Free Press rallying to stop SSAs, LMAs and JSAs

[T.L. Hughes 752]

Anti-media consolidation group Free Press has recently started a new website concerning the issues with the FCC's media ownership rules that allow loopholes that result in virtual duopolies, triopolies and "quadropolies" (this is the second time I used that term, don't know if it's the correct use) that have popped up in many mid- and small-sized media markets, resulting in what it calls "covert consolidation".

 

The site is called "Change the Channels", which can be reached at www.freepress.net/changethechannels (link here). It includes a map showing the various markets where these ownership/management loopholes exist as well as stories relating to television media consolidation and the negative effects it has on independent journalism.

 

There are a few minorly-irrelevant management agreements mentioned: for example, it cites Hoak Media's LMA with KAQY/Monroe, Louisiana (which is managed alongside Hoak-owned KNOE) with a note stating LMAs result in one station producing news for another, although the last time I checked, KAQY does not and (if I recall correctly) never has had a local newscast at any time during its 15-year existence, so the LMA with KNOE doesn't apply in the news programming sense. It also mentions WTTO/WDBB and WABM in Birmingham as a virtual triopoly, Sinclair owns/manages these stations but it isn't really a virtual triopoly since WDBB is a satellite of WTTO (the FCC counts a station and any full-power satellite stations that relay its programming as a single entity) and the fact that neither station produces news (being CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates that aren't owned by Tribune Company, this is a given) and WDBB hasn't even produced a local newscast since the mid-1990s, when it and WTTO were still with Fox.

 

All in all, some of the facts mentioned on the site about the individual virtual duopolies/triopolies/"quadropolies" are a bit irrelevant in regards to local news programming, but the site does touch on a serious issue with the concentration of local media ownership in the United States today, and as many other TVNT users agree that some reform needs to be made by the FCC to close these loopholes that allow stations to be controlled by one company, while being owned by another (simply because as I said in the thread about the Sinclair and Nexstar purchases of Newport Television stations in San Antonio and Little Rock, the media ownership rules are too vague) and don't even recognize when these SSA/LMA/JSAs hit the threshold of violating TV station cross-ownership rules in markets where a legal duopoly isn't allowed.

[Spring Rubber 614]

I used to go to college in Bloomington, IL, which is part of the Peoria market. Man, it's brutal over there. WEEK, WHOI, and WAOE are all part of the same SSA, which results in the same news team (WEEK) producing newscasts for all three stations.

 

In addition to that triopoly, the market also has a duopoly with WMBD and WYZZ in which WMBD produces a weekday newscast at 9 PM for WYZZ. Other than that, there is no other news to be found on WYZZ. Even the commercials for news and weather services on WYZZ all promote "sister" station WMBD instead.

 

It's bad enough that all of the local newscasts in the market are low-quality and look as if they're straight out of the early 1990s, but it's even worse when you only have two groups operating all five stations that air news in the market.

[CircleSeven 1944]

And from this article posted a couple of days ago, that this TVNewsCheck columnist stated that the FCC might follow though with outlawing new JSA/SSAs and to give a couple of years to exhaust exisiting ones. This columnist says "That's the wrong way to go" and wants the existing LMAs to be grandfathered. The reason why the FCC wants to get rid of these arrangements is to let the airwaves go to more minority firms.