How much will it cost to buy you out, to quote Saul Williams

This gets me good and pissed off, but not just because I don't agree with the sentiment:

Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War, a newspaper reported Monday.

CNN has more details (and avoids those pesky registration things you find at major newspaper web sites).

Can Sinclair afford any more bad press and FCC attention? They've already lost some public support by preempting the Nightline episode that read the names of the dead from the war in Iraq (Operation If-You-Don't-Like-Our-Reasons-for-Going-To-War-Don't-Worry-Because-We'll-Find-A-New-Reason-Why-We-Went-Next-Week-and-We-Hope-You'll-Like-That-One-Better), and I haven't seen a single television trade publication that thought that was rational or appropriate. If that was a PR error, this has "clusterfuck" written all over it. Perhaps they feel that helping their preferred candidate into office will make them more money than the primetime commercial minutes would provide, as the current administration has been relatively generous to broadcast groups in the past (not that broadcast groups aren't still complaining about what little regulation they do have). No matter what the reason, the station group shouldn't be forcing their subsidaries into preempting network programming for this documentary. I wouldn't even mind them suggesting to their stations to preempt (because, let's face it, every station preempts something during the course of the year), but forcing them to do so takes away one of the few rights and priveledges granted to local stations.

In fact, other FCC regulations are why there was no substantial blogging from me last week - I had to file our stations' quarterly reports on Children's Programming with the FCC. While I'm more than happy to complain about having to do the actual work verifying that we aired enough educational programming, and that we didn't go over the commercial limits on broadcasters set by the FCC related to children's programming, I won't complain about the fact that it has to be done. Let's face it - as media-savvy as kids are today, it is still important to make sure that they are not being unfairly targeted by advertisers and broadcasters. It's one of the reasons I cringe when I see the fanboy lobby complaining that DC doesn't advertise Teen Titans or Justice League comics in the cartoons with those characters - the FCC specifically forbids such actions because the programs are considered kids programming.

I copied the following from my most recent National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) guide. These stations are the ones owned and operated by the Sinclair Group:

KABB-TV, San Antonio
KBSI-TV, Paducah-Cape Girardeau-Harrisburg-Mt. Vernon
KDNL-TV, St. Louis
KDSM-TV, De Moines-Ames
KFBT-TV, Las Vegas
KGAN-TV, Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque
KMWB-TV, Minneapolis-St. Paul
KOCB-TV, Oklahoma City
KOKH-TV, Oklahoma City
KOVR-TV, Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto
KRRT-TV, San Antonio
KSMO-TV, Kansas City
KVWB-TV, Las Vegas
WABM-TV, Birmingham-Anniston-Tuscaloosa
WBFF-TV, Baltimore
KCGV-TV, Milwaukee
WCHS-TV, Charleston-Huntington
WCWB-TV, Pittsburgh
WDKY-TV, Lexington
WEAR-TV, Mobile-Pensacola
WEMT-TV, Tri Cities
WGGB-TV, Springfield-Holyoke
WGME 13, Portland-Auburn
WICD-TV, Champaign-Springfield-Decatur
WICS-TV, Champaign-Springfield-Decatur
WKEF-TV, Dayton
WLFL-TV, Raleigh-Durham
WLOS-TV, Greenville-Spartanburg-Ashville-Anderson
WMMP-TV, Charleston
WMSN-TV, Madison
WNUV-TV, Baltimore
WNYO-TV, Buffalo
WPGH-TV, Pittsburgh
WRDC-TV, Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville)
WRLH-TV, Richmond-Petersburg
WSMH-TV, Flint-Saginaw-Bay City
WSTR-TV, Cincinnati
WSYT-TV, Syracuse
WSYX-TV, Columbus
WTTA-TV, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota
WTTO-TV, Birmingham-Anniston-Tuscaloosa
WTVZ-TV, Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News
WTWC-TV, Tallahassee-Thomasville
WUHF-TV, Rochester
WUTV, Buffalo
WUXP-TV, Nashville
WVTV, Milwaukee
WXLV/WUPN, Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem
WYZZ-TV, Peoria-Bloomington
WZTV, Nashville

This list doesn't include the LMAs Sinclair operates, as I don't know if they are affected by this edict. If you live in one of these stations' DMAs, and want to voice your displeasure directly to someone in charge, e-mail me or post in the comments thread, and I'll let you know who to contact. Because, really, fuck them - if I get calls as trivial as people complaining that "my VCR didn't record Enterprise because baseball ran long... Thanks a lot, asshole" (actual voice mail from this morning, because we air UPN's Enterprise on Sunday nights on our FOX station), then these guys can get calls about something that is actually important. I'm not advocating inhibiting free speech - this speech isn't free, it's bought. And, despite the rampant commercialism that plagues North American media, tactics like these (specifically prohibited by the FCC, I might add) only serve to discredit what little credibility broadcast stations have in regards to the dissemination of information to the masses.