocaust survivors.’
“Random House publishers announced Thursday that David and his sister Lauren had penned a deal with the publishing house to release a book, #NEVERAGAIN: A New Generation Draws the Line, June 5.”
Lauren is a freshman survivor.
Today @lauren_hoggs and I are announcing our book #NeverAgain that tells the story of the foundation of this movement for those we lost. Lauren and I will be using the money made from the book to help heal the community. #NeverAgain out June 5th https://t.co/Vh2gWVWNGq
The Blaze also reports the book is being described as
“a statement of generational purpose, and a moving portrait of the birth of a new movement.”
“In times of struggle and tragedy, we can come together in love and compassion for each other,” David told Entertainment Weekly. “We can see each other not as political symbols, but as human beings. And then, of course, there will be times when we simply must fight for what is right.”
Sister Lauren added, “It’s amazing to see that so much love can come from so much loss. But from our loss, our generation will create positive change.”
But I’ve had an issue with using the phrase “never again” since it has always referred to one event: the murders of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Nazis’ organized extermination campaign during World War II. Personally, I think the book title should be changed, and don’t think the phrase should be used in any other matter, but don’t doubt Hogg’s sincerity about the gun issue.
The ZOA said in part,
“By co-opting ‘Never Again’ title for his book opposing guns, David Hogg trivializes the holocaust” and the Hoggs’ book title “offends Holocaust survivors, Jews, and all human rights-loving people.”
Those are sections the Glenn Beck-founded network chose to highlight, due to its own agenda.
“This statement should not be construed as in any way lessening our shock, outrage and pain regarding the Parkland school shooting. ZOA completely sympathizes with the loving, bereft families and all the infinitely precious victims of the Parkland shooting, all other school shootings, and all other shootings. All affected by these tragedies are in our hearts and prayers. …
“It is an expression that should never be politicized or co-opted by anyone, regardless of political affiliation. …
“The Holocaust was unique and unprecedented, in that: it involved a ‘final solution’ designed to murder every single Jewish man, woman and child; Jews were the only people killed for the ‘crime’ of existing; the murder of Jews was an ‘end in itself’ rather than a means to some other goal; and the people who carried out the ‘Final Solution’ were primarily average citizens ‘just doing a job.’ None of the other terrible slaughters and genocides this world has witnessed share all these characteristics.”
We’ll see what happens.
A third of the 20 founding members of the group Never Again MSD is activist Emma González, who has also had to deal with criticism of her bisexual orientation, hairstyle and more, including this.
The Washington Post reported,
“A doctored animation of González tearing the U.S. Constitution in half circulated on social media during the rally, after it was lifted from a Teen Vogue story about teenage activists. In the real image, González is ripping apart a gun-range target.”
I guess you could say desperate liars were targeting her because they had nothing better.
Kasky, Hogg and González — along with fellow students Jacqueline Cohen and Alex Wind — even made Time magazine‘s list of the 100 most influential people in the world for becoming prominent activists, organizing protests, and speaking out publicly to demand stricter laws on gun control.
Time wrote in an article, How we chose the 2018 TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people: “Barack Obama, who has said that his greatest frustration as President was the failure of commonsense gun-safety laws, draws inspiration from the Parkland, Fla., teenagers who organized the March for Our Lives: ‘They have the power … to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom.’” Click here for the Time article about the Parkland 5.
Mashable went back further, writing the former president…
Young people have helped lead all our great movements. How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be. We've been waiting for you. And we've got your backs.
I’m in total awe of the extraordinary students in Florida. Like every movement for progress in our history, gun reform will take unyielding courage and endurance. But @barackobama and I believe in you, we’re proud of you, and we’re behind you every step of the way.
“both tweeted support for the Parkland teens following the deadly shooting, and wrote them a handwritten letter in praise of their ‘resilience, resolve and solidarity.’”
Notice the dates on everything. The attack took place on Feb. 14.
Mashable included a typed version of the letter, for those of you having trouble with Mr. Obama’s handwriting, and also a look at celebrities joining in at the March for Our Lives.
Even former NFL placekicker Jay Feely needs a lesson on seriousness, after The Sporting News showed a tweet he posted. It showed a “photo of him holding a gun while standing between his daughter and her prom date” that was intended to be a joke.
Feely should know better. He’s from Florida, grew up there and spent a year with the Miami Dolphins. The next day, he clarified what had happened.
The prom picture I posted was obviously intended to be a joke. My Daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they knew I was joking. I take gun safety seriously (the gun was not loaded and had no clip in) and I did not intend to be insensitive to that important issue
On a more positive note, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports the prom will be an “over-the-top” party with a touching tribute, and students promising the best prom ever, after 17 people were shot to death at their school on Valentine’s Day. Four seniors were killed. So were seven freshman (that will be some prom in three years), plus three other students and two adults.
Eventually, the prom committee wanted to recognize the tragedy that’ll mark their high school memories. There will be a memorial near the entrance to the ballroom. It’ll also include two members of their class who died in 2016 of cystic fibrosis and suicide. The memorial will be surrounded by couches and designated as a quiet place to sit and think.
Inside, the prom will be stopped by 17 seconds of silence.
It also won’t be expensive. The cost: Just $30 per ticket, and $50 for non-seniors. The hotel, DJ, florist, decorator, and other vendors are donating their services for free or at cost, and the hotel is giving families of the senior victims a free weekend of their choice.
Good for all of them!
Marjory Stoneman Douglas survivors, along with high school students from around the country, were not even born 19 years ago during the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo.
(I remember it like yesterday. I had returned from vacation, was working at WCAU, and our news anchor Renee Chenault happened to be from Littleton. She ended up going there to report from her hometown, but being local news, did not get the publicity of Katie Couric for touching the hand of a victim’s father on the Today show.)
There were an estimated 150,000 students protesting on Friday’s anniversary at more than 2,700 walkouts, according to organizers.
The Chicago Tribune, in an Associated Press article published Friday afternoon, said,
“In a new wave of school walkouts, they raised their voices against gun violence. But this time, they were looking to turn outrage into action.”
The students, “turned their attention to upcoming elections as they pressed for tougher gun laws and politicians who will enact them. Scores of rallies turned into voter registration drives. Students took the stage to issue an ultimatum to their lawmakers.”
Activists behind a March 14 protest, a month after Stoneman Douglas, estimated it drew nearly 1 million students.
(I find it interesting The Chicago Tribune used an Associated Press article, while I learned Chicago’s Fox TV station asked the other Fox stations for a story they could post on their website, because they were apparently unable to write one of their own. Were there no rallies anywhere near Chicago? Probably plenty, considering the numbers above! At minimum, I would’ve shown the big one around town and then another in a zip code they wanted to target for ratings. Even chopper video would’ve done the job except for hearing the students tell their reasons for walking out, firsthand. But we know how Fox stations operate with sharing web articles. It seems at this point, they’ve become dependent on their sister-stations rather than even try to do the work. I love how so many of today’s young people are the opposite of this kind of corporate laziness!)
The Washington Post noted, “Critics have questioned whether … the high school students demanding that the nation’s gun laws be strengthened are mature enough to understand the complex policy positions they have staked out.”
Isn’t this exactly what we want from our young people? To think, investigate and reconsider if necessary? And don’t these particular students who experienced what they did have unique insight on the issue? Yet some people feel the need to criticize them. Maybe it’s because they need to be heard. Maybe because these grown-ups really have not grown up and are jealous. Or maybe because “the kids are alright” and and it simply bothers them because they have issues of their own.
How much are they bothered?
Click here for “Ted Nugent says Parkland students ‘have no soul,’ calls them ‘mushy-brained children’” (The Washington Post, March 31, 2018).
Nugent, perhaps the NRA’s most outspoken board member, told a San Antonio radio station, “These poor children, I’m afraid to say, but the evidence is irrefutable. They have no soul,” after discussing with the host their belief the teenagers have been manipulated by left-wing ideologues.
“The lies from these poor, mushy-brained children who have been fed lies and parrot lies,” Nugent said. “I really feel sorry for them. It’s not only ignorant, dangerous and stupid — it’s soulless. To attack the good, law-abiding families of America when well-known, predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless.”
Click here for “How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet” (The Washington Post, March 26, 2018).
If ardent NRA supporters don’t lose now, or in this year’s midterms, or even the 2020 presidential election, they should absolutely know the demographics of this country are changing. Eventually, they will lose to people who have felt real pain and others of that generation. It’s going to happen, whether they’ll consider themselves martyrs, or if they’re even alive to feel any suffering from their defeat.
Wikipedia
Also a hero: Last week, the pilot of Southwest Airlines flight 1380, Captain Tammie Jo Shults, landed her plane calmly and successfully, on just one engine, here in Philadelphia. She saved 148 lives.
According to The Guardian, “Those present recalled that after the plane had landed, Shults walked through the aisle to talk to them, to see how they were doing.”
Talk about responsibility AND customer service!
Turns out, The Guardian continued,
“Shults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the US Navy and was elite enough to fly an F/A-18 Hornet. She flew training missions as an ‘enemy pilot’ during Operation Desert Storm, as women were then still excluded from combat missions.”
Also not to be forgotten is the heroism of Waffle House diner James Shaw Jr. Early Sunday morning, outside Nashville, he was sitting with a friend at the restaurant counter when police said a gunman wearing nothing but a green jacket opened fire outside.
As CNN reported, “Glass shattered, dust swirled and Shaw said he saw a man lying on the ground.”
Four people were killed.
BREAKING: 3 persons fatally shot & 4 others wounded at the Waffle House, 3571 Murfreesboro Pike. Gunman opened fire @ 3:25 a.m. A patron wrestled away the gunman's rifle. He was nude & fled on foot. He is a white man with short hair. pic.twitter.com/d1qxRxsGNx
“bolted from his seat and slid along the ground to the restroom, he said. But he kept an eye and an ear out for the gunman. And the moment the shooter paused, Shaw decided to ambush him … before more lives were lost.”
He charged at the man with the rifle. They fought. Finally, Shaw said he managed to wrestle the barrel of the rifle from the gunman, tossed it behind the counter and the shooter escaped.
Investigation on going at the Waffle House. Scene being processed by MNPD experts. This is the rifle used by the gunman. pic.twitter.com/lihhRImHQN
“The gun was hot and he was naked but none of that mattered,” Shaw said, with a burn on his hand a wound on his elbow where a bullet grazed it.
He told reporters,
“I figured if I was going to die, he was going to have to work for it. … I was just trying to live.”
This laptop bag, empty except for a handwritten ID card bearing the name Travis Reinking, was found by a citizen near the I-24 Old Hickory Blvd interchange. Unknown whether it was discarded before or after the shooting. Reinking is believed to have been in that area Sat. night. pic.twitter.com/yduQlXvAFE
Travis Jeffrey Reinking, 29, was arrested Monday, after a 34-hour manhunt.
