why media consolidation is NOT a good thing

[Scott Fybush]

At 10:23 PM 4/29/2004 -0400, Garrett Wollman wrote:
><<On Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:17:11 -0400, "Sean Smyth" <ssmyth@psu.edu> said:
>
> > In the old days, a local owner who heard from local advertisers,
> > viewers, etc., every day would cave in to public pressure on
> > something like this.
>
>In the old days, it would have been GE or Storer or General Tire who
>would be in the position that Sinclair is now.

But, again, in those "old days" GE or Storer or General Tire would have 
controlled stations in only three or four or five cities. And in those "old 
days" a local station's most likely reason for pre-empting a network news 
broadcast would have been to present a local documentary or public-affairs 
show or even (at least in WCVB's heyday) a locally-produced entertainment 
show. (And the decision to pre-empt would likely have come with a lot of 
local management input, too.) What will Sinclair's ABC affiliates be 
showing at 11:35 tomorrow night? I'm betting on "infomercial."

The difference here, as those of us "fortunate" enough to get "local" 
"news" (man, my keyboard's getting a workout on the quote sign tonight) 
from Sinclair know all too well about the company, is that this is a 
nakedly ideological (some would even say "political," but I'm loath to get 
Garrett's blood pressure worked up so close to my Boston trip) move on the 
part of Sinclair corporate.

I quote from Sinclair's own Web site (www.sbgi.net): "Despite the denials 
by a spokeswoman for the show, the action appears to be motivated by a 
political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in 
Iraq."

That's an interesting interpretation, especially coming from a company that 
admittedly skewed the content of its own newscasts specifically to show 
"good news" from Iraq, going so far as to send Mark Hyman (who's a 
corporate spokesman and not a journalist by any stretch of the term) to 
Iraq to seek out pro-military stories. You'd think (well, I'd think, 
anyway) that such a company would WANT to carry a tribute to the 500-plus 
men and women who gave their lives for the country.

But apparently Sinclair knows better than ABC itself what the "political 
agenda" of Ted Koppel and Nightline will be. (Here's ABC's statement: "The 
Nightline broadcast is an expression of respect which simply seeks to honor 
those who have laid down their lives for this country. ABC News is 
dedicated to thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the events 
shaping our world with neither fear nor favor -- as our audience expects, 
deserves, and rightly demands. Contrary to the statement issued by 
Sinclair, which takes issue with our level of coverage of the effects of 
terrorism on our citizens, ABC News and all of our broadcasts, including 
"Nightline," have reported hundreds of stories on 9-11. Indeed, on the 
first anniversary of 9-11, ABC News broadcast the names of the victims of 
that horrific attack.")

Or maybe they just want to make a gesture to the administration that (Hyman 
and his bosses sincerely hope) will still be in office next year when the 
time comes to decide once and for all what becomes of the company's 
not-quite-legal-by-any-stretch-of-the-current-rules duopolies in markets 
like Dayton, Baltimore and Syracuse.

And you know what? I'd have more respect for Sinclair if they were more 
openly ideological. If they don't believe Ted Koppel's journalism is 
appropriate for their audiences in Springfield and St. Louis and 
Charleston, W.V. and Winston-Salem and Pensacola and Columbus 
and  Asheville where they carry ABC, then let them drop the show completely 
- and let another station in each market pick it up. (That's what several 
corporate ownership groups did with "Jimmy Kimmel Live," including the 
Allbritton group that controls ABC outlets in Washington DC and several 
Virginia markets.)

Better yet, if Sinclair believes that ABC News as a whole is slanted in a 
way with which Sinclair corporate disagrees, let them drop ABC completely. 
Instead, Sinclair's actually trying to *get* ABC affiliations for the two 
NBC outlets it owns (in Dayton and central Illinois) where NBC is dumping 
the company when its current affiliation agreements run out. If I were ABC, 
I'd sign with just about anyone else in those markets just to stick it back 
to Sinclair.

Look, I have absolutely NO love lost for this particular company. They 
gutted what was becoming a decent small news operation at the Fox affiliate 
in Rochester, keeping only the very lowest-paid, least experienced 
reporters when they flipped to News Central a couple of years ago. The only 
reason that operation - and most of the other News Centrals - get any 
viewers at all is because they have no competition in their timeslots. If 
the Rochester News Central product went up against the three remaining 
"real" newsrooms in the market at 6 or 11, it would get slaughtered, as do 
the News Centrals in Vegas, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Raleigh that go up 
against "real" newscasts at 9 or 10 on competing Fox affiliates. WGGB 
barely shows in the Springfield ratings these days against WWLP, and the 
only reason WGME continues to do well is because it had a strong news 
tradition before Sinclair came in and it never became "News Centralized."