TV6 Changes Ahead?

Keep your eyes on TV6 and Fox UP in the weeks ahead. The Sinclair Broadcast Group recently bought WLUC, which operates both  TV6 and Fox UP, and now the employees are waiting to see what happens next. Who's going? Who's staying? Any programming changes? It's fair to say there's an air of nervousness in the halls of the station.

On the other hand, a big, well-funded broadcast group (Sinclair now owns 164 stations nationwide) just might decide to pour some money into one of its newest acquisitions.

Of concern to some employees and U.P. viewers: Sinclair has a controversial reputation when it comes news and politics. Back in 2004 on its ABC stations, it refused to air a Nightline segment that dramatically listed all of the dead soldiers from the Iraq war. Later that year, just before the presidential election, 62 of its stations preempted prime time programming to air a documentary highly critical of Democratic candidate John Kerry.

And in 2010 a handful of its stations aired an anti-Obama infomercial.

Partisan politics, news and business can make for a toxic mix.

Let's hope the local news coverage here doesn't suffer (Maybe it expands!) and everybody keeps their jobs. Too often, these big broadcast groups come in to a small market and say all the right things...and the next thing you know, they're tightening the purse strings and booting people out the door.
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Speaking of TV6, still no word on whether current and former news employees will be getting a lump sum for back pay.

In case you hadn't heard, the US Department of Labor came to town a couple months back and interviewed several news employees and determined they weren't making adequate salaries for the hours they worked.

Shortly afterwards, salaries for beginning employees were boosted from around $18,000 to $23,000 plus. A nice little hike that put smiles on the faces of the news kids.

Back pay? Nothing announced so far.

Full disclosure: I was the news director at WLUC from 2004 to 2011 and tried, probably not hard enough, to get salaries raised. The reasoning behind the paltry pay? If young, ambitious reporters were willing to accept a miserable salary, it wasn't management's role to insist they take more. Business is about making profits.
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Did you see the Jim Harrison article in the Sunday New York Times? Pretty damn flattering. Before moving to Montana, he lived in Grand Marais and often visited Marquette.

He had especially kind words for The Landmark Inn ("a hotel of New York standards") and the Vierling ("a restaurant I would visit every day"). It's priceless advertising to a national audience that has money and may not have heard of the UP until now.

Harrison hasn't been back here in a few years but he's fondly remembered for his sparkling conversation and his fine taste in food and drink.
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As for paid advertising, did you know that Marquette County has been promoted on the jumbo screen in Times Square in New York City?

It's just a four second spot every hour but it's a huge invitation, complete with photos, to come visit Marquette County. It's already been up twice this summer, again on Thanksgiving, and then again this coming New Years Eve. It plays for several days around those dates.

Pat Black of the Visitors and Convention Bureau is the brains behind the campaign. She wants to play with the big boys.


You got news? Contact me at briancabell@gmail.com

In touch with the world

I had a couple of free hours at Chicago O'Hare on my way back from Arizona a few days ago, and decided to put the time to good use.

I counted how many people at the airport were either on their phones or their computers.

Among those sitting down, it was almost exactly half. Among those walking, about one in eight were on their phones.

Compare that to ten years ago, or better yet, twenty years ago. No comparison. Twenty years ago, virtually all of us were calling on pay phones; ten years ago, most of us still relied on pay phones. I don't know if those banks of pay phones even exist at most airports these days.

I'm one of those who's been critical of the cell phone and computer age, simply because so many of us (in particular, the younger generation) are substituting time with an electronic implement for actual face-to-face encounters and conversations.

Have you ever seen someone busily engaged in a phone coversation arrive at a social occasion and proceed to ignore the people at the party? And worse yet, stay on the phone or make other calls while the party continues? Incredibly rude.

My feeling is, if that conversation with that person is so important, go see that person or at the very least, leave the other people whom you're ignoring so they don't have to listen to your one-sided phone conversation.

But these people at the airport with their phones and computers? That's different. For most of us, time waiting at the airport is lost time, wasted time, so if you can actually put that time to use with communication, work, or even entertainment, you're better off. For this, I salute our new, revolutionary, omnipresent technology.

As for me, however, I was the guy sprawled out in a chair in the corner, alternately reading the New York Times and a paperback book, while sipping my Starbucks latte. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

News Capital, USA

We in the Upper Peninsula had our moment in the national spotlight last week. Reminded me of my days at CNN.

CNN was here, along with Fox and NBC and several newspapers covering, first, the arrival of the Tea Party Express, and then the sudden, unexpected resignation of Congressman Bart Stupak. It was a front page story in the New York Times the following day.

The Tea Party, of course, boasted that they had forced the resignation, which Stupak, of course, denied. There was probably some truth to the Tea Party's claim but the fact was, Stupak had been hammered by both the left and the right over the last several weeks, and he was just weary, burned-out. He was a moderate Democrat, reasonably representative of the U.P. over these last 18 years, but he got to a point where he couldn't please anybody.

To say nothing of the fact that he and his family were receiving vile threats.

Lovely.

You can hardly blame the man for wanting to change careers.

You've got to wonder whether this is the apex of the Tea Party's influence and the decline starts here, or whether, in fact, this is only the beginning, and before too long, we actually have viable Tea Party candidates.

My bet would be on the former.

The big question now is whether the Republicans can harness and corral all this Tea Party anger and enthusiasm in time for the November elections. The Republicans need the votes, but some GOP candidates clearly aren't comfortable with some of the Tea Party rhetoric.

And here in the UP, we'll get an up-close view of the political maneuvering over the next several months and we'll probably return to the national spotlight at times because the First Congressional seat that Stupak is vacating will be hotly contested.

The New York Times, NBC, Fox and all the others will be watching us closely.