BREAKING: 5 more warrants have now been issued against Travis Reinking charging 4 counts of attempted murder and 1 count of unlawful gun possession in the commission of a violent felony. 1 of the attempted murder victims is hero James Shaw. Reinking's court date is now May 7. pic.twitter.com/YI1NT4qWcf
NBC News pointed out he went from wearing only a green jacket to a green “suicide smock — a padded gown made from heavy-duty polyester that is held together with Velcro strips.”
If you are of a certain age, you remember Schoolhouse Rock! from ABC on Saturday mornings. The jazz musician who was instrumental in that cartoon series died Monday in Mount Bethel, Pa., 92 miles and an hour-and-a-half drive from Philadelphia.
Bob Dorough was 94.
Wikipedia
Simple Wikipedia
Schoolhouse Rock! ran from 1973 to 1985. The cartoons, including “My Hero, Zero” and “Three is a Magic Number,” (the first in the series) were written and performed by Dorough.
His biography says he “entertained and instructed unsuspecting children.”
Schoolhouse Rock! came back for another five years in the 1990s and its 40th anniversary was marked with a DVD edition of the entire five subject series.
Has a Schoolhouse Rock! tune ever helped you on a test? Do you have a favorite? I especially liked how a bill became a law (“I’m Just a Bill”) and “Conjunction Junction.”
Wikipedia
Finally, there’s the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, site of last night’s Sixers playoff game where they eliminated the Miami Heat. Actually, the topic is replacement names, and Wells Fargo is not a very good corporate citizen.
I have always been against companies buying names for stadiums and liked it when NBC Sports, before losing the NFL in 1998, made it a point of not referring to the names of stadiums but just the city, unless there was confusion between different stadiums.
The stadium, where the Flyers played hockey until their season ended earlier this week, is named for Wells Fargo which is a big bank in Philadelphia and many other cities. Before that, it was named Wachovia. Before that, First Union. FU Center had something special to it. And before that, CoreStates. Just shows you how banks take each other over and waste money having to change the names on every branch and piece of real estate, including the ones they sponsor or use to advertise.
Just two years ago, Wells Fargo’s employees recused of secretly opening more than 2 million deposit and credit card accounts to meet their sales targets and receive bonuses. The bank had to pay $185 million to settle those allegations. It also fired about 5,300 employees for doing what may have been their jobs. In that case as well, Wells Fargo did not admit or deny allegations.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo has been the nation’s third largest bank by assets.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
FYI, the late Wilt Chamberlain played for the San Francisco/Philadelphia Warriors and the Philadelphia 76ers, and is widely considered one of the greatest and most dominant players in NBA history. He still holds the single-game scoring record, having scored 100 in one game. It happened March 2, 1962, in Hershey, Pa. against the New York Knicks. The Philadelphia Warriers moved west to San Francisco after that season.
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I’m not writing to take an opinion on the issues of sanctuary cities or illegal immigration, but have to say I’m pleased a gang of Republican-appointed federal judges were willing to rule against a president from their own party.
“A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot withhold public safety grants from cities that don’t cooperate with its immigration enforcement policies, agreeing with a temporary injunction imposed earlier this year by a lower court judge.”
The decision by three judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the administration tried to exceed its authority by establishing a new condition for cities to qualify for public safety money. Instead, Congress earmarked the money without that condition.
“The Attorney General in this case used the sword of federal funding to conscript state and local authorities to aid in federal civil immigration enforcement. … But the power of the purse rests with Congress, which authorized the federal funds at issue and did not impose any immigration enforcement condition on the receipt of such funds.”
Wikimedia Commons
According to Politico, judges here in Philadelphia and also Los Angeles “blocked attempts to add the immigration-related conditions to new federal grants.”
“Sanctuary cities” are those that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents by letting them know when immigrants in the country illegally are about to be released from police detention.
Last July, the Trump team decided cities receiving public safety grants — that can be used to buy public-safety equipment, including police cars — must agree to inform federal agents.
Wikipedia
Then, Chicago and several cities sued, and a lower court judge imposed a temporary injunction on the administration’s requirement.
This afternoon, all three judges agreed, so that nationwide injunction will stay in force. But one judge said the ruling should apply to Chicago only. That detail won’t matter.
“Other jurisdictions that do not want to comply with the Notice and Access conditions were not parties to this suit, and there is no need to protect them in order to protect Chicago. … A nationwide preliminary injunction … should only be issued where it is absolutely necessary, and it is far from absolutely necessary here.”
Wikipedia
A pleased Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel praised the judge who wrote the decision.
“Judge Rovner says in her opinion that Chicago does not interfere with the federal government’s lawful enforcement of immigration laws and pursuit of its civil immigration activities, and presence in such localities will not immunize anyone to the reach of the federal government,” Emanuel said.
But he did mention the fight isn’t over, since the money hasn’t yet come.
Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley disagreed, writing in a statement,
“We will continue to fight to carry out the Department’s commitment to the rule of law, protecting public safety, and keeping criminal aliens off the streets to further perpetrate crimes.”
Several cities established policies to protect immigrants since Trump won the 2016 election.
Thank you San Diego County for defending the rule of law and supporting our lawsuit against California's illegal and unconstitutional 'Sanctuary' policies. California's dangerous policies release violent criminals back into our communities, putting all Americans at risk.
Governor Jerry Brown announced he will deploy “up to 400 National Guard Troops” to do nothing. The crime rate in California is high enough, and the Federal Government will not be paying for Governor Brown’s charade. We need border security and action, not words!
Sanctuary Cities released at least 142 Gang Members across the United States, making it easy for them to commit all forms of violent crimes where none would have existed. We are doing a great job of law enforcement, but things such as this make safety in America difficult!
Politico noted, “Rovner was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, Bauer by President Gerald Ford and Manion by President Ronald Reagan, all Republicans.”
Three cheers to all three, since the judiciary should be separate from politics, just like they ruled the Executive branch should be separate from the Legislative.
These folks did the right thing, at least this time, since I’m not familiar with their other rulings.
ShareRocket numbers came out on Monday. They’re the equivalent of Nielsen ratings for TV shows, but for social media instead. Take them for what they’re worth, along with the thought of companies trying to use social media to make money. The Fox Television Stations Group (which still doesn’t bother to list its stations, as I’ve mentioned here and several other places) is very big on it. Too big. Other things lose out. (See Murdoch, Rupert. Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg knows much better.)
According to ShareRocket, in the first quarter of this year, Philadelphia’s “WTXF (Fox 29) generated more than 7.3 million total Engagements,” meaning the number of times people responded to the station’s, or their employees’ posts — on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — by liking, commenting, etc., during the first quarter.
“The station also benefited from having the No. 1 individual in the market, anchor Alex Holley. Holley generated more than 960,000 Engagements in the quarter across all platforms.”
Doing simple math — 960,000 divided by 7.3 million — Good Day Philadelphia anchor Holley is completely responsible for 13.15 percent of Fox 29’s performance in the quarter, all on her own. This doesn’t count anything the station wrote about her or her stories. These are posts she wrote and published by herself, on her own accounts. Good for her!
On the other hand, that means everybody else at Fox 29, including the group of people paid to write news and social media (way too much social media, if you ask me), only did 86.85 percent of the station’s first quarter performance. As I’ve written before, web producers
“try to find articles from out of the area that will get clicked. What usually happens is that one station — whether it happened in their area or not — writes it and offers to share it with the other stations, which may choose to accept it or not. If they accept it, then they can tease it on social media or not.”
So there’s lots of help Alex doesn’t get.
By the way, ShareRocket reports,
“The market saw a very large increase in Engagement in general from quarter to quarter, likely driven by the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl win. All six stations Share Rocket tracks in the market saw significant bumps in total Engagement, and four of those stations saw increases of +40% or more.”
But Fox 29 wasn’t one of the four stations out of six that saw increases of 40 percent or more. Fox 29 was in the bottom half. It only went up 22 percent from quarter to quarter! In other words, it lagged and underperformed, and its share of the market dropped from 33.48 percent, down to 30.77 percent.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller.”
Along with the longtime Trump ally, the president will also be defended by a couple who run a Florida-based law firm, Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin. Plus everyone else on his legal team. The new three are all former federal prosecutors.
Speaking of former federal prosecutors, Chris Christie hasn’t been New Jersey governor since January but his official portrait is making news because it’s going to “cost a stunning $85,000,” according to the New York Post. (Get your jokes out of the way now. The Post did. Its article’s headline is “Artist gets big, fat paycheck for Chris Christie’s official portrait.”)
Wikipedia
NorthJersey.com reports the $85,000 will be “more than what his three predecessors … paid to have their images hang in commemoration of their political service” — combined!
It priced the portrait “the highest for a governor since Democrat Jim Florio paid $58,000 for his. Christie’s three immediate predecessors — Jon Corzine, Richard Codey and Jim McGreevey, all Democrats — paid a combined $74,500.”
That makes the Christie image cost $10,500 more than Corzine, Codey and McGreevey’s altogether.
There is one difference: Christie did take up two terms. The last New Jersey governor to do that was Christine Whitman ($48,000), who served from 1994 to 2001. Even Florio was a one-termer, serving 1990 to 1994. FYI, his two predecessors were both two-termers, Tom Kean and Brendan Byrne.
The website showed the governors’ official portraits:
“Since he took office, Christie has spoken about the official picture that likely will long outlive him and the many internet memes he’s touched off. And in his public life, Christie had earned a reputation for having a taste for luxury when others paid the bill.”
Then the paper went on to describe those luxuries.
Wikipedia
Who will pay? “A taxpayer-funded transition account of $250,000 that is granted to former governors to pay for staff and office space, as well as services such as the painting,”NorthJersey.com says.
The artist is Australian Paul Newton. The portrait will be oil-on-canvas.
Too bad it won’t hang in the Statehouse when it’s finished by the fall. That’s under a multi-year renovation.
It won’t cost us anything to remember what NorthJersey.com described as
“the picture of him on that beach closed to everyone else, in that chair with his family and friends while the public was shut out of state parks on a holiday weekend during a government shutdown.”
Let’s hope Phil Murphy has a more compact ego!
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“In 2016, it had been 31 years since our last national championship for basketball, and now, just two years later, Villanova is once again the national champion! What a remarkable accomplishment for the players and for Coach (Jay) Wright and his staff, and what a wonderful time to be a Villanovan!”
It was around this time, two years ago, I was waiting for WTXF-Fox 29 to officially hire me. Of course, when you’re dealing with corporations, everything gets in the way.
I got this email from the news director, the day after the game.
Of course, the first line didn’t end with a question mark or exclamation point. Different people are held to different standards.
Of course, he didn’t let me know “either way by Friday,” as he said. Villanova won on Monday, April 4, 2016. You can see he emailed this the next day, April 5. That Friday would’ve been April 8. Instead, I did not find out until Tuesday, April 12.
