Arthur Hasson

Mort Marcus, co-president of Debmar-Mercury (center), says that station groups that produce their own shows and, in some cases, leave them on the air longer than they deserve, are making the tough syndication business even tougher. Fellow panelist Bob Sullivan, the chief of programming for Tegna, one of the do-it-yourself station groups, saw thing differently. The full TV2020 panel (l-r): Frank Cicha of Fox, Ken Werner of Warner Bros., Marcus, Arthur Hasson of Sinclair and Bob Sullivan of Tegna. (Photo: Erica Keane).

Fox Television Stations’ Frank Cicha, Sinclair’s Arthur Hasson, Debmar-Mercury’s Mort Marcus, Tegna’s Bob Sullivan and Warner Bros. Ken Werner will look beyond the networks for promising new programming opportunities at TVNewsCheck’s second annual TV2020 conference in October.

Under its new programming COO, the station group is developing shows in virtually every genre of unscripted programming that it will attempt to syndicate to other broadcasters in an effort to “control costs and develop new revenue streams,” Hasson says.

Arthur Hasson will oversee all programming as COO, Sinclair Programming. Bill Butler, VP of programming and promotion, becomes SVP of promotion and corporate marketing in the reorganization.

Sinclair Original Programming will be headed by COO Arthur Hasson. The unit will focus on creating shows primarily for the group’s MNT and CW affils in addition to business-to-consumer content such as infomercials and direct response commercials.

The former NBCU exec will oversee Sinclair’s Harrisburg, Pa., CBS affiliate as well as Nexstar’s WLYH.