{"id":11780,"date":"2018-04-04T01:18:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T01:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=11780"},"modified":"2018-04-05T01:23:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T01:23:31","slug":"why-are-sinclairs-scripted-news-segments-such-a-big-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-are-sinclairs-scripted-news-segments-such-a-big-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are Sinclair’s scripted news segments such a big deal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amanda Lotz<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On March 31, Deadspin<\/a> produced a video showing a chorus of local news anchors delivering the exact same scripted speech to viewers.<\/p>\n

The message<\/a> \u2013 denouncing media bias and fake news, calling it a problem that is \u201cneither politically \u2018left nor right\u2019\u201d \u2013 might seem innocuous enough. <\/p>\n

But I study the media industry, and it really does represent a radical departure from how local television news has traditionally operated.<\/p>\n

These news anchors all work for the same parent company, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 193 local broadcast stations<\/a> across the country. <\/p>\n

You might think that your local television stations \u2013 with names like WXYZ-TV, KXAN or KMOV \u2013 are owned by national networks like ABC or Fox. But that\u2019s often not the case; they are merely affiliated with the national network. Most are owned by companies called \u201cstation groups\u201d that have purchased a portfolio of stations in different cities with different network affiliations.<\/p>\n

Tribune Media, Nexstar and Tegna are examples of station groups<\/a>. Sinclair is the biggest.<\/p>\n

It was once the case that most stations were local, independently owned businesses. But during the 1970s, these individual stations started to be absorbed by station groups, which were able to take advantage of new technologies to achieve economies of scale. Instead of performing all operations at the local level at every station, they found they could save money by centralizing many tasks, from buying and selling advertising, to designing the computer graphics that air during news segments.<\/p>\n

Today, owning many stations and centralizing these back-end tasks are common in the broadcast business. What isn\u2019t common is what the Deadspin video shows. As far as I know, no other station group has written news scripts and required local stations to deliver them.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s a practice that directly goes against U.S. broadcast policy<\/a>, which asserts that local stations should serve their geographic communities and be allowed to refuse content offered by national networks. Sinclair, however, has dubbed<\/a> these scripts \u201cmust runs.\u201d The company also produces complete news stories and commentaries that it requires local stations to air<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The script in the Deadspin video has fueled a partisan backlash, and many have pointed out<\/a> that Sinclair\u2019s \u201cmust-run\u201d content often advances a conservative point of view. <\/p>\n

However, the most important part of the story isn\u2019t the question of partisan bias. It\u2019s that a national station group is forcing content on local stations. To many, what Sinclair is doing is precisely what U.S. broadcast policy is supposed to protect against: a single company advancing an agenda to a majority of the country using the public good of broadcast spectrum. <\/p>\n

\"TheWith Sinclair\u2019s pending purchase of Tribune Media\u2019s 42 stations<\/a>, the company\u2019s reach is only poised to grow.<\/p>\n

Amanda Lotz<\/a>, Fellow, Peabody Media Center; Professor of Media Studies, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Lotz, University of Michigan On March 31, Deadspin produced a video showing a chorus of local news anchors delivering the exact same scripted speech to viewers. The message \u2013 denouncing media bias and fake news, calling it a problem that is \u201cneither politically \u2018left nor right\u2019\u201d \u2013 might seem innocuous enough. But I study […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[4281,4282,2624,4280,11,536,3079],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11782,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11780\/revisions\/11782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}