Tv Stations

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. has agreed to buy the television station assets of Four Points Media for $200 million, the Hunt Valley-based broadcaster said Thursday. Sinclair will buy the seven stations — which television holding company Four Points owns and operates in four markets — from affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management LP. The sale, expected to close in the first quarter of 2012, is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission and must have anti-trust clearance.

Many folks may be traveling on this long Memorial Day holiday weekend, but if you're going to be around, here are two activities not to miss on Saturday. The first one's a snap - you don't even have to leave the house, or get out of your PJs. At 9 a.m Saturday (May 26), local cable, broadcast and satellite TV stations will feature a half-hour documentary about the Healthy Harbor campaign to make Baltimore's harbor swimmable and fishable by the end of the decade.  The algae bloom and fish kills this week are furnishing a pungent reminder of why this campaign was launched.

With only Baltimore City offices being contested, local television stations are planning to provide what one news executive termed "standard election night coverage" of today's primaries.The biggest change in programming will be at WBFF-TV (Fox 45), which will expand its hourlong "News At Ten" to an hour-and-a-half, pushing back the start of "The Arsenio Hall Show" to 11:30 p.m. The expanded newscast will allow the station to provide late election results as well as present the "lion's share" of non-election news, according to news director Mark Pimentel.

After watching another TV reporter broadcasting from the great outdoors during the latest "blast of snow" we recently experienced, I think it's time we viewers said enough is enough. I realize that local weather is the life's blood of our local news stations. After all, if it wasn't for numerous forecasts, warmed over national news, and the latest "Sky Team" view of the nightly traffic accident, the local news hour would barely exist. But that doesn't excuse the constant gross exaggeration, screen crawls and teasers suggesting the need to "stay tuned" to hear about the approaching Armageddon - which frequently amounts to a snow shower somewhere in Cumberland.

Commercial TV stations in Maryland and Washington barely get a passing grade when it comes to children's programming, according to a "report card" released yesterday by the Maryland Campaign for Kids' TV. The 13 monitored TV stations received an overall grade of D+."The stations in Maryland aren't doing a very good job," said campaign director Charlene Hughins Uhl. "Most of the stations had virtually nothing of quality for children on the air."The Maryland Campaign for Kids' TV is a project of two statewide organizations, Advocates for Children & Youth and Ready At Five, in association with a Washington-based national organization, the Center for Media Education.

LOS ANGELES -- In a sign that Tribune Co. may be preparing to exit the broadcast TV business, the company's investment bankers have begun offering its premier TV stations - KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles, WPIX in New York and WGN in Chicago - to selected potential buyers. One reason it is shopping the stations is the pending expiration of broadcast licenses. KTLA's eight-year license expires Dec. 1, at which time Tribune could be found in violation of Federal Communications Commission regulations banning ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same market, because it also owns the Los Angeles Times.

WNUV (Channel 54) has a new owner.Eddie Edwards, owner of Pittsburgh's WPTT and one of the few African-American owners of a TV station in the country, has signed an agreement to buy WNUV from ABRY Communications of Boston and has obtained the option on a Milwaukee station from Gaylord Broadcasting of Oklahoma City.ABRY, which manages the Milwaukee station for Gaylord, said in a news release that the purchase price for the two stations exceeds $100 million."I'm just happy that this has happened," Edwards told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

How would you like to turn on your $30-a-month cable T service one day this fall and find out that you can no longer see "Seinfeld," "Roseanne" or "60 Minutes"?How would you feel if you found out that because you do have cable you won't be able to watch the NBA playoffs or the Super Bowl?The terms "retransmission consent" and "must-carry" probably don't mean much to most TV viewers today. But for the two biggest factions in the TV industry, today is the first day of the rest of their lives under the new Cable TV Act.Retransmission consent is part of the Cable TV Act passed by Congress last fall.

WASHINGTON - Opponents of greater media concentration expressed outrage yesterday over a congressional maneuver that could allow more consolidation in the television industry. The move late Monday was a "total violation" of protocol, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, said in a statement. White House officials and Republican congressional leaders "went into a closet, met with themselves, and announced a `compromise"' on how many TV stations one company could own, he said.

