Be The Media

David Letterman: In solidarity with the writers

Thanks to David Letterman and his independent production company, Worldwide Pants. Letterman agreed to all the deal terms - including new media revenue - that the writers are asking for. And well he should - It's a fair deal!

According to Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars: "At one point in the broadcast, Letterman took questions about the strike from the audience, leading to his head writer interrupting:

"Thousands of writers still walk the picket line every day until their legs cramp and their backs ache, only to return to a home they can now barely afford because of the producers’ greed. So, to the arrogant media moguls who’ve gotten so fat off our sweat-soaked toil that they can no longer fit behind their oversized mahogany desks, I say to you: Stop spending all your money on cufflinks, cocktails and whores. Stick a crowbar in your wallet and start bargaining in good faith with the writers."

What's the strike about?

See Not The Daily Show, by Some Writer

Howard Kurz with guests Ray Richmond, Michael Medved, and Jennifer Pozner, who points out that the strike is a labor issue.

 

"There is Power In A Union" by Joe Hill, performed by Utah Philips

Would you have freedom from Wage slavery,
Then come join the grand Industrial band;
Would you from misery and hunger be free,
Then come, do your share, lend a hand.

Staples to drop ads on Sinclair TV newscasts

By Lynn Smith in the Los Angeles Times:

"Staples Inc., the world's largest retailer of office products, will no longer advertise on Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.'s local television news programs, a spokesman announced Tuesday.

The decision was partly based on e-mails sent by individuals who identified themselves as customers and complained that Sinclair's political commentary was one-sided, said Owen Davis, spokesman for Framingham, Mass.-based Staples. He did not specify the amount of advertising but said it was a "very small" part of Staples' overall media buy.

David Brock, spokesman for Media Matters for America, said it was the first victory for the liberal group formed in December to persuade advertisers to drop Sinclair, which was thrust into the public spotlight last year."

Sinclair CEO makes list of "Worst Managers Of 2004"

From Business Week:

"In the runup to the Presidential election, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. (SBGI ) CEO David D. Smith became the bogeyman of Big Media. Allegations surfaced in October that Sinclair planned to broadcast the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor to its 62 TV stations across the country. Liberal groups were livid, charging that longtime GOP contributor Smith, 54, was trying to influence the election. Media watchdogs also made Sinclair Exhibit A in their argument against the ills of media consolidation. With the nation's media concentrated in fewer hands, they say, owners can more readily skew news coverage to their political views.

Sinclair's stock fell 17%, to $6.26, over the 11 days of controversy. It has regained that ground, though the price was still down 39% in late December from a year earlier. But even if Sinclair recovers financially, Smith's dip into the partisan pool is sure to come up the next time he needs clearance for expansion."

"Somewhere Jesus is weeping" over attacks on Bill O'Reilly

From Media Matters for America:

"Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared that "[s]omewhere Jesus is weeping" over criticism of O'Reilly in the print media. O'Reilly issued this lament at the end of his December 20 "Talking Points Memo" segment — a monologue he devoted entirely to responding to criticisms of him by various op-ed columnists — on The O'Reilly Factor."

Fox News Channel goes to Zell

By Lisa de Moraes in the Washington Post:

"Sen. Zell Miller, the fire-and-brimstone-preaching Dixiecrat who tried to challenge MSNBC's Chris Matthews to a duel after delivering the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention, has been welcomed with open arms by Fox News Channel.

The cable network announced yesterday it has signed the departing Georgia Democrat as a contributor, beginning in January."

Sony back in broadcast TV

By Joe Flint in the Wall Street Journal:

"Now Sony is returning to broadcast TV, but this time on its own terms. Sony gambled last year on "Joan of Arcadia" — about a teenage girl who talks to God — backing the show after three other studios passed on the premise as too sappy. "Joan" was a hit on Viacom's CBS last fall, although its ratings have fallen somewhat this year.

Sony's pullback from broadcast seemed to some to mark an end to a golden era of television production. Until about a decade ago, studios would bring heaping platters of new shows to the networks every fall, going into debt to produce them yet not getting a share of the networks' ad revenue.

The deficits were seen as worth it: If a hit show could last on the air for five years, the studio that created it could sell it into syndication for hundreds of millions of dollars — making reruns one of the most profitable properties in the entertainment business.

But the industry shifted over the past decade after the Federal Communications Commission lifted regulations that had prohibited broadcast networks from owning television shows. TV networks paired up with corporate owners of studios: ABC merged with Walt Disney Co.; CBS with Viacom's Paramount; General Electric Co.'s NBC with Universal. News Corp., which already owned a studio, was granted a waiver of the rules to start a network. That left foreign-owned Sony a wallflower at the television ball.