That same Tuesday, I gave my two weeks at WCYB, leaving there after April 26, and starting at Fox less than a week later, on May 2. I had been given the option of starting May 9 but knew there was a ratings period and wanted to be as much help as possible, as soon as possible. So I quickly got mover and cleaner estimates, and my friend Scott found a temporary place for me to stay. The good folks at WCYB made sure to honor me with a cake. Lots of people involved with my departure and arrival!
I’m sure Fox management appreciated that move I rushed – just like I appreciated the imaginary transportation, hotel and lunch they provided during my interview! (What’s the best emoji for sarcasm that covers everything about them in that last, long sentence?)
My time at Fox was not pleasant because they seemed to care more about nonsense social media that would pull at people’s heartstrings, rather than real, relevant news. They also did not take the 11-page critique they had asked me for into consideration. (Click here to see it.)
They did take my advice to use Facebook more often, but never thanked or acknowledged me in any way. I remember being told during my one face-to-face interview (Feb. 29, 2016) that one Facebook post an hour may be too much! In other words, exactly the opposite. Some people can never be satisfied. Maybe they’re too insecure.
Note: I think I’ve kept every emailed promise, accusation, etc. Some people won’t look very good if-when it all comes out. That’ll be up to our representatives. Same thing when all the witnesses start talking about their experiences. I left that place in the middle of nothing short of an exodus.
I must make public I hope I’m not infringing on the NCAA’s trademark nastiness by using words like Villanova and phrases like national championship.
Wikipedia wrote this, not me. I don’t think the NCAA would consider it informal.
I also don’t think certain lawyers would agree there are “informal” uses, either!
The Main Line’s Villanova University was named after Saint Thomas of Villanova. It was founded in 1842 by the Order of Saint Augustine. The other school
“traces its roots to the Universidad de Santo Tomas de Villanueva (Saint Thomas of Villanova), founded in 1946 in Havana, Cuba, by American Augustinians with assistance from European Augustinians. When the Castro government expelled the Augustinians from Cuba in 1961, several of the American Augustinians came to Miami where they founded Biscayne College. … When University status was attained (in 1984), the name of the institution was changed to St. Thomas University to reflect its Cuban heritage.”
Another thing, friends, is you know I have a long memory.
That last line I quoted isn’t exactly true. Biscayne College didn’t become St. Thomas University; it became St. Thomas of Villanova University, but folks on the Main Line didn’t like that competition, so the name – How did they put it? – was shortened. I found it didn’t take more than a few months, and the second change wasn’t even mentioned in The Voice, Miami’s Catholic newspaper. I checked the 1984 issues. Seems they went through a lot of trouble for nothing.
As for me, I’ve never been a college basketball fan. Growing up in Miami, the University of Miami didn’t even have a team from around the time I was born until I was in 9th grade (you look the dates up!), so I didn’t grow up with it. Also, if you blink, the players are gone – either graduating, dropping out, or a few going professional. There’s no chance to remember more than a few individual players, unless you’re a die-hard fan or journalist (or live in Connecticut, where any high school stars are remembered forever).
But I loved when somebody I consider a mentor – Miami news legend Eliott Rodriguez – put his live shot from Vilanova’s 1985 championship up on Facebook, this morning. It happened while he worked for WPVI’s Channel 6 Action News, during a break from the Miami market.
You’ll have to watch. I commented jokingly, “Full of information! But other things never change.”
He responded, “The pictures tell the story,” but couldn’t remember whether he or his photographer suggested doing the live shot from the top of the van. Turns out, maybe they should’ve! And Jim Gardner always had the perfect response.
Jim is still there today and still in first place, even against the Super Bowl and Olympics on NBC in February. Says something about stability and being true to yourself, and what you stand for.
See who was referred to as a “distant fourth” twice in the above article! Let’s just agree it was well-deserved. Heck, they changed their Facebook policy between the time of my interview and the time I started. That wasn’t much more than two months!
And to leave you on a much more pleasant note, here’s a much more recent picture Eliott posted: Two former Philadelphia folks, including one who worked at KYW-TV3. It was taken in March. Glad to see Eliott and Marc Howard looking happy! Goes to show there is life after TV news!
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There are two big changes in weather: The snow has stopped and The Weather Channel is being sold.
Also, you can say the owner is a real person for two more reasons: The new owner is not a partnership between three corporations, like in the past – and he was one of the stars of the TV show Real People!
The Weather Channel and Local Now streaming service had been owned by The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital and Comcast/NBCUniversal. Deadline pointed out those groups “experimented with longer-form programming and big-name talent” such as Al Roker and Sam Champion.
October 2014, Wikipedia
Twitter
It also said Allen, “comedian-turned-entrepreneur, has been growing his Entertainment Studios, which became the largest independent producer of first-run syndicated programming.”
“This lawsuit was filed to provide distribution and real economic inclusion for 100% African American-owned media. The cable industry spends $70 billion a year licensing cable networks and 100% African American-owned media receives ZERO. This is completely unacceptable. We will not stop until we achieve real economic inclusion for 100% African American-owned media.”
“The industry spends about $50 billion a year licensing cable networks in which 100 percent African American-owned media receives less than $3 million per year in revenue from that $50 billion stream of money that is spent to acquire content.”
Allen also accused media companies of adding insult to injury by throwing money at Sharpton, employed by Comcast-owned MSNBC – saying they used “the least expensive negro” to “cover” up their track record of “blatant” discrimination.
January 2015, flickr
Official White House Photo
On top of that, Allen called President Obama “bought and paid for” by Comcast.
“What happened in the Obama administration is former (FCC) commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker voted for the merger of Comcast NBCU and then 90 days later took a much higher paying job with Comcast after granting them the merger,” Allen said. “That was betraying the public’s trust as a public service.”
As of April 2017, that suit was pending. At least part of it had been dismissed, but Allen was appealing. I could not find anything on Entertainment Studios’ website while searching for Comcast, Warner, Time-Warner, or Sharpton.
Byron Allen: Black people are doing worse under President Obama.
Byron Allen standing by his controversial comments.
But he sued AT&T and forced the company’s subsidiary DirecTV to pick up seven Entertainment Studios Networks channels.
Did you watch NBC, Wednesdays 8-9pm, 1979-84? Top: John Barbour, Sarah Purcell, Skip Stephenson, Byron Allen; Bottom: Bill Rafferty
Looks like Allen has turned out to be the most successful of the Real People cast!
A look back at Real People:
Byron Allen heads to cheerleading school:
Byron Allen visits a bar on Venice Beach where disco on skates is king:
Byron Allen visits the experimental aircraft convention and talks to vets:
The syndicated Byron Allen Show, 1989-92.
We may have learned the fates of seven TV stations that will be divested if the $3.9 billion Sinclair-Tribune merger I’ve written against time and time again is allowed to happen.
Wikipedia calls him “an American political commentator, entrepreneur, author of a nationally syndicated conservative newspaper column, and host of a daily radio show and a nationally syndicated TV program called The Armstrong Williams Show.” The South Carolina native is also the largest African-American owner of television stations in the U.S.
“for president in 1948 as what the press called a Dixiecrat.” …
“He said that ‘on the question of social intermingling of the races, our people draw the line.’ And, he went on, ‘all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.’
“His opposition to integration, which he often attributed to Communism, was the hallmark of his career in Washington until the 1970’s. In 1971, he was among the first Southern senators to hire a black aide — in recognition of increased black voting resulting from the legislation he had fought. From then on, black South Carolinians, like all other residents, benefited from his skills as a pork-barrel politician who took care of the home folks.
“‘We’ve looked out for the state,’ he said in a 1999 interview, ‘and everything that was honorable to get, we got it.’”
According to a Senate website, “He turned 100 years old in 2002, becoming the oldest person ever to serve as a senator. He also holds the Senate’s record for the longest individual speech, his filibuster against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.” He retired Jan. 3, 2003, and died that June.
According to The Times, “Mr. Thurmond always insisted he had never been a racist, but was merely opposed to excessive federal authority.”
So that was Armstrong Williams’ boss at one point. Wikipedia adds,
The name of the company came from both William’s mother’s middle name, Howard, and his father’s middle name, Stirk.
On President Trump’s “s__thole countries” comment: “An indictment about what’s in his heart.”
African-American conservative and South Carolina native talks about removing the Confederate flag.
Sinclair has been known for using shell corporations like Cunningham Broadcasting to own stations while Sinclair actually operates them, including programming them and doing everything else true owners would do, as an attempt to get by the rules.
Williams has been in business with Sinclair – a corporation with overtly and pushy conservative leanings – before.
Armstrong Williams on President Obama’s “arrogant and dictatorial style.”
The backstory is that Williams helped Sinclair buy Barrington Broadcasting. He got NBC affiliate WEYI-TV in Flint-Saginaw-Bay City, Mich., and CW affiliate WWMB in Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C., BUT according to Wikipedia,
“Both stations remain operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement, which resulted in allegations that the company was simply acting as a ‘sidecar’ of Sinclair to skirt FCC ownership rules. Williams defended the allegations, noting that he had full control over their programming, and received the majority of their revenue.”
He did buy five other stations, three from Sinclair.
Williams’ website has the headline “Howard Stirk Holdings seeks to acquire 7 local affiliates in early 2018!” (really in six cities) and a picture with logos, but no article. At least it says “seeks.”
I found connections to the Sinclair-Tribune deal in all the stations pictured, with just a question about one.
Let’s take a look at the stations (clockwise on above graphic):
* Sinclair’s WLRH-35 in Richmond, Va. (Fox affiliate with CW on subchannel), since Tribune owns competitor WTVR-6 (CBS affiliate).
* North Carolina’s Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point) is where I have my big question. Sinclair owns WXLV-45 (ABC affiliate) and also WMYV-48 (MyNetworkTV affiliate). Tribune owns WGHP-8 (Fox affiliate). I would expect one of those three to go, but the logo on Armstrong Williams’ website is for WCWG-20 (CW affiliate). Just last month, Hearst bought that station from Lockwood Broadcast Group, but it had already been operating the station under a shared services agreement. Hearst also owns the market’s NBC affiliate, WXII-12, making a duopoly. How any other owner would fit in, since Hearst just finished the sale and got a duopoly last month, is a mystery to me – unless The CW plans to change its affiliated station in the market. Note the station already has a good owner that puts a newscast on it, but nothing – not even public service — compares to money when it comes to broadcasting. (Also keep in mind, a month ago, Sinclair made a case to the FCC it should be able to own more than one of the top four stations in Harrisburg, Indianapolis and Greensboro, N.C.)
* Sinclair’s KDNL-30 in St. Louis. This weak ABC affiliate with lousy ratings canceled its local news in 2001. From 2011 to 2014, a competitor aired news for it at 5 and 10:00. Then came a year with Family Feud and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire instead of news. Since 2015, it has been airing The Allman Report, which says it has a “debate-driven format,” at 5 and 10pm, and 6:30am. But what about news? Click here for the station’s website’s People page. Notice it’s empty! Tribune owns two competitors in St. Louis: KTVI-2 (Fox affiliate) and KPLR-11 (CW affiliate). Sinclair filed to own two stations in this market. The St. Louis situation could come down to which stations are and are not part of the top four rated in the city, per FCC rules. Read below for details.
