Tag Archives: WHOI

Sinclair buying WHOI, selling WYZZ

PEORIA — Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying 18 television stations from Barrington Broadcasting, including WHOI (channel 19) in Peoria, Ill. Sinclair already owns a television station in the Peoria/Bloomington market, WYZZ (channel 43), but FCC rules say they can only own one due to the size of the market. Thus, Sinclair has also announced they will be selling WYZZ.

Currently, WHOI is being operated by Granite Broadcasting (owner of WEEK, channel 25) through a shared services agreement. WYZZ is operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (owner of WMBD, channel 31) under a local marketing agreement with Sinclair. How the changes in ownership will affect these agreements is unknown at this time since the story is just breaking.

WHOI is an ABC network affiliate; WYZZ is a FOX network affiliate.

Barrington Broadcasting, owner of WHOI, to be sold

PEORIA — Barrington Broadcasting, owner of 24 television stations including local channel WHOI (19, ABC), may be bought out by Nexstar Broadcasting Group or Sinclair Broadcast Group, according to TVNewsCheck.com. Nexstar owns or manages 55 television stations including local channel WMBD (31, CBS), and Sinclair owns or manages 74 television stations including local channel WYZZ (43, FOX).

Under FCC ownership rules, one company cannot own two of the television stations in a market Peoria’s size, so if the sale of Barrington goes through to either Nexstar or Sinclair, it appears they would have to divest themselves of one of Peoria’s channels.

WEEK/WHOI reject offer, plan rally

From the Journal Star:

Members of the Peoria local chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists at WEEK-TV Channel 25 and WHOI-TV Channel 19 rejected what Granite Broadcasting called its “last, best and final offer.”

The vote taken on Friday was 27 to 1.

…The union plans to hold a rally at the East Peoria station at 5 p.m. Wednesday to drum up community support for their position.

“The rally at the station is hoped to let the company see that the community supports local and professional news,” said [local union President Garry] Moore.

The sticking point is still “flexibility” language that is included in the contract which the union believes will allow Granite to outsource local news broadcasts to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. You can read more about the union’s concerns here on their Facebook site.

Management says local news operation will remain local

In the interest of fairness, I e-mailed WEEK’s general manager Mark DeSantis yesterday, and asked him about the employees’ concerns about outsourcing our local news to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Here’s what he had to say:

[T]he one point that seems to be the most vital to the viewers of Central Illinois is that the local news operation remain local. I have gone on record with the union and with the public that there is no plan and no proposal to move the news outside of our East Peoria facilities. We have invested millions to build a dual digital control room, outfit a second studio, purchased and installed digital cameras in the studio as well as cameras used in the field to produce 11 hours of local news each day. There is so much invested and so much news content to produce that it could not be moved to another entity. It does not make financial sense.

The local news operation here will remain local. Period.

According to published news reports and interviews I’ve heard, the troubling language that Granite Broadcasting (owner of WEEK) wants to insert in the contract is something called “jurisdicitional flexibility.” The employees believe that, regardless of current plans, this language will give the company the option of outsourcing the news if they desire.

So I asked Mr. DeSantis, if the company plans to keep local news operations local, why are they pushing for this “jurisdictional flexibility” language? What does the company hope to gain by including this in the contract? What are some examples of the types of things the company could or would do with this contract language?

DeSantis declined to answer, saying, “Obviously we cannot get into specific issues with regard to language proposals. These are employee issues and getting into specifics would be a breach of our relationship with the union. What I can say is that the proposed language is becoming industry standard and exists with units in many stations including stations represented by AFTRA. So there is nothing in the proposal that would be new to the union representing the WEEK/WHOI newsroom. It is, understandably, new to this unit and I understand that change is not easy for employees to accept.”

My take: To some extent, the news is always going to have to be gathered locally. If you want to get on-camera interviews with local newsmakers, you have to have someone in Peoria holding the camera and asking questions. If you want to cover local sports, someone has to be in Peoria attending the games and getting footage. In essence, you have to have some kind of reporting/newsgathering staff here locally, and you have to have some amount of camera equipment to support that function. But everything else — editing, voice over, and especially anchoring — can be done remotely, from a technical standpoint.

