Mergers, diversity of ownership, and multiple perspectives.
Update: The DC Court of Appeals unfortunately rejected the stay on the reinstatement of the UHF Discount on June 15. This will allow the Sinclair-Tribune merger to move ahead. See press release below.
Continue reading Obscure UHF Discount Feeds Media Consolidation
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
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
Update 2-6-2017: Entercom has announced they will turn in KDND’s license rather than defend the water-drinking contest. The license surrender will be part of Entercom’s merger with CBS Radio.
Nine years after the death and four years after the filing of a petition to deny license renewal by Media Action Center (a fiscally sponsored project of Media Alliance), the FCC has finally convened a hearing on the 2007 death of Jennifer Strange.
Inside Radio Coverage of Entercom’s surrender
Sacramento Bee Coverage of Entercom’s surrender
Bradcast Interview with Sue Wilson (KPFK-FM Los Angeles)
Continue reading FCC Responds to Radio Death – 9 Years Later
Community Media Centers across the Western States will meet at the annual conference in nearby Fresno in March of 2017.
Take advantage of having this event just a few hours drive from the Bay Area.
More information here:
The Bay View newspaper, a reliable source of hard hitting reporting and a much-requested item in prisons across the country, is undergoing a series of official and unofficial bannings as prison strike activism continues. Continue reading Un-Ban The Bayview
The Department of Justice filed suit against DirecTV (commonly known as AT&T after the recent merger) for anti-competitive collusion in violation of antitrust law.
The suit comes as DirecTV parent corporation AT&T has petitioned the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission for another mega-merger with Time-Warner’s content division. Continue reading DirecTV Sued For Anti-Competitive Collusion
Update: Sadly, Catherine was not re-nominated by Governor Jerry Brown. A big loss for California’s consumers.
Catherine Sandoval is one of the most qualified commissioners to ever serve on the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The first person of Latino descent to serve on the agency in its 100-year history, she has been a determined public interest advocate and fighter for real people against the massive corporate interests the agency regulates.
Continue reading PUC Needs Consumer Advocates: Reappoint Sandoval