* Tribune’s KZJO-22 in Seattle (MyNetworkTV affiliate), since Tribune also owns KCPQ-13 (Fox affiliate that Fox itself really wants to buy), and Sinclair owns both KOMO-4 (ABC affiliate) and KUNS-TV51 (Univision affiliate) there.
* Sinclair’s KOKH-25 (Fox affiliate) and KOCB-34 (CW affiliate) in Oklahoma City. Tribune owns both KFOR-4 (NBC affiliate) and KAUT-43 (independent) there.
* Dreamcatcher Broadcasting’s WGNT-27 (CW affiliate) in Norfolk, Va., which is operated by Tribune, while Tribune also owns WTKR-3 (CBS affiliate) there. Sinclair owns WTVZ-33 (MyNetworkTV affiliate) in Norfolk.
No price has been announced, but it was reported a few weeks ago Sinclair will sell WPIX-New York for a measly $15 million to Cunningham Broadcasting, owned by Sinclair’s founder’s survivors, and WGN-TV Chicago for just $60 million to Steven B. Fader, chairman of Baltimore-based Atlantic Capital Group and business partner of Sinclair executive chairman David Smith in Atlantic Automotive Corp.
That’s peanuts. Pennies on the dollar. No stations above even come close to WPIX-New York or WGN-TV Chicago, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a half-billion. But Sinclair will get to run them and possibly buy them back within eight years, if the rules are relaxed further by then.
Both Sinclair and Tribune own many TV stations. You just got a taste of how each company by itself owns several stations in several cities, and that number grows very large – too large for federal regulations – if combined. That means some stations will have to be spun off.
As I’ve written, Fox has wanted to buy several of those stations, especially Fox affiliates in cities with NFL football teams. Both Sinclair and Tribune own several Fox affiliates.
“Fox is in talks to acquire at least six stations from Sinclair, a source confirms. Discussions center Tribune-owned Fox affiliates in five markets — Seattle (KCPQ), Denver (KDVR), Salt Lake City (KSTU), Sacramento (KTXL) and Cleveland (WJW) — and a CW affiliate in greater Miami (WSFL) … contingent upon Sinclair winning regulatory approval for its $3.9 billion Tribune acquisition.”
Whether Fox will get to buy those stations remains to be seen. That’s because:
— Sinclair is already the nation’s largest TV station owner, based on the number of Americans its stations reach. That’s how the count goes, and Sinclair wants as many different people watching its stations – or able to pick them up – as possible. It probably won’t sell more than what’s necessary.
— Of course, it helps to own more than one station in a city, since synergies can save millions of dollars. As a small example, the company will only need one person to answer the phone. Both companies have pushed the legal limit on duopolies, and Sinclair has already asked for waivers. Again, it probably won’t sell more than what’s necessary.
— Fox will need money to buy all those stations, and it planned to sell its film, television, 22 regional sports networks and international businesses to Disney for $52.4 billion – but that plan is no longer certain.
There could be two stumbling blocks for Fox to sell everything but its broadcast network, TV stations, news and business channels, and its FS1/FS2 cable channels.
Reuters reported a group called Protect Democracy Project sued in District Court in Washington for any records of communications on the deal between the White House and the Justice Department, plus “any related antitrust enforcement efforts by the DOJ, to find out whether the president or his administration is improperly interfering with the independence of the DOJ out of favoritism for a political ally.”
Wikimedia Commons
Rupert Murdoch, Wikimedia Commons
According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, President Trump attacked AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner. However, he even spoke to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch in December and congratulated him on his Disney deal!
Fox owns Fox News Channel, which Trump likes, and Time-Warner owns CNN, which the president does not like.
“sets limits on the number of broadcast stations – radio and TV – an entity can own, as well as limits on the common ownership of broadcast stations and newspapers. As required by Congress, the FCC reviews its media ownership rules every four years to determine whether the rules are in the public interest and to repeal or modify any regulation it determines does not meet this criteria.”
*Newspaper and Broadcast Station Cross-Ownership: No “common ownership of a full-power broadcast station and daily newspaper if” the station completely encompasses the newspaper’s city of publication, and they’re in the same Nielsen market, except if the newspaper or broadcast station is failed or failing (or they were grandfathered in). I’ve even come out in support of Fox saving the New York Post from extinction!
*National TV Ownership: No limit on the number of TV stations. (It used to be five.) Now,
“a single entity may own nationwide so long as the station group collectively reaches no more than 39 percent of all U.S. TV households. For the purposes of calculating the ‘national audience reach,’ TV stations on UHF channels (14 and above) count less than TV stations operating on VHF channels (13 and below), this is also known as the UHF Discount.”
The UHF Discount – established in 1985, according to Variety – only mattered when we used antennas because UHF stations had weaker signals and were harder to watch. That’s why they only counted half as much as a VHF station. (It wasn’t until 1965 that the FCC required all new TV sets sold in the U.S. to have built-in UHF tuners to receive channels 14+!)
In 2016, the FCC led by Democrats discontinued it because with digital broadcasting, along with cable and satellite, it’s not needed anymore. But big broadcasters wanted to grow larger than the 39 percent rule would allow (especially Ion Media, a major UHF group). In April 2017, the FCC led by Republicans brought it back!
“We need to take a holistic look at the national cap rule, including the UHF discount,” Pai said of the item. “The marketplace has changed considerably due to the explosion of video programming options and various technological advances that have occurred since the cap was last considered in 2004. So we need to examine whether our rules should change accordingly. That’s an important discussion that will be informed by the facts in the record—not anything else.”
“Giving a single broadcaster the means to buy up enough local stations to exceed the 39% cap is inconsistent with the statute and must be rejected.”
*Dual TV Network Ownership: No merger between ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. Remember how NBC’s old Red and Blue radio networks were separated?
*Local TV Multiple Ownership: A company can own up to two TV stations in the same area if either:
*The service areas – known as the digital noise limited service contour – of the stations do not overlap. (I take this to mean Grade B overlaps, where people living in between two markets – like central New Jersey in between New York and Philadelphia, and Boca Raton in between Miami and West Palm Beach – can pick up stations in both cities that are owned by the same company. But, for example, CBS owns stations in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, so there must’ve been waivers.)
*At least one of the stations is not ranked among the top four stations in the DMA (based on audience share), and at least eight independently owned TV stations would remain in the market after the proposed combination. This is important: ratings and number of competitors. Keep them in mind as you read further. According to Wiley on Media, “The Commission determined that a minimum of eight independently owned and operated television stations was required to preserve competition in local television markets” and “The FCC concluded that top four station combinations had the potential to provide a single firm with an unacceptably high market share.” This is why Sinclair-Tribune can’t simply keep the two highest-rated stations in a big city if the sale goes through, or more than one in a smaller city.
*Local Radio/TV Cross-Ownership: Restrictions are based on a sliding scale that varies by the size of the market.
*In markets with at least 20 independently owned “media voices” (defined as full power TV stations and radio stations, major newspapers, and the cable system in the market) an entity can own up to two TV stations and six radio stations (or one TV station and seven radio stations).
*In markets with at least 10 independently owned “media voices” an entity can own up to two TV stations and four radio stations.
*In the smallest markets an entity may own two TV stations and one radio station.
*Local Radio Ownership: Restrictions are also based on a sliding scale that varies by the size of the market, but there’s no need to go into it here.
So the bottom line for now is that at this point, we’re learning some more about what Sinclair and Tribune intend to do with other stations they won’t be allowed to keep if their deal goes through — but whether their deal goes through — and whether Fox is able to buy the stations it wants because Comcast outbid Disney for Sky, but still needs approval — is up in the air(waves).
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P.S. In the spirit of weather, here were Casey and Frisky yesterday. As usual, Frisky (left) was more interested in Mother Nature’s show than Casey (right).
People who know me can never, ever say I’m not loyal to people I like and respect. You’ll see that in a moment, along with an example of the opposite. (Is your mouth watering yet?)
I’m going to give the writer the benefit of the doubt because reporters don’t usually write headlines, and the headline goes after the format rather than the person.
The article started by criticizing Mike Jerrick’s on-air behavior on International Women’s Day, March 8. It quoted Peter Jaroff – assistant professor of media studies and production at Temple University and a former WPVI-6ABC producer – who described the situation perfectly.
Jaroff told the paper,
“You’re supposed to chat and fill up time and be engaging to your audience, and that can get you in a lot of trouble.”
Let me repeat: “Fill up time and be engaging.”
He didn’t say for how long or how often. Let’s look at the situation.
WTXF-Fox 29 puts on a six-hour morning show.
(I mentioned people who know me. They also know I hate the phrase “show” rather than “newscast” because a newscast is special with the responsibility of informing people about important current events and controversies – even though they typically air too much crime and too many fires, often without putting any of it in perspective. A “show” can be anything.)
Jerrick is on the air for four hours straight, from 6 to 10am. His broadcast, Good Day Philadelphia, actually starts at 4. (Yes, it’s the same name as all the other local Fox stations call their morning shows because they copy.)
Speaking of copying: Today, were we supposed to look at this and know where St. Mary’s County is? No clues. The company itself owns three Fox 5s. That doesn’t include affiliates. But this didn’t cost a cent!
It begins with hard news. Certainly, a lot of the content is from the day before because very little happens between 11:30pm and 4am, except for the crime and fires.
Jerrick is as good as anybody when he goes on the air at 6.
But let’s start before 6.
Mike’s bio, but is it FOX or Fox? (Absolutely NOT Mike’s fault!)
I worked with him for 15 months. I’ve seen him at 5:30am daily, before the public at 6, telling producers and an executive producer his intelligent, educated, experienced opinion – usually right – on what stories he should be talking about and which shouldn’t air. Four hours, or actually six, can be a long, long time – and a lot can happen to change things.
There will never be a TV station that has the staffing it really needs.
Jerrick would start out doing the news, correcting mistakes in scripts based on what aired earlier, what has changed since then and what he knows is the truth. (In other words, somebody else’s mistake.) He won’t let a live reporter go without making sure viewers have all the facts they need.
That may throw off the time, and producers have to go almost by the second – which probably makes them crazy – but realize Good Day Philadelphia producers do two straight hours in the control room. That’s a lot, even for the most disciplined, attentive, anal person trying to get as much new material on as possible.
The producers can’t read every script before they air. Scripts are still being written moments before, especially in breaking news situations. Jerrick and his counterpart, Alex Holley, may be told a few quick points in their earpieces and given a line or two. Very few TV news anchors can do that as flawlessly as they do multiple times every morning, while keeping tabs on what the live picture is showing, or if the signal goes bad.
At 7:30am, there’s often a live interview with a newsmaker, victim, etc. Jerrick and Holley consistently show the right tone, depending on the situation.
