Will anyone “come to save the day” for WGN radio/TV takeover by Sinclair?

Learning that the FCC (is that the Federal Cookie Company?) is expressing reservations about allowing suburban Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group to take over the WGN-TV and radio properties in Chicago as part of a nationwide expansion doesn’t quite ease my own concerns.

Will Trump allow them to intervene?

For I can’t help but think this is merely some rhetoric meant to make it appear as though federal regulators of the public airwaves are actually doing something when in reality they’re inclined to do as little as possible to interfere with the deal that would make Sinclair the largest collection of broadcast properties in the United States.

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION head Ajit Pai issued a statement implying his entity is not prepared to put the rubber stamp to the deal that would give Sinclair control of some 230 broadcast properties – including those founded by Tribune Company that have long thought of themselves as “Chicago’s Very Own.”

Yet I can’t get around the concept that Pai got the FCC post through appointment by President Donald Trump. He’s a political appointee, and the idea of putting all these broadcast properties under single control of a company with a history of believing their ideologue ways are what’s proper would be the kind of thing Trump would approve of.

So is Pai serious in suggesting Monday that an administrative law judge conduct hearings into the deal? I suppose if we learn through Trump’s Twitter rants that Pai has been dismissed for gross incompetence, then it means Pai meant what he said.

Soon to be history?

Otherwise, I suspect it’s a form of rhetoric that merely delays the inevitable, which in the case of Chicago and WGN television and radio means they’re not really locally-run broadcast properties any longer.

THE DAYS OF thinking that Channel 9 and 720-AM were somehow places on the broadcast spectrum that carried the unique perspective of the Second City are no more.

I suspect it’s just a matter of time before the Chicago stations are forced to air as part of the “local” newscasts the commentaries produced out of the corporate offices in Maryland.

The ones that have given Sinclair its reputation within the world of news broadcasting as being ideologically tainted.

The new wave?

My guess is that the first will be on an issue in which Trump wants to get on his high horse and rant and rage about how erroneous Chicago is. Sinclair would probably want to use their new Chicago stations (currently, the closest to Chicago they have to a broadcast property is the ABC affiliate in Springfield, Ill.) to tell Chicago viewers how wrong they are!

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if the character is destined to change so drastically that the properties are ruined. Similar to how back in 1984, the Chicago Sun-Times was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s media entity and the character was altered so drastically that circulation and the paper’s image plummeted – in ways that make some people think Rupert still has a hand.

Even though in reality, he sold the newspaper within two years (so he could buy WFLD-TV in Chicago).

What would Garfield Goose think of new employer?

That deal was because of federal laws controlling just how many properties one can have in a single market, similar to the ones limiting the overall number. Which is why Sinclair is supposedly working out side deals to “sell off” some of the stations they’re about to buy.

One of those is the WGN properties. The Chicago Tribune reported that Atlantic Automotive Corp. of Towson, Md., will buy the Chicago stations.

THEN, THEY WOULD work out an agreement by which Sinclair would handle the actual work of programming and maintaining the stations for them. Because, after all, what would an out-of-state car dealership know about Chicago or broadcasting?

These are the very issues Pai hinted cause the FCC to have reservations. But is the FCC really capable of thwarting a deal if the entity being “harmed” is the one that Trump persists in calling the “enemy of the people?”

Although one often suspects even Trump doesn’t fully believe the nonsense he spews whenever he speaks or Tweets like a twit.

What we’re likely to have occur? Something along the lines of that old Andy Kaufman bit where he lip-synch’s the portion of the “Mighty Mouse” cartoon theme about “Here I come to save the day!” while otherwise standing around doing nothing.

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Could Koch brothers breathe new “life” into Chicago Tribune? Define “life!”

I have to confess to having to fake outrage at the thought of the Koch brothers potentially becoming the new owners of the Chicago Tribune.

The Koch brothers' new Chicago office? The New York Times seems to think so

 

Yes, I disagree with the political ideals espoused by the brothers. And I think it would be cheesy for them to use the newspaper as an arm of their own personal propaganda.

BUT LET’S BE honest. We’re talking the Chicago Tribune of Col. McCormick. Seeing the newspaper being used in such a manner might well be completely familiar to the oldest of readers.

Even though McCormick himself died in 1955, it wasn’t really until the mid-1970s that his influence was really eradicated from the publication’s quirks. And there are some readers who are convinced that the conservative tendencies never really went away.

So the idea that the Chicago Tribune is a “conservative” newspaper? What else is new. It just means a different family name atop the mast-head.

