Local ABC Affiliates Are Getting Slammed
From Columbia Journalism Review
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, promised to bring power to community stations. But it’s their corporate owners who make the big decisions—while regional reporters and station managers take the heat.
Early this week, at an ABC affiliate owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the phones were ringing off the hook. Every two minutes, someone was calling to complain about Jimmy Kimmel’s show being suspended from their local station. On Monday afternoon, an announcement had been made: ABC was going to put him back on air Tuesday night. But not Sinclair and Nexstar, which together own seventy partner stations, according to Reuters, representing more than 25 percent of ABC affiliates nationwide and reaching 23 percent of American households. “Managers were just kind of scrambling to figure out if they needed to get it into the newscast, and then we got word from corporate that we had to wait, and everyone was just really frustrated, and remarking about how ridiculous the situation was,” a reporter at the station said.
https://www.cjr.org/news/local-abc-affiliates-nexstar-sinclair-getting-slammed.phpOpen linkView original on piefed.social
Sinclair & NexStar are anti-American.
If you live in one of their markets, I urge you to call businesses that advertise on their station, especially local businesses, and tell them you will not buy their products or services as long as they are supporting NexStar & Sinclair’s fight against free speech.
Do also call these affiliates directly. Phones ringing off the hook have an intense effect on people who's livelihoods are in those noisy rooms. Can confirm. Was news intern in college.
How do you see if you live in their market?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_operated_by_Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Nexstar_Media_Group
the latter is also trying to acquire these for even more control over the nation's local news (mostly formerly owned by gannett, which split off broadcast stations a decade ago):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegna_Inc.#Television_stations
Beat me to it. Donate to Wikipedia people, the fascists are also trying to destroy it as well.
I'm not actually in their area, nor do I have cable lol, but I called the closest one and asked why my grandma can't watch Kimmel anymore and they hung up on me. 👍 Thanks for the links
SLAMMED
I really need to just put a filter on all of my feeds for the word "slam". Unless there is any actual slamming going on, of course.
Yeah, I should not have let that headline through. This, BLASTED and BREAKING are some of my least favorite cliches of contemporary reporting.
To be fair saying “the phone lines are slammed” is way more acceptable to me than saying “person a slammed person b”.
Yeah, this is definitely a more normal use of the word.
Not like a synonym for "mildly disagreed with".
MeGaThReAd
But then you'll miss all the crucial news about grand slam breakfasts and poetry slams! 😰
🖕
Even when they're getting hammered, they keep lying their fat asses off!
Must.praise.dear.leader. . .
If money is the only thing that makes facists back off, then we need to continue with the pressure.
Like Jimmy said, get 10x louder next time, it's working!
That's just harassing and stalking a bunch of people who had no say in the matter.
The order came from the fascist media hoarding corporations that own them, not the local stations themselves.
They do have a say and impact. They can quit working for a station owned by a fascist supporting organization. When the anchors quit, they'll have a problem.
Correct answer.
Call their advertisers folks. Cannot stress enough how visa pulling ads is gonna make them piss themselves. Or even smaller local companies. Drive the ad revenue to zero.
Look, if I have to hurt the local station to hurt the corporate owner to push back against blatant violation of the 1st amendment as we slip deeper into authoritarianism, so be it and local station, violate your orders if you don't want to be rightly punished.
Slammed! SLAMMED!