Good morning. Here's the latest on the Public Media Bridge Fund, Shari Redstone, Gavin Newsom, Steve Hartman, Jimmy Kimmel, Taylor Swift, "Frankenstein," Flow, and much more... |
Local TV giants set to merge |
"Local broadcast television is edging toward one of the biggest consolidation waves in its history," TVREV's Tim Hanlon wrote last week. More proof came this morning: Nexstar, which is already the biggest owner of US TV stations, is trying to get even bigger, acquiring Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal including debt.
This morning's announcement definitely isn't the last word on the matter, since just last night the WSJ reported that Sinclair has also proposed a merger with Tegna.
All of this "challenges decade-old limits on control of local media," Deadline's Dade Hayes writes, with the presumption that FCC chair Brendan Carr is poised to loosen the limits, known as the broadcast station ownership cap. I texted Carr for comment this morning and haven't heard back.
Tellingly, Nexstar CEO Perry A. Sook began his statement about the deal by praising President Trump: "The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the Big Tech and legacy Big Media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources. We believe Tegna represents the best option for Nexstar to act on this opportunity..."
>> "Under any previous administration, such a combination would have been unthinkable," Craig Aaron of the public interest group Free Press wrote recently. "Under Donald Trump, it's just a question of how much of your independence and integrity you’re willing to sacrifice to get a deal done."
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Jim Heaney, a 25-year veteran of The Buffalo News who now runs the Investigative Post, described what a Nexstar-Tegna deal looks like on the local level yesterday.
In Buffalo, "we're facing the prospect of a merger involving the chain owners of Channels 2 and 4, who between them dominate the local TV news ratings," Heaney wrote. "Media consolidations are rarely a good thing, and the Buffalo market is likely to be ill-served... Competition is likely to take a hit and a downsizing of the joined operations is likely, although the stations would maintain separate newsrooms."
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The local news mood music |
Meantime, many local news sources continue to shrink or shut down altogether... A slow-motion disaster for communities that don't know what they don't know. I appreciated how the PBS "NewsHour" highlighted the closure of 23 rural papers in Arizona, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming the other day. Local coverage is "really important to community identity," Teri Finneman told the "NewsHour."
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The 'Public Media Bridge Fund' |
With federal funding to PBS and NPR stations about to dry up, half a dozen key foundations are coming together to support the most vulnerable stations, the ones that relied on taxpayer dollars for more than 30% of their budgets. The donors are "providing an emergency $26.5 million cash injection to stabilize the stations most at risk," the NYT's Ben Mullin reports. "The group is aiming to raise additional money for the fund and hopes to reach $50 million this year." You can learn more about the bridge fund here.
>> The MacArthur Foundation is also committing $10 million "in direct support to public media stations, programs, and organizations."
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'High schoolers could do a better job...' |
Yesterday's Oval Office photo op with President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky underscored how the White House has remade the press corps to Trump's liking. Veteran correspondents privately grumbled as MAGA online personality Brian Glenn dominated the Q&A by complimenting Zelensky's suit and serving Trump easy set-ups for talking points.
"This display, especially in front of foreign leaders, is so embarrassing," a WH correspondent remarked to me. "Many of the questions aren't designed to get answers, but to create another confrontation or make Trump look good. That's not journalism. High schoolers could do a better job than some of these people."
At issue: The makeup of the press "pool," now controlled by Trump's aides. Here's our full story...
>> Of note: Yesterday's WH meetings ran long, and Zelensky opted not to appear on Fox, disappointing Bret Baier, who had expected to have an exclusive interview. Zelensky instead spoke to cameras across the street from the WH, seemingly more focused on his domestic audience in Ukraine versus the US audience on Fox.
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Andrew Kirell writes: Gavin Newsom's press office keeps going viral after adopting a strategy of directly trolling and mimicking Trump's online behavior — from the all-caps rants to the bonkers AI images to the flurries of insults. The effort, clearly designed to hold a mirror up to MAGA and "bully the bullies," so to speak, has evidently gone over the heads of many conservative media personalities, baiting them into making Newsom's point about Trump’s behavior on their own.
Fox host Dana Perino has best demonstrated this phenomenon. During yesterday's episode of "The Five," she discussed Newsom's biting posts and remarked, "You have to stop it with the Twitter thing. If I were his wife, I would say, 'You are making a fool of yourself. Stop it.' He's got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little more serious."
"Indeed," wrote NBC's Sahil Kapur, "can you imagine someone elected to a big political job persistently posting self-aggrandizing tweets while taunting and insulting rivals in all caps? |
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