For years, living in Toronto, my Sunday morning ritual has included the weekly political forums on them main networks. Of all of them, I most enjoyed Meet the Press, primarily because Tim Russert's interviews tended to be the ones that made 'news'.
Due to a number of circumstances, I moved back to my hometown of Kingston, Ontario, 2.5 hours east of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario. It's a nice town, and I remembered watching Meet the Press here in my university days on WSTM, the Syracuse NBC channel. However, since I moved back to Kingston in April, something has been amiss my Sunday mornings. Meet the Press has been censored for Bush criticisms by WSTM.
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At first, I wasn't sure that it was censorship. WSTM would air their Sunday morning news after the today show, and then at 10 o'clock, WSTM would go blank - just a black screen. I assumed that there was some sort of a problem with satellites and transmissions - all of the stations in Syracuse constantly have satellite problems (Monday Night Football was a doozy on Syracuse's ABC channel), so I didn't think too much of it.
It did air sometimes, but usually it would be one of the more boring programs with Bush sycophants. I thought that was strange, but chalked that up to coincidence.
Then today's show came on.
Despite the fact that it hasn't been on in months, I had the channel on WSTM, just in case it happened to be on. Much to my shock, it was on. First it was going to be hurricaine talk, and then the NYT columnists (shilling for their new pay site I suppose). I easgerly sat in to watch my first Meet the Press since my last visit to Toronto.
The interviews with Aaron Broussard and Gov. Perry went off without a hitch, and then the NYT columnists began. So far, so good - Russert's being a typical dick and is apologising for the Bush administration while attacking their critics. There's not a lot of negative Bush talk yet - David Brooks is speaking about Bush - screen cuts to black - comes back a few seconds later. Maureen Dowd begins talking about how Katrina exposes failures of Iraq - suddenly Maureen's beautiful visage (flame away) is replaced by an infomercial for a local used car dealership.
There are satellite and transmission problems, there is incompetence, and there is censorship. For too long, I have thought that it was the one of the first two denying me my weekly Meet the Press fix. Now, I'm pretty sure that it is censorship, as the coincidences are too many. As far as I know, WSTM hasn't had a problem broadcasting any other show.
WSTM is owned by Raycom Media Inc., which, as far as I can tell, is a pretty right-leaning company. They are based in Alabama, own a ton of stations, and have broken several FCC rules acquiring multiple channels in the same market. They then combine the newsrooms and lay people off. In Syracuse, they also own the UPN channel (which I don't get).
Anyone else have problems getting their TV fixes due to corporate censorship? Does this piss anyone else off? Anyone know if this is against FCC rules?