I haven’t forgotten their great job with the return of a station intern, wounded in the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, who lost a loved one. Or the controversial Philadelphia sugar tax that mostly affects soda. Or the superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia about needing 1,000 new teachers when the other teachers hadn’t gotten a raise in five years and put up a billboard on busy I-95, making sure everyone sees the claim Philadelphia doesn’t value its students. I remember Jerrick and Holley making sure to present both sides, playing devil’s advocate when necessary, and give everyone a fair shot – for journalism and conscience.
I know because in each of those situations, I took notes and when each was over, I quickly got in and out points to put the video on the web, and wrote stories that started with the new information Jerrick and Holley were able to gather. Often, they made the interviews memorable experiences and that’s exactly what TV goes for: memorable experiences involving people associated with your station. The bosses get credit, the station makes money, but it’s Jerrick, Holley and company who actually do the work.
I’ll tell you now, I have not watched for a moment since I left last Aug. 10. Too painful. And that personal story is far from over. The people I’m writing about may not know that but their bosses sure do!
So how can Jerrick and Holley go from being hard news people – bringing viewers every new fact possible while guaranteeing their accuracy, while sitting inside a studio – and suddenly become time fillers at 9? They’d have to be extremely talented and well-rounded, or bipolar!
Sure, they report breaking news the executive producer decides is important enough until 10:00, but the *show* transitions from hard news to arguably nonsense and no matter how slowly that process takes, and the audience changes, it still involves the same on-air people.
It’s very rare, but I remember the morning hero, reporter Steve Keeley, breaking three new stories live at three different locations one morning! It’s a combination of his sources and reading everyone’s social media (and I included every police and fire department’s tweets in three states when I wrote everyone’s).
The station is too cheap to hire other people.
STOP FOR A SIDEBAR: All I ever got from the station, other than hard times, was a green t-shirt and hat for the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2017. Most other places give gift bags when you start.
But I got a Good Day Philadelphia Weekend shirt that one of the anchors, Bill Anderson, actually spent time and money to make all by himself! Don’t believe me? He did that to connect with viewers and increase ratings – and then the bosses took him off the show and gave him a reporting franchise, For Goodness’ Sake! Some thanks and appreciation!
Bill is still doing what he does, great reporting, substitute anchoring, and wardrobes.
Yes, folks. This is the fourth largest TV market in America and this is what a local native – great person, great at his job – obviously feels forced to do. Somebody should be ashamed, and it’s sure not Bill!
BACK TO THE STORY: At 9, one of the 4-6am anchors usually joins Jerrick and Holley. They’re given a list of topics to ad lib about. That means no real scripts for them or their director, who has to make sure the right video is playing. Reporters who were on the air earlier usually change stories – not because of news happening, but planned events. Everyone’s time is planned out so there’s no waste, or rest on a bad day.
There’s a lot for the anchors to keep track of while making small talk with weathercaster Sue Serio, the most open, genuine human you’ll ever meet – and traffic reporter Bob Kelly, who has to keep track of all roads and transit in the region, get all the facts as they change without getting confused, and then find the live shots or make the graphics you see without any help. Oh, and then it’s Kelly’s Classroom or Camp Kelly, depending on the season, and Breakfast with Bob weekly.
So there’s a hell of a lot that goes on that viewers don’t see, except for the same faces, over and over again. How they seem to know everything – and at that hour – is incredible! They deserve credit, not scorn.
Of course, the viewers want the local angle, rather than the network or cable morning shows. There’s a place for it but honestly, it’s not for me.
I’ve often thought of Mike Jerrick as Johnny Carson. Who except Dom DeLuise and Joan Rivers ever had a public spat with Johnny?
Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia
Flickr
I mean, Jerrick is from the Great Plains (Kansas), smart, funny, and – yes – older. That’s valuable and lacking in too many places today. I wasn’t around when Carson (from Iowa) started on The Tonight Show in 1962 and wasn’t allowed to stay up late enough to see him until I was old enough, and still, a lot was over my head.
No, not everything goes as planned. That’s the nature of live TV. How the people on-air react is what separates amateurs from professionals. The anchors you see on that station I really don’t like are professionals.
So Mike and Alex’s job is basically to fill time, and it works because they’re often #1 in the later time periods. That means they do very, very well – especially because one of their competitors is the nation’s powerhouse station.
Something ironic: The article with the title about a format possibly being on its way out barely touches on history. It used to be a white guy doing the news. Or two white guys. Same with weather and sports. Then came Adam and Eve – a man and a woman. The article quotes University of Maryland journalism professor Linda Steiner as saying network executives see that “as the kind of ideal nuclear family.”
But this isn’t Leave it to Beaver. This is Fox. So you have to expect a little pushing of the boundaries, especially from a station with the brand We Go There.
Maury Povich
Jerry Springer
As seriousness turns to silliness, children have headed out to school. If they’re home sick, how would you compare Jerrick’s behavior to afternoon soap operas in the past? Or to the lowlifes too often seen on daytime talk and reality shows, these days? Do you want your kid watching Maury(a KYW-TV3 alum) orSpringer? The difference is, Mike is the serious newscaster, earlier in the morning. (I’ve never asked him which role he prefers, if either.)
And HBO’s John Oliver used Jerrick as an example of someone who spent “the entire day (International Women’s Day) acting inappropriately.”
Yes, times change. Jerrick – with daughters and grandchildren – would be one of the first to support #MeToo.
He also keeps colleagues on their toes and the audience interested. I give management and the parent company no credit for that. Absolutely none. It’s the people you see, and I don’t have a bad thing to say about any of them. And when the show is over, they clean up (if necessary), meet to discuss the good and the bad of the morning, plan the next show, and then go out to shoot all the special segments viewers see. It’s usually not far from 12-hour days.
Do you think all the pre-NFL Draft features happened on their own or by magic? It was big planning, changing clothes and going with the flow – just like at the newsdesk but with a little more wiggle room.
Kellyanne Conway, Wikipedia
So he said “bullshit” when President Trump’s assistant Kellyanne Conway – a local woman – used the phrase “alternative facts” about the Trump inauguration’s crowd size. WHO WASN’T THINKING THAT? And he took his punishment knowing he shouldn’t have used the word, and knowing the station had to pretend to care about Federal Communications Commission rules.
Tom Snyder – who anchored here at KYW-TV3 in the late 1960s – shot a bird on WABC in New York, in the early 1980s. This is how he remembered it, years later, on CNBC.
I can imagine the same situation here.
And who was totally honest about needing to take a few months off?
Nobody is perfect but Mike Jerrick – with the job he has – is pretty damn close. (I can say the same about Alex Holley who, among so much else, has made her own family out in Texas, our own family.) It has earned him promotions and made him a national figure. And I sure hope he’s not working for the money. (I’ve always said money is freedom.)
Ryan Lochte, Wikipedia
And don’t tell me Ryan Lochte (pre-2016, Rio) didn’t deserve to be laughed at after his interview,
I’d never put any of them on my show and I doubt Mike would either, unless they did something SO ridiculous that everyone was talking about it.
The article pretty much says Jerrick found his niche and compares him to the Today show’s first host, Dave Garroway, buried here at West Laurel Hill Cemetery.
So bottom line: Mike Jerrick is the right person for the job, the station is lucky to have him and I will blame any future fall in ratings with changes in front of and behind the camera, or the end of an era – not Mike.
(For the record, I was NOT in contact with ANYBODY associated with the station for weeks before, or while writing. The thoughts are completely my own.)
Speaking of people I like, I can’t say enough about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre survivors outside Fort Lauderdale. They’ve spoken forcefully and eloquently about the need for stricter gun laws.
Just wait, but some of them and other high school students will be old enough to vote by this year’s midterm elections. Mark your calendar for Tuesday, Nov. 6. Every member of Congress will be up for (re)election, along with about a third of the Senate.
Plus, 39 states including Pennsylvania and New York (I’ll get to that one in a few moments) will be (re)electing governors, and there will be many state legislature elections. (If I remember correctly, in ancient times in Florida, you could register to vote at 17 but not actually vote until your 18th birthday.)
Then, in two (hopefully) short years, more than half of today’s high school students will be able to vote in the 2020 presidential election.
Anyone who dismisses the Stoneman Douglas student group over their ages is stupid because they’ll be voting before you know it, and are already convincing other voters! Same for that Fox News host, Todd Starnes, who was troubled by how Cameron Kasky took down Sen. Marco Rubio, the one-time presidential candidate, over whether he would agree to refuse further political contributions from the National Rifle Association during a CNN Town Hall. (Click here to watch and read it all.)
Cameron Kasky, CNN’s Jake Tapper (a Philadelphia native), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
The young people are absolutely right about the need to make gun laws stricter. As for what changes, there are many so I won’t be specific. However, as powerful as this group and their supporters become, I worry about all the federal judges President Trump is appointing, and at least one justice so far on the Supreme Court. The young people and 100 million other Americans may convince some legislatures to vote their way, but those bills-turned-laws will have to be upheld if challenged.
Wikimedia Commons
I’ve mentioned Kasky’s mother has been a friend for many years. Besides beating a sitting senator in a debate, he’s the one who had to leave the 60 Minutes interview that aired last Sunday for a family dinner. (Ask them, not me.)
TVNewser called that episode “on pace to finish with 10 million viewers, which would make it one of the most-watched episodes of 2018.”
It’s not my place to name Kasky’s mother because she has not spoken out publicly (nor does she have to, with her son doing the job much more than adequately), but for those who are getting over school shootings or need a reminder of how devastating the situation has been for not only the community but 17 families, his mother shared this post on Facebook on Sunday.
nor this self-proclaimed “physical education instructon and football coach” in an outer Atlanta suburb with whom I have two friends in common. He apparently feels it necessary to use some dumb “gun permit” that never expires, that somebody made up, as his profile picture. I’ve read his take on gun issues too many times. I think his priorities are off and he has too much time on his hands. I hope we never meet.
Before leaving the topic, a possible solution to the guns-in-schools problem.
“As schools around the U.S. look for ways to impose tougher security measures, … they don’t have to look further than urban districts such as Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York that installed metal detectors and other security in the 1980s and 1990s to combat gang and drug violence”
Also,
“Security experts believe these measures have made urban districts less prone to mass shootings, which have mostly occurred in suburban and rural districts.”
And,
“Officials in some suburban and rural school districts are now considering detectors as they rethink their security plans after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.”
Let’s hope tougher security measures including installing metal detectors is a solution to save lives.
Now, a slightly less vicious politicalstory (and I mean slightly):
Yesterday, I mentioned Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon running for governor of New York against fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo. (I’m shocked this politician doesn’t have his picture at the top of his official webpage!)
People magazine reported she tweeted alongside a two-minute video,
“New York is my home. I’ve never lived anywhere else. … I was given chances I just don’t see for most of New York’s kids today. …Our leaders are letting us down.”
In the video, Nixon noted she grew up with her single mom in a one-bedroom fifth-floor walkup.
