Sunday, January 07, 2007

Nexstar campaign more about preserving profits than preserving local content

Most Joplin-area residents have seen the advertisements on KSNF and KODE about the importance of preserving local television. These ads encourage viewers to go to the website www.preservelocaltv.com.
As a column in today's Peoria Journal-Star points out, this campaign is not designed to preserve local news and other local programming, but to persuade the FCC to allow companies like Nexstar Broadcasting, which owns KSNF and essentially owns KODE, to own more than one station in small to medium-size markets:

Bottom line: Nexstar and other media companies want to continue to be able to own multiple stations in Peoria-sized towns. The issue is more about profits than local news coverage, but then, as political campaigns have shown us, a 30-second spot is more about emotion than education.


Nexstar also owns KSFX in Springfield and for all intents and purposes also owns KOLR.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are also doing a great job of murdering morale in their stations.

Anonymous said...

They've also done a great job of murdering the local news and weather for viewers on those two stations. When I saw the ad about preserving the local news, I couldn't care because there wasn't anything left to preserve.