Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Sinclair Broadcasting
Fade to Black
You know, Sinclair Broadcasting can play any silly movie they damned well please. If they want to order their stations to play a potentially libelous movie about John Kerry, good for them.
What they seem to be forgetting is that we the viewers are the ones who pay their salaries and it's just not good business sense to go out and alienate half of your customers, especially in the heavy handed manner that Sinclair has done. Of course they're not managing this issue very well now that it's a raging PR fire. Yesterday they fired their Washington Bureau Chief for publicly stating he thought the whole affair was a bad idea. Blatant agenda pushing is their right, but it's also the right of their audience to bolt to different stations or to press advertisers to pull out of their channels. The market seems to be giving Sinclair a big thumbs down on this too. Their stock has lost nearly 1/2 its value since spring.
Isn't this part of the problem with Big Media? That they continue to think they can pontificate (from the left or the right) and we just sit in our chairs and absorb their message without any critical thinking? Sorry guys, those days are gone.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20041019/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_film_reporter_3&printer=1
You know, Sinclair Broadcasting can play any silly movie they damned well please. If they want to order their stations to play a potentially libelous movie about John Kerry, good for them.
What they seem to be forgetting is that we the viewers are the ones who pay their salaries and it's just not good business sense to go out and alienate half of your customers, especially in the heavy handed manner that Sinclair has done. Of course they're not managing this issue very well now that it's a raging PR fire. Yesterday they fired their Washington Bureau Chief for publicly stating he thought the whole affair was a bad idea. Blatant agenda pushing is their right, but it's also the right of their audience to bolt to different stations or to press advertisers to pull out of their channels. The market seems to be giving Sinclair a big thumbs down on this too. Their stock has lost nearly 1/2 its value since spring.
Isn't this part of the problem with Big Media? That they continue to think they can pontificate (from the left or the right) and we just sit in our chairs and absorb their message without any critical thinking? Sorry guys, those days are gone.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20041019/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_film_reporter_3&printer=1
