@mouseam @matt Saw this yesterday and thought of this thread: http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/09/people-are-watching-a-lot-less-tv-news-especially-local-tv-as-they-get-more-news-online/
Thank you, @catone! This is interesting. It does increase my concern about where older generations are getting the news online though. They are more likely to fall for fake/overly biased news articles. Glad that there is a shift away from local news!
In good news, Maddow closed out on top for August! While Trump supporters like to accuse her of being “fake liberal news”, which is so far off base. Even Bannon admires her, he thought of her as “master of fact-based partisan polemics” and then there was her odd/random relationship with a Roger Ailes, who literally wanted to pay her to simply keep her off the air (scared much? 
).
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“Interlocking directorates” at work, here (as Professor Chomsky might call them). 
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Haven’t read this, yet, but the plot thickens…
Oofa this was a chunk and a fucking half of article. Don’t know why I feel like writing a book report on it, but tl;dr:
Sinclair’s stations around the country slip hardline political content between local weather, high school sports, and city council reports—broadcasting to a mass audience that, survey after survey shows, trusts local news more than any other medium.
Lots of history of four Smith brothers building their empire (David is the one who met directly with drumpf over dinner).
Their first loophole-ing to acquire more of the market:
Standing in their way was the duopoly rule, a 1940s-era policy preventing broadcasters from owning more than one station in a single market. To take over a second station in Baltimore, their mother, Carolyn Smith, and a Pittsburgh-based African American broadcaster named Edwin Edwards Sr. established a company called Glencairn. With financial backing from the Smith family, Glencairn acquired WNUV, but Sinclair would share advertising sales and staffing and provide 20 hours of programming a day. While Edwards controlled Glencairn’s voting shares, according to FCC records, profit from the new stations would flow through the company to the Smith family.
Coincidentally, then-President Jimmy Carter’s FCC had
introduced policies designed to encourage greater minority ownership of TV stations, and according to the lawyer, it cited that goal in its decision approving an early Sinclair deal with Edwards.
Moving on…
The FCC’s scrutiny caused Smith and his brothers to see the value of friends in Washington. Between 1997 and 2002, the Smith brothers donated nearly $200,000 to Republican candidates and committees in Maryland and at the federal level. The Smiths were also generous with Democrats, when they were in a position to help: One former Sinclair executive told me the company’s political giving “was primarily FCC-driven. Who could be friendly? Who could help them with the FCC?”
Apparently 9/11 was a pretty good days for these fuckwits:
“The management of WBFF Fox 45 stands behind the president,” the anchor said, “and our nation’s leaders in the vow that terrorism must be stopped. If you agree, make your voice heard.” It was days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and soon all 62 of Sinclair’s stations would deliver messages like this, to millions of viewers around the country.
…so that’s nice.
In 2002, the milestone:
Sinclair created a national news desk to produce segments for stations’ local newscasts, and in 2003 it followed up with a Washington bureau.
I’m cracking up about this:
The company’s first choice was not Donald Trump, but Dr. Ben Carson, the retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon. Carson was something of a celebrity in Baltimore and had appeared at Sinclair-sponsored town hall events in the region.
But then drumpf ended up as the GOP nominee, so of course
Jared Kushner, speaking in a postelection off-the-record session, described an arrangement where Sinclair had aired interviews with candidate Trump without commentary in exchange for greater access to the campaign.
(article includes links to both Politico and WaPo with more detail on all of that.)
With the drumpf victory, David Smith is creaming his pants at the opportunity for complete deregulation. And indeed with the new appointees (I had no idea Ajit Pai was a former Sen Sessions staffer!),
FCC has seemingly gone out of its way to grease the wheels for the Sinclair-Tribune merger, reinstating a rule from the Reagan era that could help the company avoid limits on media consolidation.
And they do fun things like respond to criticism of the “must-run” segments by tripling the amount of times the segments must run.
There’s a bunch more slimy history, and some interesting polls, but again, tl;dr, etc.
