New Jersey lawmakers have responded to a crisis in local news coverage by dedicating public money to fund journalism in what is believed to be the first effort of its kind.
STATION ADVISORY
Now’s The Time To Register C-Band Downlinks
COMMENTARY
The Real Danger Of Trump’s Media War
Fox News political analyst Juan Williams: “In many ways, Trump is the white Marion Barry. They share a willingness to play racial politics, an authoritarian bent and an open hostility towards journalists. There is one important difference: Trump is doing his damage at the national level.”
The former Fox News executive, who was formally brought into the White House last month as deputy chief of staff for communications, has yet to move into a permanent office or bring on his own staff. But he is already putting his mark on the West Wing, clashing with reporters, improving the production quality of White House events and trying to shape the message of an administration whose communication strategy has always seemed haphazardly dictated by tweet.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
STATION ADVISORY
Identifying Digital/Social Media Asset Owners
Media companies should be making clear by contract or otherwise who owns the podcasts, webpages, blogs and social media accounts that their employees and independent contractors have created.
JESSELL AT LARGE
Jessell: Tribune Starts Over, Sinclair Digs Out
Following the spectacular collapse of their merger, Tribune and Sinclair have to go back to work. For Tribune, that means putting up the “For Sale” sign again, with plenty of interested buyers out there. For Sinclair, things are ominous. First it must settle Tribune’s billion-dollar lawsuit, and then find a way back into the FCC’s good graces. That could prove costly, too.
It says Sinclair broke its merger agreement by proposing “extremely risky and highly controversial divestitures to buyers that were specifically disfavored by the FCC staff,” deliberately omitted material facts from FCC applications and generally antagonizing “the regulators at both DOJ and the FCC while seeking their approval.”
Exclusives
STATION ADVISORY
EAS, WEA National Tests Scheduled For Sept. 20
At the same time as it ends the $3.9 billion deal, it files a lawsuit seeking compensation “for all losses incurred as a result of Sinclair’s material breaches of the merger agreement.” It also releases its second quarter earnings results that included Television and Entertainment segment revenues of $486.4 million, up 4% from $466.1 million in 2Q 2017.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a Delaware judge said he had concerns about the medical condition of 95-year-old media mogul Sumner Redstone and declined to order that he be deposed in the legal battle between his family’s holding company, National Amusements Inc., and CBS Corp. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai sent Tuesday, Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrats on the House committee overseeing the FCC, said that the commission should look into the possibility that Sinclair had conspired with Tribune Media, which it’s trying to acquire.
National Amusements Inc. and CBS Corp. are fighting over the admissibility of a recent video of Sumner Redstone as part of the larger legal fight over control of CBS. The video purportedly supports CBS’ contention that CBS and Viacom chairman emeritus Sumner Redstone is no longer mentally competent and that his daughter, Shari Redstone, has been improperly calling the shots at his National Amusements holding company, which controls Viacom and CBS.
The FCC on Monday said that a cyberattack on its comment system that it claimed had taken place last year never actually happened. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a statement saying the agency’s former CIO provided “inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress and the American people.”
The judge who refused to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner ignored “fundamental principles of economics and common sense,” the Department of Justice writes in court papers filed Monday with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Donald Trump has not contacted the FCC about its lack of approval for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed deal to buy Tribune Media, which Trump has called “disgraceful” on Twitter, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says.
Sinclair Broadcast Group hired a group of Republican lobbyists last month as the F CC put its proposed merger with Tribune Media in jeopardy, according to disclosure forms released this week. The filings show that Sinclair tapped the lobbyists to advocate for the embattled merger on June 19, three days after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he had “serious concerns” about the deal and would be referring it to an onerous administrative law proceeding.
COMMENTARY
Free Speech Is On A Slippery Slope
Rich people have free speech rights. Do the corporations they run? That question is destroying democracy.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday refused to say the media is not the enemy of the people in an extraordinary exchange with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who has been at the center of a firestorm over President Trump and the press.
They would cover LPTV, TV translator and FM stations. The action implements the 2018 Reimbursement Expansion Act.
The FCC today took what it called “a historic and long overdue step” to increase ownership diversity in the radio industry. Specifically, it adopted requirements that will govern an incubator […]
Jeff Fager, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, stands accused of making unwanted advances and enabling harassment by others in positions of power at the newsmagazine, according to Ronan Farrow’s report in The New Yorker. Fager firmly denied the allegations. He seems determined to defend both his own reputation and the esteemed 60 Minutes brand. But the accusations of misconduct came as no surprise to 60 Minutes veterans, who had long suspected that stories might be coming.
An Alabama law firm that advertised on television is accusing the six biggest owners of TV stations — Sinclair Broadcast Group, Tribune Media, Gray Television, Hearst Corp., Nexstar Media Group and Tegna — of scheming to artificially inflate the price of ads, according to a new antitrust class action lawsuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court may soon have the opportunity to shake up the consumption of news. At stake could very well be the online dissemination of broadcast news clips as well as a deeper understanding of how politics and news intersect. That’s because Wednesday, the media monitoring service TVEyes indicated in an application to the high court that it would indeed be petitioning for review of a recent appellate loss to Fox News.
The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Wednesday it will question executives from Facebook and other social media companies on Sept. 5 in the wake of Facebook’s revelation of a new disinformation campaign aimed at […]
Los Angeles prosecutors said on Tuesday that they had declined to pursue three accusations of sexual abuse against CBS Corp Chief Executive Les Moonves dating back to the 1980s because the statute of limitations had expired.
At a particularly tense moment at CBS, the company must now answer for the destruction of messages by senior executives. According to an emergency discovery motion filed by Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, CBS has admitted to spoiling certain evidence in the ongoing battle over control of the broadcast giant.