Sony found it increasingly difficult to get its shows on the broadcast networks. In the decade leading up to its retreat from network TV, Sony made 200 pilots — but only five made it to syndication. "We were doing lots of pilots and we weren't making any money," recalls Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony Corp. of America. "We were behaving as if the world had not changed." Meanwhile, even studios with network partners discovered their shows weren't guaranteed success.

After clearing the decks, Sony decided to concentrate on making shows for buyers who wanted them. Cable television was emerging as a viable outlet for original programming. Cable budgets were small, but the timing was right: Cable channels were finally looking beyond reruns of network shows. Sony, which was already producing "Strong Medicine" for the Lifetime cable network, became a partner on "The Shield," a gritty cop drama that had its premiere in 2002 on the FX channel.

The jury is still out on whether reruns of cable shows will ever rival network reruns in their ability to generate cash. Yet a market is emerging. The explosion in sales of DVD collections of TV shows has helped. And with the export potential of the broadcast networks' reality shows proving limited, cable shows such as "The Shield" and "Rescue Me" are fetching foreign licensing fees in the mid-six figures per episode.

Producing for cable is cheaper than for the networks. Creating the typical episode of a drama for broadcast networks can take eight days and more than $2 million. In the cost-conscious cable world, production usually runs seven days and costs about $1.5 million."

The Sinclair propaganda machine

By Evan Derkacz in Alternet:

"Set aside "values" and voter fraud for a moment and just take a look at Sinclair Broadcasting Group. If the nation's largest owner of TV stations didn't actually help reelect George W. Bush it wasn't for lack of effort. Their message to America now: Our man won, deregulation will continue and we've only just begun... to expand.

"More Agressive Than Fox"

For starters, a single studio at Sinclair's home office in suburban Maryland, known as "NewsCentral," creates news segments which are then mixed with live broadcasting at the 62 stations to create the "illusion of local news," as Paul Schmelzer put it in an AlterNet article from late October. He went on: "In some cases, personnel at the local station have to coach on-air personalities at Sinclair central casting on tough regional pronunciation of town names."

The Sinclair story reads like a cautionary tale about media consolidation. The centralized and hierarchical structure allows a tiny editorial team in Maryland to fundamentally control the news that reaches nearly 25 percent of the American audience. The product, says media critic Jay Rosen, is "more aggressive than Fox News Channel."

Protest Launched Against Sinclar

By Elizabeth Jensen in the Los Angeles Times:

"A coalition of liberal political groups is launching a nationwide protest against Sinclair Broadcast Group, charging that the 62-station TV broadcaster, which was also the target of intense criticism during the presidential campaign, is misusing public airwaves with partisan news programming.

The campaign is one of the first broad attempts to reenergize liberal political activists in the wake of the Democrats' electoral defeat in November. Others involved include MoveOn.org, Free Press, Campaign for America's Future, Working Assets, Alternet, MediaChannel, and filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who made "Outfoxed," a film released in the summer that alleged Republican bias at Fox News Channel.

The anti-Sinclair campaign will be run through a new website, SinclairAction.com.

The main focus of the protest is the nightly "The Point" commentary by Mark Hyman, who is Sinclair's spokesman and also oversees the company's Washington lobbying."

NBC didn't share footage for 2 days

From the Chicago Tribune, by John Cook:

"The last time a U.S. news network got hold of potentially explosive images—in April, when CBS News obtained the photographs that sparked the Abu Ghraib prison scandal—U.S. military commanders asked it to hold off on the story because the situation in Fallujah was too tense. CBS complied, waiting for two weeks before airing the photos on "60 Minutes II."

This time, with Fallujah's insurgency largely routed by U.S. forces, it was NBC News with shocking images.

NBC, aware of how potentially damaging the footage of a wounded and possibly unarmed Iraqi being shot by a U.S. Marine could be while troops were still in battle, decided on its own to hold off on airing them for two days.

"We felt we had to do our due diligence," NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said, explaining that the network spent much of Saturday, Sunday and Monday thoroughly reviewing and reporting the circumstances of the shooting. "To be responsible journalists, we had to do our jobs to put it in context."

Televised killing in Iraq debated

From the Baltimore Sun, by David Zurawik and Stephanie Shapiro:

"Television coverage of the war in Iraq crossed a new threshold this week when network and cable news channels aired footage of an American Marine as he shot to death an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi insurgent who lay in a Fallujah mosque. It was the first time that a videotaped image has been televised of any U.S. military personnel killing an Iraqi.

The coarse words and graphic pictures, which at times had the appearance of a combat video game, were aired only days after 60 TV stations declined to air the Academy Award-winning film about World War II, Saving Private Ryan, because some of its dialogue was deemed too profane. Recorded by an NBC cameraman who was serving as videographer for a pool of 10 news organizations, the images from Fallujah quickly spread yesterday across the Internet and became fodder for radio and television talk shows."