#sinclair broadcasting

Sinclair Broadcasting on Friday said it is returning "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to its ABC stations, ending its preemption of the late-night show over remarks host Jimmy Kimmel had made on the program related to the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

The show will air on its ABC affiliates tonight, Sinclair said in a statement. Sinclair owns 38 ABC stations across the U.S.

Disney's ABC brought Kimmel's show back on Tuesday following a six-day suspension, but stations owned by Sinclair and Nexstar — about a quarter of the network's affiliates — had continued to air other programming in that time slot instead.

Tumblr, we need to have a discussion. I know this is the no nuance website and thinking critically is an afterthought a lot the time and a lot of yall may not like what I have to say, but I ask you to read anyway.

Firstly, the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel is fucked up and a gross violation of the first amendment of our constitution. That is not in question. However, yall are quick to jump down ABC/Disney’s throat. Now, they are obviously the ones who pulled the plug despite not thinking it was wrong or bad enough to warrant cancelation.

But these selective boycotts are a waste of your time. Firstly, most of y’all don’t even watch the show on avenues that are a) legal or if they are legal are b) Nielson rated. All that these selective boycotts are going to do if you manage to pick up enough steam is to get your favorite shows canceled. It is awfully funny to me though that these targeted actions don’t include ABC’s number one show: High Potential. It’s giving ‘I still want to be able to watch my favorite show and not feel bad about it’.

Also, I have barely seen anyone actually talk about what IS happening here. ABC was threatened by the FCC. It is Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group that said they were going to preemptively pulling Kimmel off of their combined 52 affiliate stations, including most of the highest metro populations. Also, a suspension is not an outright cancelation. (Even though it is as good as one)

SINCLAIR BROADCASTING IS THE ONE EXTORTING KIMMEL. Sinclair said that if he wants to go back on the air he needs to apologize and donate to Turning Point. That is extortion. And the FCC SHOULD be preventing this.

That brings us to the crux of the problem. The FCC. The FCC can pull ABC’s license in total and then we get NOTHING. ABC studios shut down until the license can be gotten back. Is this legal? No. It’s not.

It’s not legal at all.

BUT WHO IS GOING TO STOP THEM? Congress? Congress Oversight Committee has launched an investigation, but they don’t have subpoena power right now. The supreme court? The one that is in Trump’s corner? The president? The same one who said no one has the right to criticize him?

By all means PUT PRESSURE ON THESE PEOPLE. Make your voices heard.

BUT MAKE THEM HEARD BY THE RIGHT PEOPLE. Put pressure on these conglomerate broadcasting companies that own monopolies of these stations. Only eight ABC stations are actually owned by ABC directly.

Please look at what is actually happening and not just what fandom is telling you, because I gotta tell you, pick me politics is exhausting and fandoms are rampant in them.

By all means, cancel your subscriptions. Boycott the NETWORK. But don’t think that your precious SNL creator will stand up to them and not bend at the knee. Don't think that other networks wouldn't have done the same thing. Nexstar and Sinclair own 57 NBC affiliates (more than ABC affiliates). Don’t think that selective boycotts are going to work in this case. But KEEP TALKING. Explain to people what the real problem is here. Don’t just fall in line because a BNF has a loud keyboard. That doesn’t make them all knowing.

KEEP PRESSURE ON THE FCC AND THESE AFFILIATE BROADCASTING COMPANIES.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about writing Disney a letter – a physical, paper letter, with an ENVELOPE and a STAMP – and went into why those are so. damned. scary. to companies, particularly these days.

Tonight, I’m writing a letter – a physical, paper letter, with an envelope and a stamp – to the local Sinclair propaganda outlet, KOMO-4, over their continued blockade against Kimmel.

I’m not telling them I’m going to boycott them, no. They’re a free/over-the-air station. I don’t pay them. I don’t pay them a dime, why would they care if I boycott them?

Obviously, they wouldn’t.

So instead, I’m telling them I’m going to boycott their local sponsors, and I’m going to write those local sponsors a physical, paper letter, one with an ENVELOPE and a STAMP, and make sure those local sponsors know why.

For every obvious reason, I (and 50501 Seattle) encourage you to do the same. If you’re not in KOMO’s range, that’s fine, find your local Sinclair station and write them, instead.

(But write your own letter, don’t copy mine. They check for that.)

KOMO received enough protest calls today – Tuesday, September 23rd, as I write this – that they shut down their phone system. They went dark.

They can turn off their phones. They can delete their voicemail. And they have, and they did.

Let’s see ’em shut off USPS delivery.

(Spoiler: they can’t. 😀 )

Ring of Honor was not honorable in having this promo package taken down, and I as a Chi-land resident am EXTREMELY disappointed in my home promotion right now. Let David speak.

