In what is becoming a common refrain for Sinclair, the company is shutting down its local news operation at WSTR-TV in Cincinnati. It’s Sinclair’s second newsroom in the city, but nevertheless employs 19 staffers who will all be looking for work.
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WB/UPN Combination Will Hurt Sinclair, Trigger Consolidation
The news this week that the WB and UPN will be merging into one network has many mid-sized station owners shaking. That’s because a lot of markets have one affiliate for each network, but when they combine, one of those stations is going to lose its network affiliation. Already big players like Tribune and CBS […]
Government Handouts and Playing Hardball with Cable and Satellite Win Big Money for Nexstar & Sinclair
Nexstar is this year’s Sinclair Broadcast Group — a medium-sized TV station owner getting aggressive about squeezing cash out of stations any way possible. Nexstar isn’t as outwardly political as Sinclair is — there’s no Nexstar equivalent to Mark Hyman‘s The Point — although it recently refused to air NBC’s controversial “Book of Daniel” on […]
On Today’s Radioshow: Iowans Challenging Sinclair
In a few minutes I’ll be interviewing Charlie Miller and Eileen Finnegan from Iowans for Better Local TV, in Iowa City. Their group is challenging the license of the Sinclair-owned station in their city, due to its centralizing of news content, and a very locally relevant incident:
The tipping point occurred when SBG conducted on on-air attack of an Iowa Citian because it opposed his views. The fact that KGAN transmitted SBG’s smear without contacting him or offering equal time was the troubling wake-up call for us that our local television was in trouble. It no longer served the community, but a narrow agenda of a distant corporation.
Also joining me in the studio will be Andrew Kennis and Brian Dolber, who will be contributing regularly to the program. Andrew and Brian both went to the Anti-War march in Washington DC this past weekend, and will report back on their experiences and their take on mainstream media’s coverage of the march.
Today’s show will also be the first mediageek of the WEFT Fall Pledge Drive. If you’re a local WEFT listener or you listen on-line, please give a call in during the show and make a pledge to keep indepenent community radio alive and strong in East-Central Illinois.
If you listen on one of our community radio affiliate stations, then please be sure to support your local station however you can.
The show airs live on community radio WEFT 90.1 FM in Champaign, IL at 5:30 PM CDT. It will be posted for on-line listening, download and podcasting by midnight Sunday night.
The Sinclair Angle — If It Bleeds (Our Pocketbooks) It Leads
Alternet is running a story that further documents the crookedness of Sinclair Broadcast Group, charging that the company doesn’t merely slant hard-right, but that management is mostly only interested in covering “news” that directly affects the top dogs’ pocketbooks:
One such staffer says that Sinclair Vice President J. Duncan Smith asked Craig Demchak to take on the story. “Duncan comes in and says: ‘Craig, we need this story, it’s affecting my property. We’ve got to slam these people,Â’” recalls that person. “He was told ‘This is destroying my property, we’ve got to stop it.’ If it had been anybody else’s property, would they be sending the helicopter there to see it? No way in hell.”