Now the reason this is being stirred up again is that the New York Times on Sunday felt compelled to publish a story about how the Koch brothers – who have spent countless millions to try to influence elections with candidates of their ideological ilk – are among the entities who might buy the Tribune Co. publications.

IT ISN’T NEWS that they’re interested, along with several other entities – including Newscorp head Rupert Murdoch. But it seems that most of the business entities expressing interest in the Tribune Co. newspapers being for sale are really interested in buying the Los Angeles Times.

Murdoch himself seems to like the idea of taking over the LA Times just like his people took over the Wall Street Journal a few years ago.

Only the Kochs, the New York Times reports, seem willing to buy all the publications – including our city’s very own Tribune. Which is the preference of Tribune Co. types. They want one huge payday from a mass sale – rather than several deals for smaller amounts and the possibility that a publication or two might not be able to draw sufficient interest from would-be buyers.

Personally, I’d rather see the Chicago Tribune wind up in the hands of someone with an interest in Chicago proper.

BUT IT SEEMS that the only people willing to take on that kind of media property are those Wrapports types who took advantage of the Chicago Sun-Times’ lesser business status to buy themselves a daily Chicago newspaper with a lower price tag than the Chicago Tribune would command.

I don’t know if there is anyone else out there with the kind of whimsy to buy the Tribune – even if it gives them a chance to work out of that 24^th Floor office that once was the working place of the Colonel himself!

So we may well get the Kochs as a part of our media scene – although personally I find that as less of a shock to the local scene than the idea that WGN-TV, WGN-AM, CLTV and ALL THE OTHER media properties that make the Tribune a news goliath will no longer be connected to the Chicago Tribune proper.

If anything, such a buy may well ensure the continued existence of the Chicago Tribune brand name, since the ideologically-aligned newspapers in our nation (the New York Post, the Washington Times and others) wind up with ownership who are more interested in using them for political statements and other ego-boosting activities.

WHICH MEANS THE financial bottom-line just doesn’t matter as much. If it did, the New York Post would have died decades ago! And the Times in Washington would NEVER have been created!

And I’ve always taken the attitude that I don’t care if newspapers are blatantly ideological in their leanings – so long as they’re honest enough to admit their biases.

Because the bottom line is that we all can simply ignore any publication that feeds us too much nonsense on its pages or its websites. That IS the real American Way – not the trite trash that the Kochs might choose to spew at us if they succeed in making this purchase.

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What becometh our Chicago Tribune?

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper that likes to think of itself as the voice of the Midwestern U.S. yet at times isn’t even the most important newspaper in Chicago.

How long until all the slots are filled with the same publication?

There are just too many people in our city who want nothing to do with the Tribune and its particular worldview for it to be the all-dominant creature that it believes itself to be. Although certain others swear by it (and sometimes at it, which makes it a part of Chicago's inherent character).

WHICH IS WHY it would be particularly amusing if there turns out to be some truth to the notions being spread about that Wrapports, Inc. (the current owners of the Chicago Sun-Times) wants to buy “Mother Tribune.”

Wouldn’t it be a kick if the Great Chicago Newspaper War ultimately was won by the Sun-Times? After all the generations of talk by Chicagoans that the Tribune (and its broadcast properties) were the great elephant in the realm of Chicago news creatures, the dinky (I mean that literally these days) Sun-Times prevails.

It’s just too bad that the tug boat-like building along the Chicago River is no longer their headquarters. The irony of that architecturally challenging (yet appealing in its own warped way) structure prevailing over the gothic Tribune Tower would just be too much.

Although on another level, a Sun-Times-related purchase would be completely depressing. That company has managed to take over so many of the local newspapers and turn them into a homogenous mass that it feels like there’s hardly any “press” left.

A CHICAGO-AREA MEDIA that consists of a Sun-Times/Tribune conglomerate, the Daily Herald of suburban Arlington Heights and the Munster, Ind.-based Times of Northwest Indiana sounds so miniscule.

Yet the latest rumor in the mill talks of the Koch brothers – those ideologues who like to use their money to try to impose a conservative bias upon all of us living in this society.

Supposedly, the brothers would like to have a few major newspapers with which to put their spin on the news reports we all consume.

We’ll all be reading the reports in coming weeks speculating about how the Kochs will restore the days of Col. McCormick – who until his death in 1955 was more than willing to use the pages of the Tribune to take on all his political enemies (who were numerous).

LEAVE IT TO them, and the Tribune will become the great enemy of President Barack Obama (even though the newspaper actually endorsed him in both presidential election cycles).

Now I realize the brothers have put out a statement that declines to comment about the possibility of their purchase. Although the tone of the statement in the LA Weekly newspaper is more along the lines of a couple of egomaniacs enjoying the attention without wanting to say anything.

