Tag Archives: Television

Television

How does TV channel 59 serve the local interest?

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Television stations that broadcast on the public airwaves are required by law to operate in the “public interest, convenience,and necessity.” Brookings has a good history of this phrase and how it has been interpreted. There is some controversy over what “public interest” means, but surely if it means anything, airing infomercials 24 hours a day, seven days a week, does not qualify.

But that’s what channel 59, WAOE-TV is doing. Every day in high definition, the station offers no entertainment programming, no news programming, no sports programming, no local programming, no network programming, almost no programming of any kind that could be considered in the public interest except for three hours of children’s programming per week to meet FCC mandates. Other than that, it’s nothing but paid commercial programming around the clock.

What’s the benefit to the television-watching public? The public airwaves are a scarce resource. Surely there are better ways to use such a limited resource than wall-to-wall commercials. But perhaps in this age of streaming programs over the internet, this is just the death rattle of over-the-air television. If so, maybe it’s time to pull the plug.

In fairness, they do have two standard-definition digital subchannels:

  • 59.2 is TheGrio, which provides programming “focused on the African American community,” according to their website.
  • 59.3 is VPOD TV, which airs TV shows and movies in the public domain as well as some original content.

However, neither of these channels provide any local programming, and being standard-definition, the quality of the sound and picture are not very good by current standards. Peoria deserves better.

Television

Peoria ‘one of the worst cases of covert media consolidation in the country’

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The media reform group FreePress has a campaign called Change the Channels, and it is currently profiling our fair city, saying, “Peoria, Illinois is suffering from one of the worst cases of covert consolidation in the country; all five of its commercial TV stations produce just two distinct newscasts and are controlled by only two companies.” Those two companies, of course, are:

  • Granite Broadcasting, which owns and operates WEEK (channel 25) and, through a local marketing agreement (LMA), operates WHOI (channel 19) and WAOE (channel 59)
  • Nexstar Broadcasting Group, which owns and operates WMBD (channel 31) and, through an LMA, operates WYZZ (channel 43)

They go on to say, “This situation is unacceptable. Two newsrooms simply cannot provide Peoria…with the amount of local news coverage and diversity of perspectives that residents need to stay informed.”

Of course, most of this isn’t news to the residents here in Peoria, but they did have one other claim that I hadn’t heard before: “Three of those stations, WEEK, WHOI and WAOE, are part of an anti-competitive conspiracy that spans two states.” They explain:

Granite’s Shared Services Agreement with Barrington Broadcasters is a particularly outrageous anti-competitive conspiracy between the two companies. Each company owned one station in the Peoria market, as well as one station in the Syracuse, N.Y., market. In order to avoid competing with one another in both markets, they simply “swapped” control of the stations, yielding these comparable markets completely to their former competition. This shady deal cost more than 30 jobs in Peoria (along with 45 in Syracuse), destroyed competition and left viewers in both communities with less local news.

Note that phrase: “to avoid competing with one another.” Barrington Broadcasting owns WHOI in Peoria, and when they were producing their own news program, it was unique in the Peoria area, often including investigative reports and stories that the other stations weren’t covering. Once Barrington and Granite entered into an LMA, the reporters were fired and the anchors moved to a set in the same building as WEEK. Now the WEEK and WHOI news programs are nearly identical.

Granite is now in a dispute with the Peoria chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) over contract language that would give Granite “jurisdictional flexibility” — something they could use to move the anchor jobs to their central broadcasting hub in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, for example. The local general manager denies the company has any plans to do so, but he won’t explain why the company insists on having the “jurisdictional flexibility” language in the contract. Granite imposed the contract, and AFTRA has filed a grievance.

The Change the Channels campaign is asking those opposed to these kinds of shared services agreements (which they call “covert media consolidation”) to write to the Federal Communications Commission and ask them to put an end to the practice.

The rules are supposed to protect localism, diversity and competition on the public airwaves, but in almost 80 markets across the country, these rules have been circumvented. Media companies have taken advantage of loopholes to covertly consolidate more than 200 stations, colluding rather than competing in order to cut costs.

As a result, communities are getting less local news than ever before. When the exact same news is aired on several stations, fewer stories told, fewer viewpoints are presented, and the public airwaves are wasted on copycat broadcasts.

Continue reading Peoria ‘one of the worst cases of covert media consolidation in the country’ →

Television

WMBD-TV parent company for sale

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Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc., the parent company of WMBD channel 31 and the operator of WYZZ channel 43 here in Peoria, is for sale. The company issued a press release on July 21 that stated:

Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXST) announced today that its Board of Directors has decided to explore and evaluate strategic alternatives intended to maximize shareholder value, including a possible sale of the Company. The Company has retained Moelis & Company as its financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP as its legal counsel.