It’s true there has been investment in equipment and sets, but those can be moved. When Granite entered into a local marketing agreement with Barrington Broadcasting, owner of WHOI, they moved WHOI’s sets to WEEK’s studio, as well as their equipment. If Granite wanted to move the whole works to Ft. Wayne, they could pack up the sets on a truck and move them out to Indiana in a jiffy. The digital equipment could be repurposed to Granite’s other stations, or kept here for use as a production facility (i.e., creating commercials or other production services for hire). Even if they sold the equipment, any loss could arguably be covered by the decreased personnel costs.

The bottom line is that many local residents just don’t trust Granite Broadcasting. We’ve seen them move all their master control out of the area, resulting in job losses here. We saw them try to move the weather reports out of state for a while. We’ve seen the increase in technical glitches during the news programs. We saw them get rid of reporters when they brought WHOI into the fold. It’s hard not to be skeptical of their assurances that they’re heavily invested in the area and have no plans to move the local news operation in light of all these other actions that have hurt our local news coverage.

Support your home team

I’ll let this video speak for itself, except to say I support keeping our local news local:

You can get more information on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/peoriaaftra. They’re encouraging everyone to contact their boss, their boss’s boss, and their boss’s boss’s boss:

Who to Contact:

Mark DeSantis
General Manager
WEEK/WHOI
2907 Springfield Road
East Peoria, IL 61611
mdesantis@week.com
309-698-2525

Granite Broadcasting
Mr. Peter Markham, Chairman of Granite Broadcasting
p.markham@granitetv.com

Mr. Duane Lammers, Chief Operating Officer of Granite Broadcasting
d.lammers@granitetv.com

767 Third Ave, 34th Floor
New York, NY 10017

(212) 826-2530

Kudos to Journal Star on some great reporting

A couple pieces worth reading, if you haven’t already:

  • Investigative Report on Overtime: With the city facing a budget deficit of $10-12 million, everything is under scrutiny, and that certainly includes the city’s largest expense: salaries. So kudos to the Journal Star — and specifically John Sharp — for the in-depth analysis of overtime expenses in the police and fire departments. All angles of the story were covered between the main article and numerous sidebars.

    I thought it was interesting that the police union would rather see property taxes raised than take a pay freeze, considering almost half the force lives outside of Peoria and would be unaffected by a tax hike. It was also interesting to read that Mayor Ardis is threatening the police department with layoffs if they don’t voluntarily freeze their wages.

  • Local Media Beat: Steve Tarter’s weekly column keeps us up to date on what’s happening in local TV and radio. His article this Sunday included some great news: Fort Wayne weatherman Jason Meyers is going away.

    A grievance filed by Channel 25 employees over displacement of station personnel by using the aforementioned Fort Wayne weatherman for weekend weather on the station’s local-news show was upheld by an arbitrator last week.

    The news is the last bastion for local programming on commercial television, and here’s WEEK outsourcing the weatherman — roughly one third of the local newscast — after they already obliterated WHOI’s independent news team. It’s sad that local content has sunk to such a low.

Peoria loses another independent news source (UPDATED)

The rumors have been flying for weeks. We all knew it was coming. And now it’s here: WEEK has taken over the operation of WHOI:

March 2, 2009 – Granite Broadcasting Corporation and Barrington Broadcasting Group, LLC announced that, effective March 2, 2009, WEEK-TV and WHOI-TV will be operated jointly from the WEEK-TV studios in East Peoria, Illinois. Granite will operate both stations under a shared services agreement (SSA) with Barrington, owner of WHOI-TV.

Under the terms of the agreement, Granite will continue to operate WEEK-TV and provide advertising, sales, promotion, administrative services and selected programming to WHOI-TV. This arrangement between Granite and Barrington will create a better and more efficient operation, which will enhance these outstanding local television stations. A similar arrangement provides that Barrington will provide advertising, sales, promotion, administrative services and selected programming to Granite’s Syracuse, New York station, WTVH-TV.

In making this announcement, Granite Broadcasting’s Chief Executive Officer Don Cornwell said, “This arrangement is an important step in the implementation of Granite’s strategic vision to capitalize on our core strength of operating leading local stations in the nation’s mid-size markets. It provides opportunities for substantial operating efficiencies by allowing us to use our existing infrastructure to expand the breadth of local news and services provided to the viewers of Central Illinois, while enhancing the revenue and profitability of both stations.”