So anything could happen, I suppose. We might get the Kochs. Or the Sun-Times crew becomes all-powerful in their efforts to turn the news reports into SPLASH, GRID, a daily Carol Marin video and the Jenny McCarthy we can endure in print!

It became known that billionaire Warren Buffett is NOT interested in including the Chicago Tribune in his splurge to develop a media “empire” across the country – largely because he doesn’t like the idea that the Tribune people are insisting on selling all their publications in one shot rather than splitting them up amongst local ownership.

NOT THAT I'M saying he's some sort of savior. If anything, he wants the publications in smaller-scale communities where no one expects the same type of investment in the product that is required to make a major metro daily paper worth reading.

 

MURDOCH: A 'journalistic' savior?

But when one looks at the possibility of ideologues or trivialogues taking over the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper, I have to confess that the rumors having Rupert Murdoch come back to Chicago a quarter of a century after he sold his interests in the Sun-Times don’t sound quite so awful. At least he's devoted a life-time to the printed word; no matter how cheesily his publications have displayed it.

Rupert Murdoch as the “savior” of Chicago journalism?!? Who’d have ever thought it possible!

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And da winnah is, Da Sun-Times?!??

I can remember being a brand new reporter-type person back in the late 1980s and talking with some of the long-time (and now retired, and in some cases, deceased) veteran reporters of the Chicago Sun-Times when they would speculate on their publication’s fate.

Whose news box will prevail?

They seemed to think back then that the Sun-Times would be a product of the 20^th Century that would no longer exist once we passed over into the new millennium.

YET NOW WE’RE one-eighth of the way into the 21^st Century. All that transition into a new millennium talk seems like a life-time ago. And yet, we still have the Sun-Times with us – albeit in printed editions that now only get as fat as the paper used to be scrawny in the old days.

And I wonder how those old Sun-Times vets would react to not only seeing the newspaper still alive, but to the Crain’s Chicago Business report on Friday that indicated the Sun-Times ownership was talking about purchasing “assets” belonging to the Chicago Tribune.

Of course, Crains’ report was purposely vague as to what was meant by “assets.” That could mean anything from some websites that deal primarily in advertising to some of the newspaper or broadcast properties that Tribune officials are expected to try to sell off later this year as part of their way of becoming a financially-solid company.

Could we really get the day when WGN (either television or radio) is a sister property of the Chicago Sun-Times? Would they take on the monicker of the World’s Greatest Newspaper that those broadcast call letters perpetuate?

OR WOULD WE really get an effort by the Sun-Times to purchase the Chicago Tribune itself?

Sister newspapers published in coordination with each other? Or just buying the Tribune so as to fold it and eliminate the competition?

 

Whodathunk a quarter of a century ago that the great winner and new heavyweight champion (or are modern newspapers bantamweight instead?) of the Chicago newspaper wars would be the Sun-Times? It’s a thought that leaves me staggering with a headache.

Talk about an unpredicted outcome!

NOW LIKE I stated before, the report in Crain’s was purposely vague because Sun-Times officials are being vague. In fact, it may well be possible that this is just cheap trash talk by Sun-Times executives who want to make the Tribune types wet their pants a bit at the very thought of becoming merely a part of Wrapports – the Chicago-based company that now owns the Sun-Times and always engages in high-minded talk about how they’re going to turn the newspaper reporting assets to bolster a digitally-based media company.

This may be the ultimate evidence of talk being cheap.

Although it also has me wondering what will become of the high and mighty Tribune – whose cornerstone of the gothic tower along Michigan Avenue reminds us that it has been in place since 1847 and probably thinks it will outlive the city of Chicago itself!

Sold to the Sun-Times? Or is there anything to all that rumor-mill rumblings that Rupert Murdoch might actually consider purchasing the newspaper.

HE IS THE man who already owns the Wall Street Journal (along with his New York Post) and who allegedly believes that having the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune all aligned together would give him the basis of a truly national news brand in this country.

Which was the reason that the Tribune types themselves bought the old Times-Mirror Co. a decade ago – thinking that having the Times and Newsday in New York’s suburbs would give them a combo in the top three U.S. media markets.

Would that be enough to get a whole slew of Tribune types to jump ship and try to hook on at the Sun-Times – to avoid having to work for a Murdoch-owned publication? Or have times changed enough that no one would care that the Tribune would shift from being the sister newspaper of WGN-TV to being the sister publication of WFLD-TV (which originally was created to be the television counterpart of the Sun-Times).

