corrente

There's an old saying that goes "When the question is 'why?', the answer is 'money'". Why, we've been wondering, is Sinclair Broadcast Group making this blatant attempt to rig the election for BushCoInc by running a piece of Moonie propaganda against John Kerry right before the election?

Yup, you guessed it. They're going broke.

Per Sinclair's own website:

BALTIMORE (April 3, 2003) - Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBGI) announced today that it is revising its estimate for its first quarter net broadcast revenues due to the war in Iraq and its impact on advertising spending. The Company is not prepared at this time to update or reconfirm its full year revenue estimates until there is clarity regarding the war's progress and longevity.

[various financial details for the quarter snipped]

In making the announcement, David Amy, Executive Vice President and CFO of Sinclair, said, "As of March 19th, we were on pace to meet our guidance, which did not make an assumption for war. For the first quarter, we are estimating that the war resulted in approximately $2.2 million in advertiser cancellations and preemptions, many coming from the automotive sector. We believe that how advertisers respond going forward will be determined, in part, by how successful the U.S. is in Iraq."

Hmm, not "how long the war lasts" but "U.S. success in Iraq". Why would a hit to the auto-advertising budget be related to the war effort?

Sinclair's holdings and influence is in markets where new and used car dealerships make up a great whacking percent of the ad buys. Details such as the locations of said stations can be found at the following link, whick includes a bit of analysis:

Public-I.org

From 1999 to 2000, in an effort to recover financially, Sinclair sold all of its radio holdings, including 55 stations, to Entercom Communications for $920 million, thus making the company all-TV. Despite the sale, the company is still wrestling with significant debt. Sinclair is No. 8 by revenue among the top broadcast television companies, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine’s annual ranking, despite having the most stations: revenues of about $756 million for 2002 are a fraction of the $2.3 billion that News Corp., with only 35 stations, pulled in.

As Sinclair has continually added stations, its role has become increasingly that of a content provider rather than a straight distributor.

In 2002, Sinclair created News Central to manage news operations for all of its stations from a central location. The company prides itself on being an alternative to mainstream news media, broadcasting its own content under the name “News Central.” The company’s vice president for corporate relations, Mark Hyman, provides daily commentaries during broadcasts.

During the Iraq war, Sinclair dispatched its own reporters to Iraq in order to cover the positive stories coming out of the country that the company said were being spiked by the mainstream media.

But it was the Nightline flap that cast Sinclair as the unsung darling of conservative media. Robert Zelnick, chairman of Boston University’s journalism department and former ABC News correspondent called the company “kind of a Triple-A Fox News,” referring to News Corp.’s conservative cable news channel.

In conclusion of this minor piece of meta-news analysis....

You can admire a person who sticks to principles even though you may think the person is mistaken, or you disagree with the principles in question.

A Benedict Arnold, on the other hand, who turned his coat simply for the money, is held in universal contempt. Add another name to the Arnold list:

(via bellacio.org)

A statement on Sinclair’s website explains: "While the Sinclair Broadcast Group honors the memory of the brave members of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country, we do not believe such political statements should be disguised as news content. As a result, we have decided to preempt the broadcast of Nightline this Friday on each of our stations which air ABC programming."

But gasp! Horror! What was it they said about this MoonieCo Productions bit of fiction they're planning to air?

Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

The very perceptive Nancy said down in comments for my first post on the Sinclair Sneak:

"This is what everyone is now talking about. It scrolls across the bottom of CNN and at the end it states a forum will be shown at the end and John Kerry is invited, to satisfy the Fair[ness Doctrine]. This is just a bowl of Rove crap. The more you talk about it the more people want to see it. It's caca.
WATCH YOUR BACK because wh[ile] you are looking in this direction, you aren't seeing the rest of the crap getting ready to be hurled."

I think Nancy is exactly, 100 percent, bingo, on the money. The point of this, or at least the timing of the announcement, is to keep the Sabbath Gasbags off the topic of how badly Bush sucked in the second debate, by giving them something else to talk about.

Matador Rove is waving the red cape again. One can admire the virtuosity while still rooting for the bull to gore his guts out.