Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Media Council files complaint against KHNL, KFVE, KGMB shared service agreement
by Larry Geller
It’s not disappeared news at all—the press conference called by Media Council Hawaii was well attended and each TV station covered the story. KGMB featured it on their 5 p.m. news, a welcome surprise, since they are involved in the controversy.
(pic is Chris Conybeare, president of Media Council Hawaii, and on the screen is Angela J. Campbell, attorney at Georgetown University Law Center, counsel for Media Council Hawaii.)
Here are some articles found by Google. I particularly love the headline at rbr.com, Protesters move against Honolulu SSA (shared service agreement). It sounds like a march on Washington or something.
Towards the end of that article the authors speculate whether the FCC will grant a waiver in this instance. As the Media Council made clear today, the stations did not ask for a waiver, they just went ahead and did it. Of course, the FCC can do anything, but this may be a pretty strong case to preserve the public interest by disallowing the stations from joining in this way. There are also possible anti-trust implications that were explained.
A complete copy of the complaint is here. Listen to a short audio clip of the attorney explaining the FCC complaint here. There should be more detailed coverage in tomorrow’s papers.
In the exhibits you’ll find my little complaints to the FCC. Three of us went to KHNL, KFVE (co-located) and KGMB to copy some documents from their public file but did not succeed in our quest. The sad tale is in the complaints. And yes, I know I had a typo, I put KHVE instead of KFVE. I corrected it, but the uncorrected complaint was the one that was included.
Thank you Media Council for posting a protest about the proposed joining of three TV stations into one facility. The news offered is poor enough in Hawaii. Very little journalistic reporting! No wonder educated people use the internet for news now.
: October 8, 2009 at 7:13:00 AM HST I want to know just who is Chris Archer - under Raycom's Plan he would be the one to decide what would be included in the News coverage for three stations.....and decide on the content for 44% of all visual News in our "local" coverage. Why would there be a 'News Czar' position in the first place - sounds like corporate lowest common denominator to me......content is poor now, and the quality of coverage is marginal at best - the viewers haven't seen how low it can go, with Raycom's plan content can be virtually non-existent. This is a race to the bottom......
: October 8, 2009 at 8:53:00 AM HST 
<< Home
Post a Comment
Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.