She has been a vocal critic of Gov. Cuomo’s educational policies. According to People, she accused the two-termer of being the main cause of the divide between the state’s “richest” and “poorest schools.”
Today, JTA reported, “Her two eldest children from her first marriage are Jewish and have both been bar- and bat-mitzvahed.” (I hate that phrase! You can’t simply add an –ed to a word that’s not English!)
It also said she’s
“an active member of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, Manhattan’s most prominent LGBTQ synagogue, and has spoken there multiple times”
including her June 2011 Friday night sermon, the same day same-sex marriage became legal in New York state.
Back then, she lavishly praised Gov. Cuomo for his leadership in making that happen. I wonder if she changed her mind.
Nixon is getting support from former co-star Kristin Davis…
I am so proud of @CynthiaNixon , no one cares more than she does about EVERY person getting a fair change and a good education. I know that she would be an excellent Governor ! https://t.co/xEAyRxFBb8
but now, the New York Post is reporting Nixon is being “denounced” by arguably the Big Apple’s most prominent lesbian politician, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Besides being the first openly lesbian governor in the U.S., I think Nixon would be the first governor in the U.S. to go topless. Just a thought, for those interested. Or would you have preferred to see Richard Nixon topless?
And rather than me leave you on that last note, there’s an update after I showed you:
“Data aggregator eMarketer … released a report indicating Google and Facebook’s (aka “the duopoly”) dominance of the digital ad market is about to be less dominant, as “smaller players” like Amazon and Snapchat are on the rise.”
“Google’s share is expected to decline from 38.6 percent last year to 37.2 percent in 2018, while Facebook could shrink slightly from 19.9 percent to 19.6 percent.”
So let these crypto companies call good ‘ol Rupert and advertise on 21st Century Fox and News Corp. websites. That’s even though Recode says,
“the crypto industry is still new, unregulated and fraught with fraud.”
Shouldn’t stop the mogul from accepting a dollar, or pound, you think?
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The TV people were right this time. It’s almost 1pm and I’m supposedly getting 3 inches of snow an hour, which should end up as 6-10 inches when it’s done, and the snow didn’t even stick at first.
The storm comes less than a week after this last one, last Friday.
March 2, 2018
Luckily, I have lots on my mind to share with you today.
From ugly weather (to those of you in Florida) to an ugly video: Monday, Britain’s Independent reported, “The National Rifle Association has released a video containing a threatening message to journalists, warning them ‘your time is running out.’”
You see an angry looking and sounding “conservative political activist and TV host Dana Loesch telling “every lying member of the media” that “we are done with your agenda” and they have “had enough.”
She names lots of media hosts and shows. Then, at the end, she ominously says, “Your time is running out. The clock starts now,” and she turns over an hourglass.
“Video games are enjoyed around the world and numerous authorities and reputable scientific studies have found no connection between games and real-life violence.” … “Like all Americans, we are deeply concerned about the level of gun violence in the United States. Video games are plainly not the issue: entertainment is distributed and consumed globally, but the U.S. has an exponentially higher level of gun violence than any other nation.”
But a group spokesman says they’ll be there anyway.
The entertainment magazine reports after the Parkland massacre, the President said,
“I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”
“will provide the opportunity to have a fact-based conversation about video game ratings, our industry’s commitment to parents, and the tools we provide to make informed entertainment choices,”
but their titles don’t contribute to real-life mayhem.
In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a California law to restrict minors’ access to video games, ruling it’s protected by the First Amendment.
I’m excited about something else. It’ll help you watch out for hidden agendas in news, or media that knowingly publish falsehoods or propaganda.
“research online news brands to help readers and viewers know which ones are trying to do legitimate journalism — and which aren’t.”
The ratings will be like a traffic light. A real newspaper publishing good content will get green. A fake news site will get a red. Then, according to Nieman,
“A site that’s not putting out deliberately fake news, but is overwhelmingly influenced in its coverage by a funder that it’s not eager to disclose? Maybe a yellow.”
And the ratings — called “nutrition labels” – will come with “a 200- to 300-word write-up on each source’s funding, its coverage, its potential special interests, and how it fits in with the rest of the news” world since the founders acknowledge not all of the sites in a given color category are equal.
I can’t wait for this to start. The folks behind NewsGuard are Steven Brill (founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV) and L. Gordon Crovitz (former publisher of The Wall Street Journal).
Brill told CNN “algorithms aren’t cutting it, so real-life reviewers are needed to judge reliability.”
They say their “goal is to give everyone the information they need to be better informed about which news sources they can rely on — or can’t rely on.”
Analysts will work in pairs. They may not settle on a rating if they feel they don’t have enough information to be confident, or have editors weigh in if the analysts disagree.
Plus, “The company will also have ‘a 27-7 ‘SWAT team’ that responds to breaking news and news items that are suddenly trending.”
It plans to stay in business by licensing “NewsGuard’s encyclopedia of news sources to social media platforms and search engines” – in other words, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, which could leave out the reds or use them with a warning – and offering advertising for businesses that “want to be spared any embarrassment that comes from advertising on deliberately fake sites.”
Brill said the tech companies will pay because, “We’re asking them to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem.”
“Clickbait-focused publishers such as Buzzfeed had benefited enormously from being promoted on Facebook – and owed much of their success to lightweight ‘shareable content.’ But after the changes, traffic dropped sharply. Facebook rushed to assure publishers it was just a test. It has now formally abandoned the experiment, counting “feel-good news and service content” publisher LittleThings among the casualties.”
The Register explained Facebook has “come under fire” since the 2016 Presidential election. First, the News Feed was “hand-curated by low-paid graduates” but “accused of political bias.” Then it replaced the people “with an algorithm that valued ‘engagement’” but a “low bar for inclusion” exposed more “inflammatory and bogus material.”
It also quoted former senior Facebook exec Antonio Garcia Martinez, who explained how viral content was given a premium value.
“Rather than simply reward that ad position to the highest bidder, though, Facebook uses a complex model that considers both the dollar value of each bid as well as how good a piece of clickbait (or view-bait, or comment-bait) the corresponding ad is,” Martinez said. “If Facebook’s model thinks your ad is 10 times more likely to engage a user than another company’s ad, then your effective bid at auction is considered 10 times higher than a company willing to pay the same dollar amount.”
And Donald Trump’s campaign – which spent very little money – was playing by Facebook’s rules since “rural targets were cheaper to reach than urbanites, and Trump wanted to reach them, so Facebook ad spending proved to be very good value.”
Bottom line, according to The Register:
“The results of Facebook abandoning this particular experiment is that clickbait-hungry publishers will continue to rely on the platform for exposure, rather than building their own brands, and Facebook will rely on clickbait-y free content to keep people on the site. It’s a marriage of the desperate.”
That’s not what I wanted to read.
I suggest Zuckerberg suspend all Fox and News Corp. accounts from Facebook for a week. Every newspaper, TV station, news anchor, etc. That should show ‘em!
Meanwhile, Miami’sCNN’s Jeff Zucker accused Facebook and Google of having a duopoly or monopoly on money from digital content, and wants regulators to look into the two companies.
Keep in mind, CNN was a monopoly on 24-hour cable news from June 1, 1980 to 1996 when MSNBC started on July 15, and Fox News Channel went on the air on Oct. 7. (That’s except for when ABC/Westinghouse’s Satellite News Channel competed from June 21, 1982 until Oct. 27, 1983, and CNN founder Ted Turner bought it.)
“Everyone is looking at whether these combinations of AT&T and Time Warner (his own company, which AT&T wants to buy for $85 billion, and may put his own job in jeopardy -Lenny) or Fox and Disney pass government approval and muster, the fact is nobody for some reason is looking at the monopolies that are Google and Facebook. … That’s where the government should be looking, and helping to make sure everyone else survives. I think that’s probably the biggest issue facing the growth of journalism in the years ahead.”
Government “helping to make sure everyone else survives” sounds a whole lot like President Obama bailing out the U.S. banking and auto industries during the Great Recession. It was probably the best thing he did as President. Philosophically, maybe he shouldn’t have, but nobody can deny it worked and saved jobs.
But the banking and auto industries are not journalism. They’re not protected by the First Amendment. And intelligent people will turn to quality news, even if it’s hard to find, and that has already become harder and harder for years.
Advice for Zucker: Do a better job on TV. In contrast to President Obama, explain why you hired so many digital staffers a year ago, only to lay off roughly 50 of them last month – and why you shouldn’t be one to go.
Vanity Fair reports, “Several high profile digital initiatives are being scaled back.” Media analyst Jeffrey McCall told Fox News the layoffs “seem to suggest that CNN may have outkicked its coverage” and Zucker wanted his digital group to “grow too quickly” before having a “comprehensive plan” in place. Also, “It does seem odd that these cuts are apparently targeted for the digital side at this time, when most strategists seem to think that’s an area for potential growth,” McCall said.
And the kicker (rather than “kick ass”), according to the Fox article,
“Last month, YouTube star Casey Neistat — hired by Zucker on the recommendation of his teenage son — abruptly walked away from CNN less than two years after CNN reportedly paid more than $20 million for his video-sharing startup Beme.”
Time Warner is a big company. It owned AOL – one of the early pioneers of the Internet – until about the time you were hired. Why didn’t TW compete? Or did it, and free enterprise sent the experiment to wherever those 50 laid off digital staffers are?
Zucker, get more people to your website and have your digital salespeople do a better job, you sore loser, or you’ll be out of a job!
Back to 21st Century Fox’s Murdoch. He got a black eye about a week ago when Philadelphia-based Comcast (the cable company that also owns competitor NBC) topped his company’s offer to buy the 61 percent of Sky PLC it didn’t already own. That could halt Fox’s attempt to consolidate ownership of the British broadcaster. It has owned 39 percent of Sky for years.
But even more importantly, Sky is supposed to be one of many assets Fox plans to turn around and sell to Disney (owner of ABC) — while keeping only its American broadcast network, TV stations (you know by now Fox doesn’t bother list them on its Stations Group website) and plans to buy more, the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network — in a separate $52 billion follow-up deal.
But Fox was cheap.
Reuters reports Comcast offered £12.50 per share ($31 billion), significantly higher (more than 16 percent) than Fox’s £10.75 per share. (Yes, I know how cheap Fox is. I worked for them. The one exception is the NFL.) Sky already agreed to be sold to Fox, but the British government delayed the takeover because it’s concerned about Rupert Murdoch’s influence. In 2011, he closed the News of the World after its journalists admitted hacking phones to get scoops, but he still owns The Sun and Times newspapers.
Fox promised to keep Sky News fully independent for ten years, but faces skepticism across the pond. And with a ten-year promise, I don’t understand how it could be sold to Disney.
Reuters reports Sky’s shares jumped more than 20 percent, while shares of Comcast, Fox and Disney all fell. So if the Sky-to-Fox first part doesn’t happen, investors may expect a bidding war.
