WCYB

WCYB, 2015-2016: Digital Media Manager

I have to start with some information on the former Bonten Media, since the company was sold after I left. (They were very good to me.)

Then, you’ll see a grid showing a few dozen of the stories I wrote during my time at WCYB-5 NBC, CW4-5.2, and WEMT-39 Fox.

As Digital Media Manager, I was responsible for all three stations’ websites, but most of WCYB.com’s content syndicated to the others. I helped with the switch to a higher-level Lakana CMS just before leaving, in April 2016. Later, Sinclair bought WCYB and changed its look again, leaving the site what it is today.

SIDENOTE: WEMT was actually owned by Esteem Broadcasting, operated by WCYB’s owner and sold to — as Wikipedia puts it — “Sinclair affiliate Cunningham Broadcasting.”

Why Sinclair affiliate?

More than 90 percent of Cunningham’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 and Sinclair operates most of its stations. That makes it a shell corporation and raises a lot of questions.

My No. 1 question is why Cunningham got rid of WEMT’s perfectly good website, along with those of the other Esteem stations it took over, and several others? That’s lousy customer service and makes it harder for members of the public in cities around the country — whose interest the Federal Communications Commission says Cunningham is supposed to be serving — to find information about WEMT.

I’ve written all about Cunningham and Sinclair, and a similar situation with Deerfield Media.

But back to my WCYB story.

After all the changes, if you go to the actual webpages, you’ll notice links are gone, graphics have changed, the names of image files are shown, and spacing involving some words and paragraphs got eliminated. This portfolio of some of my work is still available online. I only edited out advertisements.

However, since I first compiled articles, I found six new ones, and was able to format several others better.

You can also click here to see stories from my time as Web Producer at WTXF. I started there just five days after leaving WCYB and unlike the wonderful people in the Tri-Cities, I had mostly a miserable 15 months.

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