WHOI Anchor Gone After Less Than 3 Months
WHOI Dropping Anchors Gretchen Wirtz, Mark Welp
Quincy Media, owner of NBC affiliate WEEK Peoria-Bloomington, Ill., has purchased the market’s ABC and CW affiliations from the Sinclair Broadcast Group which carried them on WHOI. WEEK had already been providing news and other services to WHOI. WEEK GM Mark DeSantis says: “You’ll still find separate news on both channels.” The deal comes on the heels of another on Tuesday in which Quincy sold its Fox affiliation for WSJV South Bend, Ind., to Sinclair, which will air the network on a subchannel of its CBS affil WSBT.
Contract Talks Continue At WEEK, WHOI
Members of the Peoria, Ill., local chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists at WEEK and WHOI on Friday rejected what the stations’ owner Granite Broadcasting called its “last, best and final offer.”
Employees at WEEK and WHOI say they are prepared to strike over negotiations with the stations’ owner, Granite Broadcasting Corp. Employees say Granite’s push to be able to “hire out” its news coverage of the Peoria area could mean that the city will eventually be covered from Fort Wayne, Ind.