The Company has not made a decision to pursue any specific strategic transaction or other strategic alternative and there is no set timetable for the process, so there can be no assurance that the exploration of strategic alternatives will result in a sale of the Company or any other transaction. The Company does not intend to disclose developments with respect to the progress of its strategic review until such time as the Board has approved a transaction or otherwise deems disclosure appropriate.

RBR.com notes that “It is the second time that Nexstar has been on the auction block, with a previous sale attempt called off in 2007 after the market soured.” They also report that the Wall Street Journal Online expects the company to sell for over a billion dollars. These kinds of transactions are called (positively) “mergers and acquisitions,” or “M&A,” by the industry, and (negatively) “media consolidation” by media watchdog groups and concerned citizens.

The website TVNewsCheck.com defends big media:

With each deal, there will be an outcry from those opposed to “media consolidation” as if bigness were in and of itself a bad thing. Bigness can be a good thing. It can provide the resources and legal backing that enterprise and investigative journalism often requires, job security and perks that are disappearing from small companies.

What matters is not how big the new owner is, but who the new owner is. Is it a company that measures the value of a TV stations only in dollars and cents or one that respects the special role TV stations occupy in their communities? Is it one that is in for the long haul or one that will look to flip the group in five to seven years?

That all sounds great in theory, but we’ve yet to see any of these benefits of bigness in Peoria. GateHouse Media and Granite Broadcasting have not improved journalism, nor offered its employees better job security or perks. Quite the opposite.

Television

WAOE adds new sub-channel

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There’s a new TV channel in Peoria. Antenna TV, a new network owned and operated by Tribune Broadcasting in Chicago, is now being broadcast over-the-air on channel 59.2, a sub-channel of WAOE. “The network features classic television programs and favorite movies,” and just debuted the beginning of this year according to the network’s website. I just discovered it over the weekend as it was showing “The Partridge Family,” “The Monkees,” and other classic shows.

WAOE (“my59”) is an affiliate of MyNetworkTV, owned by Four Seasons Broadcasting, and operated by Granite Broadcasting. Granite Broadcasting is reportedly going to impose its “last, best, and final” contract on union employees at its Peoria stations this Saturday, July 16.

See also: Steve Tarter’s blog entry.

Television

WEEK/WHOI reject offer, plan rally

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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.

City of Peoria, Television

Management says local news operation will remain local

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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.

Television

NBC restricts online Olympic coverage to cable subscribers

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I went to NBC’s official web page for Olympic coverage, hoping to see a replay of some of the events. Well, it turns out you can only watch those replays if you’re a cable subscriber–and not just a basic cable subscriber, either. So NBC, even before being purchased by cable giant Comcast, is now making certain web content basically an extension of expanded cable service. No use trying to watch other countries’ coverage. They block you out based on your IP’s country of origin.

What a bust. If I had expanded cable service, why would I need to watch the content on the Internet? Why can’t they offer Olympic content like they do all their other shows — sprinkled with commercials here and there to get the revenue they need? Why the need to tie the coverage to payment of a monthly fee to a cable company, denying access to over-the-air viewers and those whose cable companies don’t have a “partnership” with NBC? Even if you do have a cable subscription, you still have to go through an authentication process that is irritating in itself.

If I wasn’t already soured on NBC enough after the whole Conan fiasco, I certainly have no use for the network now. I’m sure they’ll be back in fourth place again after the Olympics anyway.

Television

WMBD and WYZZ to split

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Nexstar Broadcasting Group, owner of WMBD channel 31, entered into an outsourcing agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of WYZZ channel 43, on December 1, 2001. In April 2002, WYZZ added a 9 p.m. newscast, produced by WMBD’s news department.

It appears that arrangement is coming to an end.

Requests for comment from Sinclair and local General Manager Coby Cooper have gone unanswered. But a reliable source tells me WMBD and WYZZ are splitting as of April 1, 2010. My source says that WYZZ will move back to 2714 E. Lincoln in Bloomington, and the WMBD news bureau that is currently occupying that building has been asked to relocate. A job posting on CareerBuilder.com shows Sinclair is looking for a “General Manager/GSM at WYZZ-TV in Bloomington, IL.” Reportedly they’re in the process of building a separate staff altogether.

Not known is whether that staff will include a news director or reporters. If not, then this move will likely be the end of Fox 43 News at Nine — not that it would be any great loss, considering it’s essentially the same newscast that’s on WMBD at 10:00.