If the merger is approved, Sinclair’s broadcasts will reach 72 percent of all households. Some media analysts have speculated that with Fox News reeling from cascading sexual harassment scandals, Sinclair senses an opportunity to build a rival conservative network. David Smith is reportedly eyeing a collaboration with Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist who leads Breitbart News. There have also been reports, which Sinclair denies, that the company is pursuing the ousted Fox host Bill O’Reilly as well as Sean Hannity.
Whatthefuckever. This is going through, I just don’t doubt it anymore at all. I do, however, enjoy the acts of rebellion like when Seattle’s KOMO station only ran the must run segments at like 4am.
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OOOH! I actually fully, 100% encourage this. Maybe that’s a thing we could do on WTF? A sort of book reports section of essays detailing the who, what, setting, context, themes, etc.
That’s way better than op-eds and a nicer way of understanding the context of big hairy topics (like this discussion).
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@matt I feel like that was the original intent Ezra Klein had with Vox when he announced it – understand news in context by providing history and detailed timelines. They’ve sometimes done that, but really strayed from the mission because they found out context doesn’t pay the bills. 
(Though Vox does still produce some great stuff – their non-news video content is often especially interesting.)
Anyway, +1 to this idea on WTFJH, though, since ya’ll aren’t beholden to advertisers the way Vox is.
zero fucks given by Ajit Pai about consumers.
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I love that I’m plural! jk.
I agree! We should do more as a community to put shit in context. I love @MissJava’s WTF “Book Reports” idea – a sort of ELI5 x an executive summary on a topic. Pretty much the same thing as Current Status: Where we're at with all the storylines
I can provide the platform and audience if somebody wants to lead the charge.
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This made me think about Axios – which I’ve found a new appreciation for. I feel like it’s the cliff notes version of Vox at times. However, they can at times lack…focus, I guess you can call it? I do like that they keep it short, sweet and to the point – they usually a section like “why it matters” or links to “go deeper” and “don’t forget”, etc. Also, their graphics team has been killin’ it lately.
Yeah, I really like the Axios model of “value-added curation” (my term, not theirs). It’s sort of an update on the old model of The Week magazine. I don’t read Axios a ton for political news (except when they have a scoop everyone is linking to), but I have been reading them a lot for business stuff.
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Citing primary sources only works if all parties recognize real facts and not alternative facts. I offer climate deniers as example.
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Here’s more on Sinclair media and Trump/Kushner.
A primary source has nothing to do with facts in journalism. It has to do with a person directly involved or present for an event. Whether or not they’re telling the truth is something else entirely.
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There is much reliance on the populace being too preoccupied with busy lifestyles, earning a living, being the family taxi, grocery shopper, cook, dishwasher and the one who shovels the poop to actually have the energy to take an active interest in educating ourselves about things of such importance and complexity. I see this in a family member and have suggested she stop voting if she doesn’t have time to become informed. Fat chance that will happen.
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I suspect the majority of voters do not dig very deep into the issues or candidates. Either voters didn’t dig very deep into The Donald or else they said “it smells but i will take it anyway”.
I think statistically, yes - but based on personal experiences I think it may be skewed (personal opinion/gut intuition though).
Local news is still very important to a majority of households in the US.
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Local news viewership is in decline, but it’s still a significant source of information for a ton of people.
According to Pew, for people under 18-29 TV is still the preferred source for over a quarter, that number goes up to half for 30-49 year olds, and the vast majority of people over 49 rely on television for news.
And local TV is still a big part of that mix:
This is important because 1. younger people consume less news in total anyway, so these local broadcasts are still reaching a large portion of actual news consumers, and 2. people over 35 vote more, so, these local news broadcasts are reaching a lot more of likely voters.
Also from Pew, local TV news reach has declined a lot since 2007, but still reaches a huge number of people on a daily basis: http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/local-tv-news/
I think it’d be a mistake to discount the significance of Sinclair’s reach.
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