The Seattle Times Got It wrong

[Commentary] The Seattle Times and its publisher, Frank Blethen, have long styled themselves as crusaders for independent journalism and freedom of the press. So, it’s both discordant and disappointing that a recent editorial in The Times called for heavy-handed federal government intervention to limit media companies’ ability to acquire and run more TV stations.

Television broadcasters in Seattle and across the country are operating in the most brutal business environment in their history — besieged by a plethora of online and mobile video offerings, with more entrants sprouting up every day. Unlike most of those competing services, Seattle’s broadcast TV stations provide high quality local news and weather coverage — and it’s totally free to anyone with an antenna. Even viewers who get their local TV stations from cable and satellite pay far less for it proportionally than they do for much less-watched national cable networks like USA and ESPN. To keep their businesses viable in this arduous new media age, TV station owners need to amortize costs across more outlets and build scale to increase negotiating clout with programming suppliers and cable and satellite carriers. But localism will continue to be what sets broadcast television stations apart and will always be crucial to their financial success. The federal government intervention in local broadcasting ownership endorsed by Blethen would seriously impair the industry and reduce the number of broadcasters able to make the substantial investment required to produce local television news. But Blethen’s stance is not only irresponsible for someone who claims to celebrate robust local journalism, it’s appallingly disingenuous and self-serving.

[Spieckerman is CEO of SpieckermanMedia LLC, a Dallas-based strategic communications consultancy and cable television network company]