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First off, if you’re not familiar with the Sinclair Group, check out this post:
John Oliver's Hilarious and Frightening Warning About the Next (and Worse) Fox News
and the John Oliver video, explaining who they are, and what they are doing.
In brief, they want to buy out your local News Station and the insist that the station run, ultra-right, corporately-produced, conservative news pieces — under the guise of “your local trusted News Team”. Think ”Swiftboat Veterans for Truth“, and you’ll get the idea of their indoctrination gameplan.
Well one city, on Sinclair’s target acquisition list is St. Louis. And local reporters there are none-too-happy about the prospect.
Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media is bad news for St. Louis
by Jeffrey Layne Blevins, St Louis Post-Dispatch — July 3, 2017
Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media is bad news for the principles of localism, diversity and competition in the St. Louis media market. With the purchase of Tribune’s television properties, Sinclair would own and operate three stations in St. Louis, including two major network affiliates: KDNL-TV (an ABC affiliate), KTVI-TV (a FOX affiliate), and KPLR-TV (a CW affiliate).
Why is it bad news? Sinclair, which is headquartered in Maryland, was the architect of the concept of “central casting” by providing pre-packaged news segments (including weather) that were surreptitiously inserted into the local news broadcasts of its owned-and-operated stations across the U.S. All of those local news broadcasts also carried a segment titled “The Point” by one of Sinclair’s corporate executives, Mark Hyman, that provided a politically conservative perspective on public affairs.
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Under current telecommunication law, U.S. broadcasters are currently allowed to reach no more than 39 percent of U.S. television households through their owned-and-operated stations, and current rules would not allow multiple station ownership in certain markets. [...]
However, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has already signaled his willingness to relax media ownership rules further, which would allow Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune to go forward. A similar situation occurred in 2004 when Congress changed the owned-and-operated television station cap to 39 percent after Fox Television Stations, Inc. purchased Chris-Craft Industries’ broadcast properties, exceeding the legal limit at the time of 35 percent.
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Want to know why roughly 39% of viewers, Voted for President “Grabby Hands”?
Well, how much of the local news media markets were controlled by the Fox Network at the time — roughly 39%.
And now the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, sees no problems with bumping up that share of Media Market control — even higher, for Sinclair’s proposed Mega-purchase of Tribune.
What is a good round number that the Chairman will sign-off on? 42% … 45% … 50% ???
Hell, if they got the money — he’s got the exemption all lined up, and ready to go!
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Someone needs to remind Mr Pai, that among the top goals of the FCC own Mission Statements, is to PROMOTE Competition and a diversity of Viewpoints — NOT to CONSOLIDATE those Views to a single corporate provider (no matter how much money they might be throwing around) …
The FCC's Mission
Promoting Economic Growth and National Leadership.
Promote the expansion of competitive telecommunications networks, which are a vital component of technological innovation and economic growth and help to ensure that the U.S. remains a leader in providing its citizens opportunities for economic and educational development.
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Promoting Operational Excellence
Make the FCC a model for excellence in government by effectively managing the FCC’s resources and maintaining a commitment to transparent and responsive processes that encourage public involvement and best serve the public interest.
I would suggest that putting Sinclair in charge of 3 News Stations in a major U.S. City, like St Louis, is NOT serving the Public Interest, is NOT promoting Competition, and is NOT acting in a “transparent and responsive” way to serve the Public.
We’ve seen what the Foxificaton (and the Rush-ifying) of America can do. Do we really need to test out the Sinclair-fication of America, to see if THAT will promote “educational development” — as the FCC is also mandated to do? Just one BIGGER slice of the FoxNews Pie — IOW the conservative ticket to paradise …
If the Deal goes through, we will all be getting a daily dose of Sinclair Commentator (and Vice President) Mark Hyman (behindtheheadlines.net) — as just another vanilla puff-piece, snuck-in among our local diet of News, Weather, and Sports.
What’s the harm? Just another local guy ‘’makes good” story …
You know, like SBVT (another Hyman Production), which didn’t change much either — it’s just that ‘John Kerry was just too chicken to correct the Record at the time’, some say.
We simply just had to wait 9 years for that. And that Problem’s solved!