I don’t know what the outcome of all this is going to be. Although it won’t surprise me if whoever does wind up taking on the Chicago Tribune will have some vision similar to the Sun-Times types – taking all those reporting assets and archives and trying to put them to use on the Internet.

THERE IS VALUE in all that information – no matter how many advertising-oriented dinks want to view the news “content” of a newspaper as space-filler in between the girdle ads.

About the only thing I am sure of these days is whatever the outcome of the Tribune (and Sun-Times) ownership situation turns out to be, it will be some status that – back when I was a beginning reporter-type for the now-defunct (and sorely missed) City News Bureau of Chicago – none of us could have dreamed of a quarter-of-a-century ago.

  -30-

Only the Big Shots make money

I don’t know what to make of the business situations of the two Chicago major metro newspapers these days, other than to figure out that someone is determined to bleed them dry of every last cent before letting them wither away.

It has been this week that two stories have managed to creep their way out of halls in which both newspapers are in Bankruptcy Court.

WE LEARNED THAT Sam Zell, the real estate developer who took on more than he could chew by buying the Tribune Co., could wind up being dumped from his prime spot in the restructuring of the company.

Meanwhile, it became known that over at the Sun-Times, there is a list of 20 executives who think they’re entitled to $1.8 million in executive payouts – regardless of what happens to the newspaper itself.

First, we’ll take the latter.

The owner of the Sun-Times and all those suburban newspapers they purchased during the past two decades asked for permission to pay the bonuses in the event the company is sold.

NATURALLY, THEY FOLLOWED the typical sense of business ethics – they asked for the terms of the deal to be kept under seal. So we don’t know who the 20 executives are, or how much of the $1.8 million each of them would receive.

But from the little we do know (largely because of Crain’s Chicago Business), it would be 40 percent of the executives’ base salary.

The reason this came out is the fact that the Sun-Times has been in Bankruptcy Court since March. This deal will need a judge’s approval in order to occur.

For once, we should all be grateful for the Internal Revenue Service, which already has issued an objection to the idea of these executives getting a bonus at all and that the specific amounts of the bonuses should be secret.

THIS IS ONE of those times when a newspaper company winds up looking hypocritical.

For if any other business (particularly one that has engaged in so much staff cutting in recent decades) were to try to pull a move like this, the papers would be doing everything they could to get at the information kept under wraps, then would be engaging in editorial rants meant to get the public stirred up.

They definitely wouldn’t care much about the argument that Sun-Times lawyers are likely to make when the case comes up again in Bankruptcy Court for a hearing on Wednesday – public knowledge of these bonuses would harm the company’s ability to find a buyer.

Only if a would-be buyer would be offended that part of his purchase price was going to ensure that all the people whose professional performance were unable to raise the newspaper from its problems would it be considered a hindrance.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T know what to think of what will become of the Sun-Times, although it has become fashionable among some people (including one-time Sun-Times owner Rupert Murdoch a couple of weeks ago) to predict that the Sun-Times is finally going to die off – putting it in the ranks of the Daily News, the American and the dozen or so other newspapers that have existed in Chicago throughout the years.

I’d like to think it could survive in some form because I still find its news product interesting to read and worthwhile to have.

Of course, to many of the people who are in the newspaper business these days, the “product” is about the last thing they care about.

That is the perception many have gained about Zell, who likely bought his way into the Tribune Co. thinking he could prolong its life with a few cuts, bleed a few dollars out of it, then close it off someday.

YET THE ECONOMIC events of the past year have hit newspaper advertisers so hard that he wasn’t able to bleed those bucks out of it that would have made the whole venture worth his time.

Which is what makes (to my mind) the recent reports about Tribune Co. (in bankruptcy court since December) so intriguing.

Control of Tribune Co. could be shifted from Zell and his group to a group of banks and investors. It appears that Zell would be out, unless these financiers see a specific reason to keep him on.

It’s not like he knows anything specifically about the news business, so some think he will be gone. Personally, I noticed a slight sense of glee in the reports that ran this weekend in the Chicago Tribune itself.

IS IT “DING, dong, the wicked witch is dead” at Tribune Tower these days? Or will Zell turn out to be some sort of fighter who will want to stay on to try to prove he’s not some sort of newspaper nincompoop?

Why do I believe that, for the right amount of money, Zell’s ego could be massaged just enough to leave. Could it be that the amounts of money the Sun-Times executives may receive will set a standard, so to speak, for how much Zell should get to go away from the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper.

And if it really happened that way (it’s just my guess, at this point), could it be that only the guys on top make money, while the rest of us Chicagoans wind up a little bit information-less about the Second City.

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