I’m going to watch a lot of WEEK-TV 25 in the next few weeks.
I’m going to watch to see which companies advertise there, because I won’t patronize companies who, with their commercials, enrich a New York corporation that devalues local journalists and disrespects its viewing audience: us. After I list which advertisers are spending money with WEEK, I’m going to stop watching and stop spending money with those advertisers.
I’ll miss WEEK but labor relations can pit brother against brother; employers or unions that don’t bargain in good faith as required by law inevitably draw others into the fray.
I buy American-made cars, don’t shop at big-box stores that pay workers wages so low they’re eligible for food stamps and Medicaid, and don’t cross picket lines. So unless WEEK’s owners settle the talks, I’ll stop watching it and stop spending at its local advertisers. Others might express displeasure by their viewing and shopping habits – or even complain to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
I’m less angry than frustrated, frankly; forlorn. I appreciate hometown news, whatever the medium, and that’s at risk.
Members of the Peoria Local 1080 of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) at WEEK have been trying to bargain a contract since November. Negotiations stalled but WEEK workers continue to work without a contract. Despite employee concessions to company proposals and AFTRA’s repeated requests to return to the bargaining table, the company hasn’t.
About 30 reporters, photojournalists and producers are represented by AFTRA, and the main issue isn’t wages. It’s the company’s demand that it be able to outsource news content from out of town, which employees see as a threat to their commitment to provide locally reported news to the area.
WEEK general manager Mark DeSantis has said that owners’ proposed contract language on outsourcing would provide “flexibility,” but the station doesn’t plan to use that flexibility. (What would you think if you found a car to buy and a lender said, “By the way, the loan contract has a clause that you might be required to make payments in gold or lose your house, but don’t worry. We have no intention of doing that”?)
WEEK is owned by Silver Point Capital, a $6 billion private hedge fund based in Greenwich, Ct., run by two ex-Goldman Sachs bigwigs, Robert O’Shea and Edward Mulé. It’s one of the most profitable investment firms in the country.
WEEK workers have leafleted, held subtle on-air demonstrations (wearing black during a newscast), gathered thousands of signatures on a petition to owners, and rallied with supporters as varied as the NAACP’s Don Jackson and the UAW’s Dave Chapman, and State Sen. Dave Koehler and Peoria Chiefs owner Pete Vonachen – all to no avail.
Many local TV stations are profitable, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, which finds that in 2009 a local TV station with average revenues and cash flow would have had a cash-flow margin of 23 percent of revenues and a national average of $1.1 million in pre-tax profits, “and local TV news had a strong year in 2010,” according to Steven Waldman in a new FCC report, “The Information Needs of Communities (online at:
http://transition.fcc.gov/osp/inc-report/The Information Needs of Communities.pdf).
Sadly, outsourcing happens. Independent News Network in Davenport produces newscasts intended to seem local for a dozen markets, including Springfield, Mo., and Waterloo, Iowa. Its boss concedes that it does no investigative, enterprise or beat reporting. WEEK owners tried to outsource local weather from Fort Wayne, Ind., but the experiment was an embarrassment – and violated the previous contract, according to an arbitrator.
Also, consolidation happens. WEEK now operates WHOI and WAOE (Nexstar operates WMBD and WYZZ). The Communications Workers of America union and Media Council Hawaii have complained to the FCC about markets where “shared services agreements” result in layoffs and decreasing diversity, and a study released June 22 by a nonpartisan media reform group – Free Press’s “Save The News” project – scolds such “covert consolidation” as jeopardizing “competition, diversity and localism.
“We cannot afford to let media companies use covert consolidation to squat on our public airwaves,” said Free Press program coordinator Libby Reinish. “The news and information needs of our communities cannot be met when photocopy news is allowed to stand in for real news in the public interest.
“The FCC should actively investigate … to protect and promote localism – so that people can get the news and information they need,” she added.
Some stations, such as Kansas City’s KSMO-TV 62 (owned by the big Meredith media company) expanded local programming. It now features weekly shows on local arts and the Kansas City Zoo, an English-language show targeting Hispanic viewers, and more than 70 live telecasts from local sporting events.“Regulators pay attention to how many ‘voices’ serve a media market,” wrote Aaron Barnhart in the Kansas City Star. “To make Uncle Sam happy, Meredith agreed to add more voices to KSMO.”
Voices are part of the public interest standard a station must follow – to serve the educational and information needs of its market and promote localism, according to attorney Erwin Krasnow.
“Policymakers view broadcast television primarily as a local service,” he wrote. “The station itself must be operated as if owned by the public. It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight with this injunction: ‘Manage this station in our interest’.”
Congress and the courts have repeatedly mandated that licensees serve as “public trustees.”
The legal principle is that stations use the public’s airwaves, so there’s an explicit exchange expected for granting companies a free license to use the broadcast spectrum.
“The broadcasting privilege will not be a right of selfishness,” said Maine Republican Congressman Wallace White in the 1920s. “It will rest upon an assurance of public interest to be served.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 stated, “It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”
Local is valued over distant, too. The FCC’s 1946 “Blue Book” lists four basic components for measuring public-interest performance of licensees requesting renewal, including “live local programs.” The FCC’s 1960 “Programming Policy Statement” lists 14 major elements necessary to the public interest, including local self-expression, local talent and news programs.
In the 1980s, the broadcast industry got more “flexibility” and deregulation from a business-cozy government, which had never been very active as a watchdog. (In some 75 years, the FCC has granted more than 100,000 license renewals. Four times the FCC denied a renewal application because a station failed to meet public-interest obligations, most recently in San Diego in 1980, when a radio outfit was found to have aired almost no news, public affairs or public-service programming. Still, citizens can object; there were 224 challenges against 1,772 TV stations requesting renewal between 2004 and 2007.)
In 1992 (after de-regulation started), Congress declared, “A primary objective and benefit of our nation’s system of regulation of television broadcasting is the local origination of programming.”
For its part, AFTRA has not called for a station or advertiser boycott.
“AFTRA is not taking economic action against the company and is not calling for a boycott of WEEK/WHOI at this time,” commented newscaster and AFTRA Local president Garry Moore. “It is still our hope that we reach a fair and equitable contract with the stations.”
Consumer boycotts are OK for individuals or other groups to pursue, and it can be as appropriate and effective as the picket line or “do not patronize” sign have been.
Local advertisers spending money with a company that doesn’t value its employees or viewers don’t deserve my business. So I won’t go to those food stores or banks, restaurants or retailers. It’s a personal choice in a still-somewhat free country where we’re not obligated to shop everywhere a corporation wants. If advertisers share a fraction of the discomfort workers feel, maybe they’ll talk some sense into station owners.
To view the “Save The News” interactive map, go to www.savethenews.org/changethechannels; to read the study, go to:
www.savethenews.org/sites/savethenews.org/files/Final%20Outsourcing%20the%20News.pdf
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