What It Takes to Run a Media Empire
Posted December 11th, 2009 by Chuck Lovey
This is a guest blog post by Chuck Lovey of Voice for New Jersey.
The recent behavior of Fox Television poses the question: Do you have what it takes to run a media empire? Take this quiz to find out.
Imagine that you preside over a broadcast media empire. Now imagine that one of your television stations is in trouble. The station is located in an affluent and densely populated market, but you’ve been running it on the cheap. And people have noticed.
You submit a routine application for renewal of your station license to the Federal Communications Commission. But instead of the usual rubber-stamp approval, you find that you have a fight on your hands. Community residents are saying that you do not provide enough news and public affairs programming, and they’ve petitioned to have your broadcast license revoked.
In an unheard-of move, the FCC schedules a public hearing. The state’s senior senator travels in from Washington D.C., and lets you have it. Scores of others show up to testify about your substandard news coverage. Evidence is presented to show that other stations in your market broadcast an average of five times as much news programming as you do.
Now, here’s the test. Do you: (a) acknowledge the problem and improve your news programming; or (b) cut budgets, lay off staff, slash the already abysmal amount of news coverage you provide by more than half, and then submit filings to the FCC misrepresenting what you’ve done?
If you answered “a,” congratulations! You appear to have at least a modicum of integrity.
If you answered “b,” congratulations! You appear to qualify for an executive post at Fox Television.
Incredibly, this scenario isn’t fiction. In 2007, the media advocacy group Voice for New Jersey (VNJ) filed a petition with the FCC to deny the renewal of WWOR-TV’s station license. At the time, the Secaucus, N.J.-based station offered only eight hours of news and public affairs programming per week. The station provided virtually no local news coverage for some of northern New Jersey’s largest municipalities.
The VNJ petition did, in fact, lead to an unprecedented public hearing by the FCC. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) delivered the keynote address, and was joined by scores of others who urged the FCC to demand more from the station. Subsequent comments from FCC commissioners were encouraging.
And then… nothing happened.
Well, actually, something did happen (a year and a half later). WWOR’s owner, Fox Television Stations, Inc., did a little more slashing and burning. It reduced WWOR’s news broadcasts to a half-hour per day, eliminated weekend news coverage altogether, and cut public affairs programming to a half-hour per week.
Fox laid off a good portion of WWOR’s technical and programming staff. Remaining staff is for the most part “shared” with WWOR’s sister station, WNYW-TV. The station’s Secaucus headquarters now looks like a ghost town; its four studios produce a grand total of three hours of programming per week.
And then, months after all of this happened, Fox submitted filings to the FCC stating that WWOR’s prior levels of programming were still in place. It held a series of meetings with the FCC, acted like nothing had happened, and demanded that its station license be renewed without conditions.
And that, apparently, is what it takes to run a media empire in the United States . Fox behaves in ways that, even in these cynical times, shock the conscience. The proceeding on WWOR-TV’s station license is still open. Write to the FCC today, and tell them to act. For more information, go to the Voice for New Jersey Web site at www.voicenj.com.
