Viewpoint: When Nexstar and Network cross paths

This column originally appeared on TVND.com, and is republished here with permission. Subscribe to TVND.com’s e-mail newsletter by clicking or tapping here.  

We Interrupt Our Scheduled Programming from Las Vegas

Remember when television stations use to tell you those words before delivering something of significance? These days, you are more likely to get dumped right into the midst of a special report, when the hub failed to make the switch to catch it from the beginning.

But that rant is for another day. In today’s edition, we were planning to bring you day two coverage from the NAB Show here in Las Vegas. It is where we have walked and stood so much over the past 48 hours that our feet feel like two pounds of ground beef.

Personal ailments aside, we were in the audience on the main stage of the NAB Show this Monday morning, waiting for the opening session to start. That was when our phone buzzed with the breaking news report from our friends at The Desk. They had published a story about how Nexstar Media Group, owner of the nation’s largest group of local television stations, had required some of its stations to air a story in their local newscasts about the proposed deregulation of the broadcasting industry by Brendan Carr, the current chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. In addition, the news stories reportedly called for viewers to contact the FCC and support the deregulation effort.

In timing that felt more like a movie plot than real life, we had just finished digesting the online story when the welcome session we were waiting for began. And, then, out walks Nexstar CEO Perry Sook to welcome everyone to Las Vegas and the NAB Show. Sook is on for a few short moments and introduces the next speaker, Curtis LeGeyt, the President of the NAB. For the record, we should state here that we met Mr. Sook on the occasion of Nexstar acquiring the station we were working for at the time. We doubt he would remember our name or face if we ran into him today.

But we have ruminated a bit on this Nexstar story and, as you might imagine, we have a few thoughts. Though probably not the ones you might expect.

Having spent nearly every day of our professional careers in television newsrooms, we do find it a bit heavy-handed for Nexstar to have its own newsrooms run a story calling for viewers to contact the FCC and support deregulation that it would likely benefit from–without more context than we saw in some of the versions of the news story that aired. We’d sure like to believe if we were leading a Nexstar newsroom that received the mandate to air the story, we would have pushed for language that made it clear that this was government reform that our station’s ownership supported, given the FCC grants the license to our station that allows us to be in business in the first place.

The whole effort felt like an odd twist on one scene in Paddy Chayefsky’s script for the 1976 movie “Network.” In the film, network news anchorman Howard Beale goes on the air and in a fit of angry ranting, he calls for viewers to “flood the White House with telegrams” to stop a proposed merger that will hand ownership of his fictional UBS network over to a larger business conglomerate with financial ties to Saudi Arabia.

As you might guess, in the movie, the White House indeed ends up “knee-deep in telegrams.” The plot of the movie, which IMDb lists as a “dark comedy,” then takes a series of twists that we won’t spoil for you here. We will urge you to watch “Network” if you have never seen it. Or watch it again if you haven’t seen it in recent years.

We don’t suggest that the movie’s fictional plea to viewers is equivalent to the current Nexstar situation. But art sometimes imitates life, even if it takes nearly five decades. How you ask? One of the deregulation moves under consideration by FCC Chairman Carr is a relaxation of restrictions against foreign interests owning American broadcast stations.

But here’s our plot twist that you may not expect: while we wouldn’t want to be forced to air a self-serving news story, especially with little or no transparency about the company’s interests being served, we do respect the company’s right to call for the public to support a government agency in reviewing — and possibly repealing — regulation that impacts their business interests.

We believe the most significant error in all of this was in the execution of the idea.

Because, like it or not, the people who own broadcast television stations have the right to determine what they want to put on the air. And instruct their employees to follow their instructions. (Of course, those employees have a decision they can make about doing so or finding new employment.) The only real restrictions on that right are primarily associated with the airing of obscene material or failing to meet the very broad standard of “operating in the public interest.” Perry Sook is the head of Nexstar and the company’s largest individual owner of shares, holding just over 5 percent. He, or someone in his corporate leadership, certainly can tell all 160-odd stations to put a message on their air asking viewers to support the FCC chair’s oddly named “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative.

But was it, as a Nexstar spokesperson told The Desk, “a news story worth covering?” We’d call that a bit of positive PR messaging at best.

Especially without more transparency to the viewers of those local newscasts, perhaps along the lines of what is required in the political ads that air over those same Nexstar-owned stations. So maybe it wouldn’t have to be Perry Sook appearing on camera, stating his name, and adding, “I approve this message.” But what if each local General Manager went on their stations and explained the value of local broadcasting to the community and the station’s business interests being served by less government regulation?

It may not end up as satisfying as the brilliant monologue by the late actor Ned Beatty as the corporate CEO in “Network.” Still, it certainly would be more honest with the viewers than trading on their trust placed in their local news anchor, whatever may be left of THAT these days.

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