This Week in Media
This
week has been a busy one for media watchers. The transition to
Digital TV continued to occupy committees in the House and Senate and
AARP has joined the groups with an interest in the outcome. Video
News Releases and Broadcast flags continue to be topics of interest and
a new attempt at limiting advertising by non-profits surfaced.
There is a must read from USAToday that is a great overview of the
issues and action so far.
For all
things media I recommend the folks at FreePress where they live the
motto “media is the issue.” They now have a weekly 5-minute audio
summary of media news.
And last
but not least our friends from Sinclair Broadcasting received another
mention in the media, this time in Le Monde in Paris. This
article covers most of the issues including:
Swing State Influence
In the
past decade, Sinclair Broadcast Group has quietly taken advantage of
the deregulation process orchestrated by the Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) to become the largest owner of US television outlets,
with 62 stations in 39 markets and access to at least 24% of US
viewers, including those in key swing states such as Ohio, Florida,
Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Though Sinclair
lacks outlets in high-profile Democratic cities such as New York, Los
Angeles and Chicago, it has taken over one or two stations in mid-size
cities where it can influence voters without much national scrutiny.
The Point
The most
prominent News Central segment is The Point, a nightly editorial hosted
by Hyman that Sinclair forces its stations to broadcast. Hyman, 47, is
a Navy man and former intelligence officer who carries a prisoner of
war/missing in action bracelet, engraved with the name of a US war
casualty from the Persian Gulf, to remind himself of the cost of
freedom. He wears many hats at Sinclair, from vice-president to head of
lobbying. In his spare time he is also vice president of the Centre for
Science-Based Public Policy in Annapolis, not far from Sinclair’s
headquarters. The research findings published by this think-tank, which
has received more than $650,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, include
assertions that “the mercury levels found in fish have no adverse
effects on human health” and that air pollution “cannot be a major
cause of asthma.”
Weather
The
meteorology staff of eight to 10 on-air personalities works from
Sinclair’s offices in Hunt Valley, in Maryland, where they keep stacks
of atlases, study regional maps, and practice pronouncing the names of
places they have never been to. Each member does weather reports, as
well as editing, operating the camera, selecting graphics, and
distributing the segments, for three to five cities a day. There is a
real economy in this, as Hyman explains: “It takes just a few minutes a
day to put together a weather segment. That’s why meteorologists are
always the ones doing public affairs work for TV stations, going to
county fairs and school events. We said, what if instead we had
meteorologists doing weather all day long? Viewers don’t care if the
weather man is in a studio in Oklahoma City, or in College Park, or
here.” The Sinclair meteorologist who showed us the system, James
Wieland, added: “A lot of people are surprised that we’re not even
there.”
(Click here to read the entire article)
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