“When a set of assets like 21st Century Fox’s becomes available, it’s our responsibility to evaluate if there’s a strategic fit that could benefit our company and our shareholders. … That’s what we tried to do, and we are no longer engaged in the review of those assets. We never got the level of engagement needed to make a definitive offer.”
More merger news:Broadcasting & Cable reports eight of the 50 states’ attorneys general came out against the Sinclair–Tribune merger. They told the Federal Communications Commission “it does not have the authority to raise the 39 percent national audience reach cap for TV station groups, that it does have the authority to eliminate the UHF discount” – the old rule that discounts the number of viewers UHF stations reach by half, because they were weaker and harder to watch years ago before modern technology like cable, computers, etc. – and that it should eliminate the discount.
B&C claims Pai is “saying the previous commission should have considered the cap and the discount together, which it is now doing.”
The attorneys general are from Illinois (home to Tribune), Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California and Virginia.
They – according to B&C – argue “getting rid of the cap would threaten diversity, competition, and localism, and cites Sinclair Broadcasting, whose Tribune deal would benefit from lifting or eliminating the limit, pointing out that it distributes news stories that must run in its newscasts.”
In November, The Baltimore Sun reported Maryland’s attorney general opposed the takeover because “the combination would decrease consumer choices and diversity in the media marketplace.” Sinclair is based in Maryland.
According to The Sun, Sinclair claims “the merger would allow the new company to better serve local viewers with expanded local coverage, better facilities and more programming, delivered in part by operational efficiencies.”
The company announced it would sell several stations to stay under a new cap, but the deals it reached would let it continue to control the New York and Chicago stations it sells, so those big cities won’t count. (Is there ANYBODY who thinks that’s OK?)
According to Variety, Sinclair will sell WPIX-New York for a measly $15 million to Cunningham Broadcasting. More than 90 percent of that company’s stock is controlled by trusts owned by the estate of Carolyn Smith, the late wife of Sinclair founder Julian Smith and mother of Sinclair chairman David Smith. So the Smith children own it. Talk about a shell corporation! Cunningham owns 20 stations but at least 14 of them are run by Sinclair!
And it would sell WGN-TV Chicago for just $60 million to Steven B. Fader, chairman of Baltimore-based Atlantic Capital Group and business partner of David Smith in Atlantic Automotive Corp.
Those stations are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a half-billion.
On top of that, Variety says,
“Sinclair would not only continue to operate the stations and receive the lion’s share of their revenue, but the sale agreement with both buyers gives Sinclair an option to buy the stations back within eight years. That’s seen as a marker for the company to bide its time in the hopes that the FCC relaxes its station ownership restrictions in the near future.”
The $3.9 billion deal – if it goes through – would make the nation’s largest television broadcast company even larger. Sinclair is already largest with 191 stations, while Tribune brings another 42 stations before divestitures. The post-merger reach would be 72 percent of U.S. homes. (Does that include the huge markets of New York and Chicago?)
I’m sure Buffett makes money but he has no vertical integration. Graham was supposed to help run the station after the sale, and it still has a Graham station look. So does its website. Also, Buffett is not the type to get attached (except maybe to Omaha) and would be willing to cash out of the price is right.
If he sells WPLG to Fox, then it makes sense ABC would probably call WSVN. Makes the most sense by far, but I wouldn’t swear on anything. In 1988, CBS seemingly surprised everyone by buying the former WCIX instead of affiliating with WSVN.
Jessell also reported he spoke to Ansin who said Fox hasn’t mentioned anything about “moving into the market and no expression of interest in WSVN.”
I also want to point out another example of a TV network not renewing a local TV station’s affiliation because it competed for viewers in part of a city where the network owned its own station. The last blog mentioned NBC getting rid of WMGM in Atlantic City because of its Philadelphia station, WCAU, and how ABC was much nicer years earlier when it paid the owner of KNTV in San Jose to leave the network because it owned KGO-TV in San Francisco. (WMGM shut down its news department.)
Since then, I remembered NBC dropped WHAG (now WDVM) in Hagerstown, Md., in the middle of 2016 because of Washington, DC’s WRC. Since then, the independent station really became competition, expanding its coverage area by 1.2 million households, also serving Chambersburg, Pa., Martinsburg, W.V. and Winchester, Va.
Also, I learned NBC dropped KENV-DT in Elko, Nev., which served a lot of the Nevada side of the Salt Lake City market. It aired its own news, but was run out of Sinclair NBC affiliate KRNV in Reno. That goliath Sinclair also owns three stations in Salt Lake City, but not the NBC affiliate. KENV is actually owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, and it shut down its news department.
And Jessell also wrote he’s hearing “Fox is once again pushing the idea that it should represent its affiliates in all retrans negotiation.” That means instead of each station demanding money from cable and satellite companies to carry them, Fox would do the work for them all and send each station its share. It would carry the power of nearly 200 stations, and those stations won’t have to bother negotiating. Of course, Fox would also carry power over the stations, and the network’s opinion is its programming (sports) makes the stations worth more and will take its share. Plus, somebody has to pay for Thursday Night Football!
For me, it was nice peeking out the window and watching the snowstorm as I wrote, but like this blog, and certain stations’ newscasts, it appears to be over.
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Surprisingly, I haven’t seen this reported at all by South Florida media. Yes, they’re still consumed and reeling from the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, but this involves THEM, darnit, and they know it.
There was nothing in the Miami-Herald, Sun-Sentinel, or New Times about it, nor TV stations WSVN and WSFL which could be at the center of it.
It’s the possibility WSVN-Channel 7 in Miami-Fort Lauderdale may lose its Fox affiliation.
Of course, putting WSFL on the block goes against Sinclair trying to buy up stations in every city around the country – or just make a deal with the owners to operate them, to get around the rules. That’s because neither Sinclair nor Tribune have any other stations in Miami.
Sinclair now, without Tribune
WSVN’s owner is Ed Ansin’s Sunbeam Television Corporation. He inherited it. In case you didn’t know, I started my TV news career there.
From the sixth borough, in a New York minute: YES. There is no more partnership in television. Everything is just to make a buck. Don’t forget that. It’ll repeat over and over as you read.
Look at what happened on a Saturday in January, 1987. I remember returning from the synagogue, going to my grandparents’ condo, and reading in the Miami Herald business section that NBC was buying WTVJ-Channel 4 even though WTVJ was the CBS affiliate, and WSVN was the NBC affiliate. Both networks wanted to own stations in Miami, which was growing and close to Cuba for coverage when Fidel Castro’s government collapsed. (Now, 31 years later, Fidel is dead and we’re still waiting. Typical!)
Of course, NBC didn’t want to own a CBS affiliate and CBS didn’t want its affiliate owned by NBC, but there was a two-year affiliation agreement that had just started at the beginning of the year between NBC and WSVN.
Owner Ansin fought like hell and sued to keep his NBC affiliation since he had stayed with the network during the extremely lean years before The Cosby Show put the network back on the map in 1984.
Anyway, you would think CBS would end up affiliated with WSVN, but that’s not what happened. CBS owner Larry Tisch thought that if NBC bought WTVJ for $240 million and he can buy independent WCIX-Channel 6 for a quarter of that — just $60 million — then he got a bargain!
WCIX had its own 10pm news program but Tisch didn’t realize the importance that WCIX’s signal was 30 miles to the south of the other stations, and could not be seen in northern Dade (Miami-Dade came in the mid-1990s) or Broward counties.
In 1995, CBS lost a lot of stations to Fox. It really wanted stations. Westinghouse formed a joint venture before buying CBS, which left them with two stations in Philadelphia. The partnership kept Westinghouse’s KYW-TV, so in exchange for CBS’ WCAU, NBC gave CBS KCNC-Denver, KUTV-Salt Lake City, and also exchanged frequencies in Miami so its station would cover the entire market.
Before then, affiliation agreements tended to be two years. I mean, how could you sign an affiliation agreement that’s longer than an FCC license to broadcast? That would be chutzpah! And if the station got in trouble and had its license revoked, then there wouldn’t even be a station affiliate partner.
Ansin held out and ended up with the new Fox network. He also had his news director Joel Cheatwood throw everything at crime-heavy local news — in which he could keep all advertising money – with younger, cheaper workers, and surprisingly it stuck, so everyone involved became a hero, the station’s style was copied everywhere and many working there departed for new, higher-paying jobs. And WSVN was temporarily taken off some hotel cable systems, so not to scare tourists!
Then look at San Francisco. NBC wanted to buy its longtime affiliate, KRON. The network really, really wanted to buy it. In 1999, the deYoung family decided to sell and NBC threatened to take away the station’s 50+ year affiliation and make the station worth hundreds of millions of dollars less, if it didn’t get to buy the station. (Can you say steal, extortion, or shakedown?) Still, KRON’s owners sold to a higher bidder, Young Broadcasting. NBC ended up making several more demands, which Young turned down, so KRON turned independent after all those years, at the end of 2001. (Young was bought by Media General, which was bought by Nexstar.)
KNTV in San Jose was an ABC affiliate that network didn’t want competing with its own San Francisco station, KGO-TV, in San Jose anymore. It agreed to take money from the Alphabet network and go out on its own — but it offered to pay NBC to affiliate with it. (Just like at the end of 2014, NBC got rid of WMGM in Atlantic City so it wouldn’t compete with its own WCAU in Philadelphia, but that station’s owners got nothing. Unfortunately, times changed.)
NBC had to get a new station and reverse compensation was a new, tempting concept. The FCC reclassified KNTV from a Monterey-area station able to be seen in San Jose, to an actual San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland station.
But the affiliation only lasted long enough for permissions given and the ink to dry. Weeks before the start of 2002, NBC bought KNTV for a fraction of KRON’s price. Finally, in 2005 and against KRON’s objections, NBC moved KNTV’s signal 52 miles closer to San Francisco, so people there could actually watch Peacock programming over the air again. (NBC apparently didn’t care about those people too much!) Now, it can’t be seen over the air in San Jose, but reread the words I just put in italics in the parenthesis.
Other fiascos: KNTV was over the air on Channel 11 but aired on cable channel 3 (conveniently next to KRON-Channel 4). Some genius running the transition decided to brand the station NBC3, which confused people to the east watching NBC affiliate KCRA in Sacramento, also a Channel 3. Then it became NBC11. Then simply NBC Bay Area.
See what I mean? Watch KNTV news opens through the years, from city changes to affiliate changes to branding changes.
Now, take Boston from just last year. NBC wanted to own a station there. It insisted our old friend Ed Ansin sell his NBC affiliate WHDH-Channel 7 to them, just like it would’ve preferred back in Miami in the late 1980s. Anson refused yet again, saying NBC offered half what it was worth and trying to steal it.
(Yes, Ansin got back into business with NBC in Boston, rather than Fox, after CBS dropped WHDH, even after NBC dropped him in Miami. Why? To make money, of course!)
So in early 2016, NBC announced it would drop Ansin’s WHDH and start a new station called NBC Boston on New Year’s Day?
