Search the blog if you don’t know who she is
This story broke on the Wall Street Journal and Fox News and now picked up by the Washington Times
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/10/fcc-targets-black-conservative-in-tv-station-fight/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
Unlike radio, the rules are still in effect limiting ownership of over the air TV stations to one per owner. There is an exception similar to ones given to newspapers to allow stations to share some of their operations or own two stations if the alternative is nobody else would want to run the 2nd station in a small market and it would just cease operations.
Prior to joining the FCC, Ms Clyburn (daughter of the 3rd ranking Democrat in the House) ran a so-called “black newspaper” to organize the Black Communisty for the Democrat party in South Carolina.
Armstrong Williams recently bought two TV stations – one in Flint Michigan (good luck on that!) and one in Myrtle Beach SC (ding ding ding – we have a winnah!). Ms Clyborn summoned Armstrong to inform them that while the FCC is embracing diversity, it is not political diversity and especially not in her ‘hood.
The allegation (which may well be true) is it was a sham purchase so the station will be “minority owned” – when in fact the giant Sinclair Broadcasting is defacto still running the station, just reaping the financial benefit of Armstrong’s skin color.
Armstrong has a radio show as well, or at least did – it was on my testing list yesterday, but the stream didn’t work on my iPhone.
Warren Balletine’s mortgage fraud case should be working its way to trial soon. He’s not a Conservative. I see some parallels. Obama is clearing the playing field of rivals. It’s the way gangs do what they do. Throw Jesse Jackson Jr on the list.
Here is the original story
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/armstrong-williams-buys-tv/2013/02/28/id/492555/
It sounds like Sinclair bought 18 stations as a group, but needed to divest some of them where they already operated a station in the market. I’m still looking for specifics. I lived in Flint for quite a while. I suspect this one is the station that used to have Gene Scott on the air at 3 AM. I miss that guy.
Sinclair owns WSMH-TV in Flint… (Fox)
One of the stations that Sinclair bought was WEYI, the NBC station in Saginaw. Flint and Saginaw are in the same media market, so Sinclair is not allowed to own both, so they “sell” the station to Armstrong who then hires Sinclair to run the station for him.
So what were the terms of the “sale”?
The license was transferred to a corporate shell based in Washington DC. The mailing address for the LLC is for a tiny condo above a bar near Capital Hill.
WMMB is the station in Myrtle Beach
Here is the paperwork on the WEYI “sale”
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/cdbsmenu.hts?context=25&appn=101568228&formid=314&fac_num=72052
The sales price for WEYI was $1,480,000. Payment terms were not described, only that The assignor would determine them. I would speculate no money came from Williams. His LLC may be holding a note to be repaid from his revenue stream. If it goes sour, the LLC is dissolved and he has no skin in the game.
Looks suspect to me.
Media markets are interesting as a government regulation. There is an invisible line through central NJ separating the Philadelphia and NYC media market – on both sides of the line, TV viewer get suburban signal strength from each – about 50 miles away via the Empire State Building or an equally tall tower in Philadelphia.
Look at WOR 710 – it puts out a local quality radio signal down into northeast Philadelphia – well into the Philadelphia city limits.
Clear Channel is an expert at this game. When they went private, that forced them to divest stations “over the 1996 limits”. In a number of cases they filed paperwork to move a station to a different community. The station itself didn’t move at all or the transmitter pattern – just the paperwork. In other cases, they got non-commercial stations to “move” or start up to increase the number of stations in the market, allowing clear channel to own one more station.
I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I do think “clustering” has gone too far. Non-commercial stations shouldn’t affect how many commercial stations one owner can operate.
Operating over one big 50,000 watt tower made sense in the early days of radio when there was no infrastructure.
Today, a redesigned system would leave only a few of them standing and instead have cells of smaller low power towers that tansmit a local signal with your receiver able to combine signals from several to generate the broadcast – the same way a GPS receive generates your position from several radio signals.
WOR daytime coverage map
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WOR&service=AM&status=L&hours=D
A great example of how AM radio is mostly ground wave propagation and loves water. WOR (and WABC) came in north of New Haven if you were in the car, but not a solid signal, and very “iffy” on portable radios.
A couple related things – Jerry del whatshisname has a juicy rumor (and very logical) that Clear Channel is about to sell all their radio towers. That makes sense because a tower operator could then assume the maintenance responsibility and start adding on antennas for LTE, 700 MHz public service, cell phones, etc and bypass local opposition to new towers. It gives Clear Channel cash and cuts the need for staff to keep the towers lighted, painted, fences in good repair, etc
The other was an announcement by Audi (?) that they have made a deal with AT&T to bundle Internet with your new car. 30 months of LTE for $499. Your car can operate as a wifi hotspot, so many people might be able to drop their wired service at home. You pull your car into the garage and your iPad and home PC (until they go away) can connect to the Internet via your car. For a lot of people, there is no need for Internet access at home when you’re not home.
“For a lot of people, there is no need for Internet access at home when you’re not home.”
Without it, it would be difficult to monitor the cat from work.
Just leech your next door neighbor’s pick up truck
You and your neighbors can set up a Community Antenna WIFI network. That way, when any participating members get home with their vehicles, the signal would be shared among all community members that share in a small monthly fee to pay the cost.
It will be like community antenna tv back when the peanut farmer put solar collectors on the White House.
I think Filet should lay off the abuse of power nonsense and remember this is the United States, not Kenya.