Oh, make me laugh

I’m sitting here in the newsroom, glancing up at the three TVs that are always on, monitoring the major local stations, and see a promo on KNWA (the local NBC affiliate) for a site called “PreserveLocalTV.com”. The sound is down on that screen, but my interest is piqued, so I go to that site to have a look see.
Go ahead and click on the link – you’ll see what I see nearly every Sunday morning: a big pile of horse crap. Basically, the Nexstar station group (which owns KNWA and one of the Little Rock stations, and currently runs the local Fox station while it takes a suspiciously long time for the group that supposedly bought that station to take control of it) is arguing for a relaxation of FCC station ownership rules, contending that “A media monopoly today is impossible,” and that “less local news” could result. Nexstar’s nebulous and selective interpretation of what’s at stake here is dangerously misleading. Some time back on Not News I wrote an article about what we stand to lose with media conglomerate ownership sucking up small-town broadcast stations under one homogenized umbrella. The current newscast on Fort Smith’s Fox station, populated and produced by talent from KNWA, is a good example of the problem. Sure, you might see a couple of different faces at the anchor desk than you’d see if you just watched KNWA’s news itself, but editorially, it’s the same product.
Sounds to me like KNWA wants to hold on to KFTA (the current Fox affiliate). By operating and controlling the Fort Smith Fox station and the Fayetteville NBC affiliate, each of which is seen via cable in the other’s nearby market, you essentially have two Nexstar stations versus one Hearst station, one New York Times station, and a couple of indies with no news. That isn’t preserving local TV. That’s one company trying to spread its own influence. (If Hearst attempted the same thing, which they have in some markets, even though I work for that company, I would be against it in that context as well.)
I wish I could say nobody is fooled by Nexstar’s ploy, but this comment on that site’s feedback board is proof that people are going for the knee-jerk okeydoke, just like Nexstar hopes they will. This fellow in particular doesn’t even appear to know who’s really playing the game, let alone what the score is:

To our “fearless leaders”(?) in Washington: Stay out of broadcast regulation. Specifically, re: The squeezing out of medium and small market tv. We want our local news brought to us by small stations not owned by a handful of super-companies. Keep your miserable fingers out of our local airwaves. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR????????

You want your local news brought to you by small stations not owned by a handful of super-companies? Then you definitely don’t need to be gobbling up the propaganda Nexstar is feeding you, bub.
Give it up, Nexstar. Just operate your one station in the market – kinda like the rest of us have to. You don’t get to double-dip.