Where would that station be found? Nobody else was selling their station. NBC had ended up with New England Cable News, which was owned by Hearst and NBC parent company Comcast’s predecessor, until Hearst sold its share. Over the air, it already owned a weak Telemundo channel in the northern part of the market, WNEU-Channel 60 in New Hampshire. Its signal definitely wasn’t going to cover the entire Boston TV market over the public airwaves.
Ansin sued NBC again, claiming the poor people of Boston wouldn’t be able to watch NBC anymore, which kind of made him look like a monopolist. Lawmakers were also concerned, especially because if people had to buy cable to watch NBC, they would have to use Comcast which of course owns NBC! Regulations for fairness were put in place back when Comcast bought NBC Universal in 2011. For example, Comcast’s cable service couldn’t benefit from the ability of viewers to receive the network over the air, and NBC Universal programming had to be made available to any competing cable operators in town.
This is what the network did in 2016:
— NBC bumped the Telemundo signal to a WNEU sub-channel, and put NBC on the main channel.
— It bought WBTS-LD (low-powered) Channel 8 (which it couldn’t make more powerful without interfering with channel 8s in New Haven, Conn. and Portland, Maine.
— It leased a subchannel of WMFP (virtual channel 60.5) in Lawrence, Mass.
So, by expanding NECN’s news department, it invented its own station out of nowhere!
That station, called WBTS-NBC Boston, went on the air Jan. 1, 2017. WHDH became an independent, added more news and lost some prominent people to the more prestigious NBC.
In 2018, NBC added a channel-sharing agreement with digital Channel 44, under the license of Channel 15, a CD station meaning low power analog often with a digital companion.
It also changed the branding to NBC10, which is like repeating the San Francisco-Sacramento issue, because Providence NBC affiliate WJAR — seen on cable in Boston’s southern suburbs — is powerful on Channel 10. We’ll see how long that lasts!
So Boston got an extra station and most lost viewers since the pie had an extra piece. Was it worth it for NBC, or should it have just kept its affiliation with WHDH?
So Anton got shot down by NBC again, this time in Boston, and that could lead to several other, minor network affiliation changes. For example, in 2006, Ansin bought a second Boston station, CW affiliate WLVI, coincidentally from Tribune. (Just the signal, but not the building or workers. Everyone was laid off, maybe even the producer who beat me for an Emmy Award back in 1997!) Warner Bros. and CBS own the CW Network, and the Tribune stations were a big part of the affiliates. Since Tribune doesn’t own WLVI anymore and CBS owns former UPN independent WSBK, the CW affiliation could move there. (More on this later!)
By the way, Ansin sold WLVI’s broadcast frequency in the FCC’s recent spectrum auction for an undisclosed amount that he told the Boston Globe was “a lot of money” (definitely hundreds of millions of dollars) and now that station shares WHDH’s channel.
There are several other examples:
In the mid-1990s, NBC decided to replace its Raleigh-Durham affiliate, WRDC-Channel 28, because it did poorly and didn’t carry all of NBC’s programs. That’s when The Outlet Company bought Channel 17, increased its power and changed its call letters to WNCN. Plus, there was already a relationship. Outlet owned powerful NBC affiliates in Providence (mentioned just above) and also Columbus, Ohio.
After a year, Outlet sold all three stations to NBC but that only lasted a decade. Repeat after me: It’s the money, and not what’s best for the viewer or community. In 2006, NBC sold all three stations plus its station in Birmingham to Media General. (Yes, that was NBC selling stations, the opposite of what this post is about!) The Media General time also lasted just a decade. NBC decided to affiliate with the more powerful WRAL, and WNCN soon became a CBS affiliate owned by Nexstar, after that company bought Media General.
Around the same time, NBC planned to sell its Miami station, WTVJ – weaker on Channel 6 after the dial swap – to Post-Newsweek, then the owner of ABC affiliate WPLG. That never panned out, despite both stations saying it would.
WPLG said it was going to happen:
WTVJ said it was going to happen:
Remember the rule about a company owning two of the four most powerful stations in a city.
And Fox played hardball to get a station in Charlotte, home of the NFL’s Panthers which started playing in 1995. One-time ABC affiliate WCCB-Channel 18 was one of Fox’s strongest affiliates and it had (and still has) its own news department.
Fox would have a place to air any network programming WSVN preempts, its Fox News would have access to WSVN’s powerful news coverage like it does from any other affiliate, it could say it owns a station in Miami/Fort Lauderdale to give advertisers more scale, and it could program and promote WSFL and its MyNetworkTV shows any way it wants.
This morning, 
That’s a shame and forcing good people out of the business, especially at a time we need the Fourth Estate to be as tough as ever — especially when reporting on news happening in American government and the world.
The people researching, making contacts and conducting interviews on the front lines need to make a living.
Unfortunately, today, it looks like news on the web is going the same way.
According to Axios, “Local media executives have been 
That’s because 
They’re what Axios reports Facebook has defined as 
Advertising isn’t just to sell products to make money, but also selling ideas that can win activists money for lobbying and more advertising — and votes.
BTW, Sinclair owns or operates Florida stations in West Palm Beach, Pensacola (with Mobile, AL), Tallahassee (with Thomasville, GA) and Gainesville. See map.
Plus, there have been literally thousands of complaints from activists who know how important this is. 
Another dead giveaway is that Cunningham is based at 2000 W. 41st Street, Baltimore MD 21211 and coincidentally, Sinclair flagship 
So is 
There’s still 
HSH stands for 
Williams and his supporters suggest a more partisan motive: his conservative views.
Sinclair owned MyNetworkTV affiliate WMMP-36 for years. Then, in 2001, it bought and spun off Fox affiliate WTAT-24 to Glencairn (to become Cunningham) and crafted a local marketing agreement between the two stations. That got Sinclair fined Sinclair $40,000 for illegally controlling a duopoly.
Some more about Williams: In 2004, 
A last possibility if Fox is determined to buy a Miami station is ABC affiliate WPLG-10. That station, stable under Post-Newsweek (now Graham Media) for decades, was sold to Berkshire Hathaway as its only broadcast property. We’ve talked about synergies (BH, as an “only child,” has none) and know Warren Buffett wants to turn a profit, so we can imagine Fox dumping WSVN for WPLG, but can’t assume ABC will take its affiliation to WSVN. 
Kasky, Hogg and González — along with fellow students Jacqueline Cohen and Alex Wind — even made 
Also not to be forgotten is the heroism of Waffle House diner James Shaw Jr. Early Sunday morning, outside Nashville, he was sitting with a friend at the restaurant counter when police said a gunman wearing nothing but a green jacket opened fire outside.
That same Tuesday, I gave my two weeks at WCYB, leaving there after April 26, and starting at Fox less than a week later, on May 2. I had been given the option of starting May 9 but knew there was a ratings period and wanted to be as much help as possible, as soon as possible. So I quickly got mover and cleaner estimates, and my friend Scott found a temporary place for me to stay. The good folks at WCYB made sure to honor me with a cake. Lots of people involved with my departure and arrival!
* Sinclair’s KDNL-30 in St. Louis. This weak ABC affiliate with lousy ratings canceled its local news in 2001. From 2011 to 2014, a competitor aired news for it at 5 and 10:00. Then came a year with Family Feud and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire instead of news. Since 2015, it has been airing The Allman Report, which says it has a “debate-driven format,” at 5 and 10pm, and 6:30am. But what about news? 
The UHF Discount – established in 1985, according to 
*At least one of the stations is not ranked among the top four stations in the DMA (based on audience share), and at least eight independently owned TV stations would remain in the market after the proposed combination. This is important: ratings and number of competitors. Keep them in mind as you read further. 
Just wait, but some of them and other high school students will be old enough to vote by this year’s midterm elections. Mark your calendar for Tuesday, Nov. 6. Every member of Congress will be up for (re)election, along with about a third of the Senate.
Anyone who dismisses the Stoneman Douglas student group over their ages is stupid because they’ll be voting before you know it, and are already convincing other voters! Same for that Fox News host, Todd Starnes, who was troubled by how Cameron Kasky took down Sen. Marco Rubio, the one-time presidential candidate, over whether he would agree to refuse further political contributions from the 
You see an angry looking and sounding “conservative political activist and TV host 
On Feb. 28, 
And 
That’s not what I wanted to read.
Keep in mind, CNN was a monopoly on 24-hour cable news from June 1, 1980 to 1996 when 
In November, 
And it would sell WGN-TV Chicago for just $60 million to Steven B. Fader, chairman of Baltimore-based Atlantic Capital Group and business partner of David Smith in Atlantic Automotive Corp.
And then I remembered something similar in the Tri-Cities of TN/VA, where I used to work. 
Fox doesn’t own too many stations compared to other groups — even if you find 28 in 17 cities, covering more than 37 percent of American homes astounding. 
KNTV in San Jose was an ABC affiliate that network didn’t want competing with its own San Francisco station, KGO-TV, in San Jose anymore. It agreed to take money from the Alphabet network and go out on its own — but it offered to pay NBC to affiliate with it. (Just like at the end of 2014, NBC got rid of WMGM in Atlantic City so it wouldn’t compete with its own WCAU in Philadelphia, but that station’s owners got nothing. Unfortunately, times changed.)
NBC had to get a new station and 
But the affiliation only lasted long enough for permissions given and the ink to dry. Weeks before the start of 2002, NBC bought KNTV for a fraction of KRON’s price. Finally, in 2005 and against KRON’s objections, NBC moved KNTV’s signal 52 miles closer to San Francisco, so people there could actually watch Peacock programming over the air again. (NBC apparently didn’t care about those people too much!) Now, it can’t be seen over the air in San Jose, but reread the words I just put in italics in the parenthesis.
Other fiascos: KNTV was over the air on Channel 11 but aired on cable channel 3 (conveniently next to KRON-Channel 4). Some genius running the transition decided to brand the station NBC3, which confused people to the east watching NBC affiliate KCRA in Sacramento, also a Channel 3. Then it became NBC11. Then simply NBC Bay Area.
Now, take Boston from just last year. NBC wanted to own a station there. It insisted our old friend Ed Ansin sell his NBC affiliate WHDH-Channel 7 to them, just like it would’ve preferred back in Miami in the late 1980s. Anson refused yet again, saying NBC offered half what it was worth and trying to steal it.
Ansin sued NBC again, claiming the poor people of Boston wouldn’t be able to watch NBC anymore, which kind of made him look like a monopolist. Lawmakers were also concerned, especially because if people had to buy cable to watch NBC, they would have to use Comcast which of course owns NBC! Regulations for fairness were put in place back when Comcast bought NBC Universal in 2011. For example, Comcast’s cable service couldn’t benefit from the ability of viewers to receive the network over the air, and NBC Universal programming had to be made available to any competing cable operators in town.
This is what the network did in 2016:
So, by expanding NECN’s news department, it invented its own station out of nowhere!
In 2018, NBC added a channel-sharing agreement with digital Channel 44, under the license of Channel 15, a CD station meaning low power analog often with a digital companion.