Barrington Chief Executive Officer Jim Yager stated, “We are delighted to be working with a forward-thinking company like Granite. Together, our companies and stations will focus our combined resources on making these great stations more efficient, becoming even better community citizens and, at the same time, providing measurable benefits for our viewers.”

Under the terms of the SSA, Granite and Barrington expect to realize a number of expense efficiencies through the combining of resources and the reduction of some staff positions. Affected employees will receive a generous severance package and extensive job placement assistance will be offered at company expense.

One of the chief advantages of operating WEEK and WHOI under a shared services agreement will be the ability to offer local and national news, as well as programming of community interest in new and varied time periods, giving viewers greater opportunity to watch at their convenience. The Granite and Barrington plan will fully develop this opportunity, offering local newscasts expanded in both breadth and amount. Specifically, the stations will provide newscasts in time periods not currently programmed with local news and extend local news to other time periods, allowing viewers more access to Central Illinois reports and information. Another Granite objective is to improve the emergency weather forecasting and daily forecasting by bringing the latest and best technology to both stations. New programs focusing on all important medical issues and franchise segments highlighting critical issues of public service will also be added to the stations in the next few weeks.

In addition, community charitable organizations presently on either WEEK or WHOI will receive increased exposure using the power of the two stations working together. One example is WEEK’s highly successful Buddy Check and Prostate Awareness programs. Also, the St. Jude Telethon, now in its 35th year on WEEK, will air on both stations. Another is the 25 Women In Leadership program. WHOI’s One Class at a Time, Relay for Life and special programs for the Peoria Zoo, along with numerous other community programs will continue. The stations will now concentrate on these highly popular outreach campaigns to further drive the focus on those deserving of recognition within the community.

Other plans include production of town hall meetings and a variety of community forums on WEEK and WHOI stations at different times, so viewers have greater access to information of local relevance. Granite also will expand its policy of sponsoring political debates and offering free airtime to candidates in every national election on both of the stations.

So now, although we have five commercial station owners, we have only two commercial station operators. And so, practically speaking, we have only two local TV news organizations now. One is the WEEK/WHOI/WAOE organization and the other is the WMBD/WYZZ organization. I fail to see the benefit to the Peoria area of all this media consolidation.

UPDATE: Here’s some more information on personnel and schedules from WEEK’s site:

For you viewers, here are the changes, HOI-19’s early news moves to 5:30 p.m. Then ABC’s World News Tonight on WHOI moves to 6:00 p.m., providing nightly national news so those working later now have access to the national and international information in a new and more convenient time period.

News 25 at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. stays the same as will the morning and 10 p.m. newscasts on both stations. Jen Christensen will continue to anchor HOI-19’s newscasts and HOI-19’s popular Sports Director Jim Mattson will join forces with News 25’s Lee Hall to make up the best and most aggressive sports team in Central Illinois. News 25’s popular Weather Man Lee Ranson will give the forecasts for both stations.

The two stations will produce newscasts with the combined staffs of both broadcast teams.

Goodbye, analog

I admit it, I stayed up until midnight last night to watch all the analog TV signals go off the air. WTVP had a short countdown just before midnight that said, “after 37 years” on their analog frequency, they were shutting down “in just a few moments,” but that programming would continue on 47.1, 47.2, and 47.3. Once the countdown hit 0, the signal was gone. Nothing but snow.

When I went to WMBD (31), they were already off the air. WYZZ (43) and WEEK (25) ceased regular programming, but kept their transmitter on to broadcast a public service announcement loop on how to make the conversion to digital television. WHOI (19) did not go off the air yet, opting to keep their analog signal on until the extended cutoff date in June.

There’s no question that the quality of picture and audio is far superior on digital television. The only thing I will miss is the ability to pull in weak signals of television stations from other cities. For instance, I could get an analog signal from channel 8 in the Quad Cities and channels 12 and 17 from Urbana and Decatur, respectively. They were a little snowy, but could still be watched. I cannot get the digital signals from these stations. Not a big deal; just a little something I’ll miss. When I was a little kid, I remember getting a snowy picture of channel 55 out of Springfield, and once — just once, on a freak night — channel 44 out of Chicago.

Farewell, analog. Welcome, digital. I’m looking forward to seeing the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series in beautiful high-definition glory!