Buzzfeed News

Sinclair Broadcast Group executives reprimanded and ultimately ousted a local news reporter who refused to seed doubt about man-made climate change and “balance” her stories in a more conservative direction.

Her account, detailed in company documents she provided to BuzzFeed News, offers a glimpse at the inner workings of a media giant that has sought to both ingratiate itself to President Donald Trump and cast itself as an apolitical local news provider — a position the documents undermine.

In one 2015 instance, the former news director of WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, Len Stevens, criticized reporter Suri Crowe because she “clearly laid out the argument that human activities cause global warming, but had nothing from the side that questions the science behind such claims and points to more natural causes for such warming.”

In recent months, Sinclair has garnered intense national attention for forcing stations across the country to carry pro-Trump, “must-run” segments and instructing anchors to read statements touting conservative talking points. Sinclair, which owns local TV stations “affiliated” with name-brand networks like Fox or ABC, has defended the segments and noted they are a small part of its stations’ overall coverage — but Crowe’s experience as a general assignment reporter demonstrates how the parent company’s ideology can permeate throughout local news reporting.

She faced discipline for social media posts and restrictions in reporting on guns, white nationalism, and Liberty University, she said. Company documents do criticize some of her work as unfair and her behavior as unprofessional at times. Overall, the documents provide an unusually close look at one reporter’s experience working for a Sinclair station, and how the smallest details mattered and were recorded.

Crowe told BuzzFeed News that before the October 2015 climate change segment aired, she was ordered by Stevens to include Donald Trump’s opinion on the matter. “When I instructed you to balance the story, by including some of [the] other argument, you insisted there was no need to add such balance to the story,” he wrote in her Jan. 22, 2016, performance review.

"That was the moment where I realized how things were going to go there."

A veteran reporter who has worked at news stations in Texas and Virginia, Crowe said she viewed the story as environmental — not two-sided or political. “I was always covering the flu. I don’t remember a time when for balance I went out to a group of 20 people who are nutjobs that say flu shots kill,” she told BuzzFeed News. The scientific consensus is that climate change is real and humans are largely to blame, but Crowe ultimately read the updated, “balanced” script on air. “That was the moment where I realized how things were going to go there,” she said.

Pai in the face

President Donald Trump yesterday lashed out at the Federal Communications Commission over its vote to block Sinclair Broadcast Group's acquisition of Tribune Media Company.

"So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn't approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune," Trump tweeted.

A combination of Sinclair and Tribune "would have been a great and much needed Conservative voice for and of the People," Trump wrote. Trump contrasted the Sinclair/Tribune denial with the FCC's approval of Comcast's purchase of NBCUniversal, which happened in 2011.

"Liberal Fake News NBC and Comcast gets approved, much bigger, but not Sinclair. Disgraceful!" Trump wrote.

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC's only Democrat, offered a one-word response to Trump's tweet: "Disagree."

Trump had said during his election campaign that his administration would look into breaking up Comcast and NBC, but he hasn't acted on that threat as president.

The FCC last week voted unanimously against approving the Sinclair/Tribune deal. Sinclair needed to divest some stations in order to stay under federal ownership limits, but FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the company's proposal to divest certain stations "would allow Sinclair to control those stations in practice, even if not in name, in violation of the law."

The FCC didn't block the merger outright, but it referred the deal to an administrative law judge. Mergers usually don't survive that legal process.

The Trump Happens blistering lukewarm take:

In case you’re just joining this story, Ajit Pai’s FCC has spent the past year weakening ownership rules to make the Sinclair/Tribune merger a done deal without too much pain for the poor beleaguered billionaires. Pai has earned a dubious reputation of making sure that corporate interests triumph over public concerns, so when he met with a Sinclair representative immediately after the inauguration, it was obvious shenanigans were in the air, to the point that the FCC Inspector General was forced to take a look.

(Pictured: Pai cosplaying as a “fun uncle” while telling you that killing net neutrality is radical, dudes.)

This was supposed to be a easy slam dunk, but the Sinclair Group got cocky. While they did sell off a few stations to clear what regulatory hurdles remained, at least four of the sales included provisions that gave them a pretty big role in running (and pocketing some of the profits of) the stations that they technically no longer owned. They would still maintain stations’ studios and run their websites, but more importantly they still would control the news programming and advertising sales. That implies that the stations would still be required to air the infamous “must run” editorials, and the local anchors would still be required to humiliate themselves on behalf of their “former” corporate overlords. It’s almost like Sinclair wouldn’t be going away at all!

And that’s where Pai drew the line. More to the point, that’s when we found out that Pai can draw a line at all. Sinclair lost the trust of the most anti-regulatory, pro-industry FCC we’ve had in recent memory by a unanimous vote. 

Which brings us to this asshole, and his stock price-manipulating assholery.