GALLOPING DEREGULATION of telecommunications often promises more consumer benefit than it delivers. Cable television is an example. While expanding the choices of channels that produce profits, the cable operator seeks to limit which local broadcast TV stations it must carry.The federal law that forces cable systems to carry local broadcast TV station signals (which most people used to receive by rooftop antenna or rabbit-ears on the set) is before the Supreme Court for review again this year, after being upheld twice by a federal appeals panel.

It's Saturday night at Canton's Du Burns Arena, and Mike "The Prodigy" Bennett flexes and preens as his opponent, Ring of Honor champion Jay Lethal, staggers across the mat. As the bad-boy wrestler's scantily clad girlfriend-valet joins the gloating, fans erupt in an angry chant of "You suck, you suck. " Those in the front row yell the loudest - pounding the metal dividers surrounding the ring in time with the chant. Welcome to the new - and, at the same time, very old - world of TV wrestling, as the Sinclair Broadcast Group embraces the original programming business that comes with chokeholds and body slams.

UPDATES AGAIN 6:10 p.m. Wednesday with more comments from Berk on reaction to his departure. UPDATES Wednesday morning With Berk comments at end. Weatherman Justin Berk is no longer with Baltimore's WMAR-TV, according to Bill Hooper, the station's general manager. "Friday was Justin's last day," Hooper said in a telephone insterview with the Sun Tuesday. "We have been going back and forth for months on terms of a contract, and the two sides just couldn't come together.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. has finalized a planned purchase of Four Points Media for $200 million, the Hunt Valley-based broadcaster said Tuesday. Sinclair financed the acquisition of Four Points' television stations with a $180 million loan plus $20 million in cash that it had already paid. Sinclair acquired the Four Points TV stations, which it has been operating since Oct. 1, from affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management LP. The newly purchased assets include television stations in Salt Lake City; Austin, Texas; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Providence, R.I., and New Bedford, Mass.

"Working. For you," is the slogan of WPEC-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla. But next year, Sinclair Broadcast Group expects WPEC to also work especially hard for Sinclair shareholders as it rakes in advertising money on behalf of candidates for Congress and the presidency. Thanks to the Supreme Court's removal of restrictions on political spending and Florida's perennial status as a political battlefield, West Palm Beach viewers are likely to be blasted by more ads than ever, suggesting Republicans will wreck Medicare and Democrats will wreck the country.

Dorothy E. Brunson, who became the first African-American woman in the nation to own a radio station when she bought WEBB-AM in Baltimore, died Sunday of complications from ovarian cancer at Mercy Medical Center. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 72. "Thanks to the pioneering work of Ms. Brunson, the world of broadcast media was opened up to African-American entrepreneurs and business leaders," Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement. "Her vision and commitment to excellence at every level of the business led to her success and paved the way for others to find success in cities across America.

When Oprah Winfrey ends her syndicated talk show Wednesday, millions of fans will not be the only ones facing a void. TV station executives who have lived with what's come to be known as the "Oprah Factor" are buying, selling, hoping and praying to get a piece of the audience of one of the most lucrative franchises in television. Tens of millions of dollars are at stake. "With Oprah leaving, it's the Wild West in lots of cities like Baltimore," says Bob Papper, Hofstra University professor of media studies.

The rapidly expanding Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., based in Baltimore, has bought the assets of an Alabama television station for an undisclosed price, the company announced yesterday.Sinclair, which owns Baltimore's Channel 45, has purchased the building and other assets of WDBB-TV in Tuscaloosa, Ala., said David D. Smith, Sinclair's president.The Baltimore-based broadcast group also has entered into a management agreement to operate the license of WDBB-TV, which is currently affiliated with Fox Broadcasting.

With the state of Maryland looking hard for budget cuts, and Maryland Public Television looking for new leadership as it loses audience, membership and funding, the time seems right to seriously consider whether Annapolis should be in the television business. It might seem like an unconventional idea. But if Maryland can't do better than it has in recent years, it should sell the license or lease operational control of MPT to a local nonprofit group. That is not as bold and unprecedented a move as it might seem; New Jersey is trying to do just that with NJN, its public broadcasting operation.