Category Archives: Media Ownership

Mergers, diversity of ownership, and multiple perspectives.

Media Ownership, Press Room

Spectrum Speculator LocusPoint Files Injunction To Stop Sale Of KCSM-TV

 

originally printed in the AFT Advocate

(The Media Alliance, at media-alliance.org, is a Bay Area democratic communications advocate. Tracy fought a lonely war to save KCSM-TV between 2011 and 2013.)

On October 24, LocusPoint Networks, a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group, the largest hedge firm in the world, filed an injunction to block the sale of KCSM-TV to KRCB/North Bay Public Media. The filing in San Mateo Superior Court can be read here. No date has been set yet for the injunction request to be heard. Continue reading Spectrum Speculator LocusPoint Files Injunction To Stop Sale Of KCSM-TV →

Media Ownership, Press Room

FCC Defends UHF Discount Decision in Court

FCC Defends UHF Discount Decision in Court

by John Eggerton Broadcasting and Cable

The FCC has told a federal court that it was reasonable to reinstate the UHF discount immediately while it considers adjusting the national audience reach cap, that it has the authority to adjust that cap, and that the discount and the cap have to be considered together because the UHF discount is meaningless except in relation to the cap.

That came in an opening brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the challenge to its UHF decision filed by Free Press, Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ (UCC), Prometheus Radio Project, Media Mobilizing Project, Media Alliance, National Hispanic, Media Coalition, and Common Cause.  Continue reading FCC Defends UHF Discount Decision in Court →

Media Ownership

KCSM TV Spectrum Sale Dissolves Into Lawsuits

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California’s fifth largest public television station, KCSM-TV, has been the property of the College of San Mateo and its governing board, the San Mateo Community College District, for more than half century.

Recently the station, which once trained much of the Bay Area’s broadcasting corps with probably the best educational program ever offered at a public community college, has been very much unwanted property.

The station was put up for sale, twice, and some very reasonable offers from new operators were turned down in favor of a deal with a hedge fund, the Blackstone Group, to have subsidiary Locus Point Networks, eradicate the station entirely by selling its spectrum to wireless companies in the FCC’s spectrum auction.

The get rich quick scheme foundered. The District’s authorized bidder, who appears to have been VP Jan Roecks, failed to make a bid at some point in the complex procedure and KCSM-TV was dropped from the auction.

This article by Media Alliance ED Tracy Rosenberg describes the troubled history in the AFT May 2017 Bulletin.  Continue reading KCSM TV Spectrum Sale Dissolves Into Lawsuits →

Media Ownership

CPUC Slaps Charter

 

Charter ended up being the successful suitor for Time Warner Cable after Comcast’s offer for the Southern California cable/ISP giant went down in flames.

Charter, which made much of being “not nearly as bad as Comcast” got their merger, but they got it with some conditions attached, noticeably in the State of California, where the Public Utilities Commission went through a robust approval process.

However, Charter was not content with yes for an answer and spent much of the last few months agitating about the merger conditions and trying to get them abated, using typos and other lame arguments to do so.  Continue reading CPUC Slaps Charter →