KATV Little Rock Pre-empts Oprah Finale With Storm Coverage

Awwww.....too bad Oprah fans. Some Little Rock viewers are incensed when they can't watch the finale of their favorite TV show. Click on the title link for some of their choice comments to local station KATV.

A gentle reminder--TV and radio stations are licensed by the FCC. When those licenses are up for review and renewal, a major component is whether the owner of said station "acted in the public interest".

It is much, much more "in the public interest" to warn thousands of people of life-threatening weather than it is to run a talk show. The primary purpose of TV and radio locally is to INFORM. Secondary is entertainment.

People who whine that their show is preempted when tornadoes are all around them are, in my opinion, a bag of fries short of a Value Meal, if you know what I mean.

Somehow I don't think alot of people in Joplin, Missouri cared about whether the Oprah finale aired in their market yesterday. They were busy with this.

Oh, great......

From one of my FAVE bloggers, Chickaboomer......

You gotta check out the goods on Mark Lloyd, the choice for "FCC Diversity Czar".

Add this to the news breaking today that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, West Va) has been working for months on a bill to give the White House emergency powers over PRIVATE internet sources in "an emergency".

Get the dissenters off radio, off TV, and off the Internet? Sure seems like a growing foundation to attempt it to me.

CBS6/Fox Richmond Sale Update: "Carma" is a wink-wink LLC.....

....so, basically, Sinclair owns two TV stations in Richmond, isn't suppose to, but uses a loophole. I must admit chuckling to myself with some disdain regarding the comments of Sinclair's CFO David Amy.....

....kinda like when your kid has chocolate around his mouth and when you ask if he ate the chocolate chip cookies, he answers, "I dunno....", and shrugs his shoulders at the appropriate time.

When asked about Carma, he said,

"'I don't know where they're located," Amy said of Carma. "They're a [limited liability company] in Virginia. As far as their address, I don't have their address."

In fact, forms filed with the State Corporation Commission list Carma's address as 1925 Westmoreland St., the same address for WRLH. A search of the FCC database did not yield any information on Carma.

WRLH General Manager Steven Genett is on vacation and could not be contacted for this story."

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You know, kinda like, "I just sold my car!" "Who bought it?", the neighbor asks. "I dunno!", you reply.

Read the details here, and kudos to the Times-Dispatch for digging into the story to discover that the "Carma" in this story just didn't feel right.