Television

Wireless industry trying to grab TV spectrum

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There’s another television drama taking place — this one is between over-the-air broadcasters and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

You may recall that TV recently went through a digital conversion. Over-the-air (OTA) broadcasters had to upgrade to digital transmitters at significant cost and switch to new broadcasting frequencies. The portion of the spectrum they abandoned was either used for public safety communication or auctioned off to wireless communication companies. Now there appears to be an effort to take part of television’s new broadcast spectrum away as well. Television Broadcast reported in December:

The focus on spectrum use has intensified since the Obama Administration charged the FCC with developing a nationwide wireless broadband network. The commission must present its plan by February [17]. FCC officials started floating the idea of using TV spectrum for broadband in the fall. Several interested parties have glommed onto the notion, from academics to lobbyists to economists, who say broadband is a more efficient use of the spectrum currently dedicated to delivery TV signals.

Another publication, TV Technology, gives some additional details:

…The Wireless Association (formerly known as the Cellular Telephone Association) asked the FCC to examine reallocation of broadcast spectrum to prepare for the “looming spectrum crisis.” They cited Congress’s directive that the FCC must conduct an inventory of all available spectrum with recommendations for greater efficiency….

In early December, the commission issued an urgent request for additional data from broadcasters, citing a “concern that the United States will not have spectrum sufficient to meet the demand for wireless broadband services in the near future.”

The wording of the FCC “data request” triggered even greater fears, exacerbated by the FCC’s unusually short three-week turnaround period. In its official notice, the commission explained that its “inquiry takes into account the value that the United States puts on free, over-the-air television, while also exploring market-based mechanisms for television broadcasters to contribute to the broadband effort any spectrum in excess of that which they need to meet their public interest obligations and remain financially viable.”

For many broadcasters, that sounded like a threat to reduce TV bandwidth to standard-definition capacity and eliminate ancillary channel bandwidth.

In other words, broadcasters are concerned that the FCC is considering limiting them to one standard-definition channel and no subchannels to free up as much spectrum as possible for wireless devices. They argue this would effectively kill OTA television’s viability and mean the only way to get high-definition content would be through services like www.aaasatellite.tv that provide good quality with a really good price. It would also be “the largest bait and switch [scheme] on consumers in the history of our country,” according to Perry Sook, chairman/president/CEO of Nexstar Broadcasting Group (the company that owns WMBD-TV, channel 31, locally).

Television Broadcast now says that the FCC is backing off the idea of an enforced reallocation of spectrum, and is considering a “voluntary opportunity” instead. Nevertheless, the wireless industry’s “spectrum grab” ambitions aren’t dampened:

Wireless industry lobby chief Steve Largent has said his sector will need 800 MHz of additional spectrum in six years…. “We continue to believe that all spectrum should be on the table for potential reallocation, including the almost 300 MHz allocated for broadcast television use, which is spectrum most favorable to mobile broadband. We look forward to working with the commission and the broadband team to consider mechanisms to put spectrum to its highest use.”

Broadcasters point out that the government spent $2 billion promoting digital television and subsidizing set-top TV converter boxes. Furthermore, broadcasters were required without subsidy to upgrade their transmitters to HD digital. Reclaiming TV’s spectrum for other uses would be throwing all that public and private money down the drain. Furthermore, television has a “public interest mandate” (they are required to provide educational and informational content in order to broadcast OTA) that wireless companies do not, making TV more entitled to the spectrum in many broadcasters’ minds.

The fight for spectrum isn’t over. As they say on TV, “stay tuned….”

Television

Why does HDTV go away when the weather is bad?

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Nope, it’s not because you lose the signal. It’s because the local television stations have failed to upgrade a critical piece of equipment in their signal path: the inserter. An inserter is the thing that allows TV stations to put their logo (“bug”) and little severe-weather map in the corner of your screen, and put a text crawl at the bottom of the screen. If the inserter isn’t upgraded to high-definition, guess what? Whenever they use it, it downgrades the picture to standard-definition.

Right now, there’s a severe thunderstorm watch for several counties in the area. So the evening news on channel 19 (which includes several tributes to Michael Jackson) is in standard definition. Any other programs that are on during the watch will also be downgraded. And it’s not just channel 19. I haven’t checked lately, but not long ago when I was watching David Letterman, the opening would pop down to standard def while the channel 31 logo appeared on the screen, then pop back up to high def when the bug disappeared.

My guess is that the TV engineers would really like to get one of these little babies, but the bean counters at corporate aren’t willing to shell out the bucks for it (they can run upwards of $8,000 — not an unusual price for broadcast equipment). So, all the benefits of the government-mandated conversion to HDTV go in the toilet whenever the station puts its logo on screen.

Hey, local TV stations: Buy an HD inserter already. Are you trying to drive your few remaining viewers away?