Page 56 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

Local television in the U.S. saw massive change in 2013, change that remained under the radar of
most Americans. Big owners of local TV stations got substantially bigger, thanks to a wave of station
purchases...

Almost 300 full-power local TV stations changed hands in 2013, at a cost more than $8 billion. The
2013 total of 290 is 195 more stations than in 2012 and more than four times the dollar value. Many
of the deals resulted in stations in the same market being separately owned on paper but operated
jointly, a practice that has grown exponentially in just the past two years. Joint service agreements
of one kind or another now exist in at least 94 markets, almost half of the 210 local TV markets
nationwide, and up from 55 in 2011.

One measurable impact has been fewer stations originating local news content... Fully a quarter
of the 952 U.S. television stations that currently air local newscasts do not produce the programs
themselves; another station provides them...

Other types of news sharing partnerships are also on the rise. Stations owned by the same company
now routinely share news content regionally or groupwide. In some of the largest markets, local
news services produce coverage for two or more competing stations. And more than three-quarters
of local TV stations say they share news content with other media, including radio stations and
newspapers, according to the most recent survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association...
[Source: http://pewrsr.ch/1Z1rtNp]

Ever wonder why you can switch between channels to catch the evening news only to find that the
stations are covering nearly all of the same limited number of stories? Independent news reporting
is a thing of the past. The powers-that-be want uniformity. They want control. Because they own
both the national broadcasting companies and the local stations, they can exert a complete top to
bottom control of the flow of information. As the Pew Research report stated, a full quarter of local
news stations do not produce any of their own material. Those which do produce news rely upon
wire services to acquire a significant percentage of their stories, and frequently have their reporters
read the canned reports verbatim.

https://youtu.be/46-fI18pJyw

https://youtu.be/dguiAWrUGMM

Of the approximately 300 stations sold in 2013, 75% of them were purchased by 3 media companies.
The largest number of acquisitions were by Sinclair Broadcasting.

Sinclair Broadcasting acquired more individual stations than any other buyer... Sinclair CEO David