Nextar Media Group: Making a Play to Become the First Galactic Empire
By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon
Fernando Del Valle, staff writer for "The Dying Daily (apologies to Jerry McHale)" known as The Brownsville Herald, reported the local CBS affiliate, KGBT-TV Channel 4, was sold to Nexstar Media Group. Nexstar owns the local NBC affiliate, KVEO-TV.
Let that sink in for a minute. One company now controls 50% of the local channels in the Rio Grande Valley. Our local stations break down like this: The NBC and CBS affiliate are now owned by Nexstar Media Group. The ABS affiliate, KRGV-TV is owned by the Manship family of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is operated under their Mobile Video Tapes, Inc. name, and the local Fox affiliate is owned by Entravision Communications based out of Santa Monica, California. Entravision's siser company is Univision. The Rio Grande Valley feed of Fox is shared with the Laredo area, as well.
Nexstar Media Group is the largest television station owning company in the United States, owning 197 television stations across the country.
In addition to the broadcast rights, KVEO also acquired KGBT's Harlingen studio. According to the Herald's article, general manager William Jorn said KVEO would be moving its operation from Brownsville to the Harlingen facility. Although the company is moving from Brownsville to Harlingen, Jorn also said nobody would be losing their job as a result of the merge.
In the article, Jorn is quoted as saying, "What it means for the market is the combining of two excellent broadcasting companies allowing us to bring our resources under one roof. We are enhancing our service for the Rio Grande Valley, enhancing our news content and local programming. We essentially can do twice as much with the same number of people."
I don't know if he really believes that, but his premise is laughable at best, and utterly naive at worst.
For years, Brownsville has experienced a drain on local coverage. Channels 4 and 5 have always covered believed the Rio Grande Valley ends at the Harlingen city limits. Fox is too busy looking for well-endowed supermodel weathergirls and splitting their coverage between McAllen and Laredo. The print media is worse. The Brownsville Herald stopped being Brownsville's newspaper long ago. They might as well re-brand it the McAllen Monitor South or the Valley Morning Falling Star. We'd probably be better off looking for Brownsville news in the Laguna Vista Ledger or the Port Isabel Town Crier, or whatever their one sheet newspapers are called.
It seems as if the only time Brownsville gets any news coverage is when there's some gruesome crime or some other story that makes Brownsville look bad.
The only hope Brownsville had for decent local coverage was KVEO. Their broadcast center is in Brownsville, after all. Their coverage of Brownsville, Port Isabel, and the Island was decent — not spectacular, or adequate — but at least it was decent.
Now, with KVEO pulling up their roots and transplanting themselves in the old KGBT studio, the Harlingen and McAllen bias will begin to creep into KVEO's broadcasts.
Large media conglomerates are not a good thing. Now, more than ever, independent television stations and newspapers with their respective news directors need to cover things that affect the areas they broadcast in. We do not need corporate boards and executive news directors or presidents of news divisions telling our local stations what to cover, and we certainly don't need two local channels merging to cover the same news stories.
We need more variety — not less.
This is exactly why I encourage more people to start blogs and post news stories to their social media pages. Citizen journalism is a product of large media monopolies and conglomerates buying up newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. People didn't start blogging about news stories because they wanted to compete with old media, they started blogging about news stories because old media isn't covering the stories that need to be covered.
We are treading on some very dangerous ground when we're allowing a select few corporations control the flow of information to an area that already gets very poor media coverage.
Fernando Del Valle, staff writer for "The Dying Daily (apologies to Jerry McHale)" known as The Brownsville Herald, reported the local CBS affiliate, KGBT-TV Channel 4, was sold to Nexstar Media Group. Nexstar owns the local NBC affiliate, KVEO-TV.
Let that sink in for a minute. One company now controls 50% of the local channels in the Rio Grande Valley. Our local stations break down like this: The NBC and CBS affiliate are now owned by Nexstar Media Group. The ABS affiliate, KRGV-TV is owned by the Manship family of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is operated under their Mobile Video Tapes, Inc. name, and the local Fox affiliate is owned by Entravision Communications based out of Santa Monica, California. Entravision's siser company is Univision. The Rio Grande Valley feed of Fox is shared with the Laredo area, as well.
Nexstar Media Group is the largest television station owning company in the United States, owning 197 television stations across the country.
In addition to the broadcast rights, KVEO also acquired KGBT's Harlingen studio. According to the Herald's article, general manager William Jorn said KVEO would be moving its operation from Brownsville to the Harlingen facility. Although the company is moving from Brownsville to Harlingen, Jorn also said nobody would be losing their job as a result of the merge.
In the article, Jorn is quoted as saying, "What it means for the market is the combining of two excellent broadcasting companies allowing us to bring our resources under one roof. We are enhancing our service for the Rio Grande Valley, enhancing our news content and local programming. We essentially can do twice as much with the same number of people."
I don't know if he really believes that, but his premise is laughable at best, and utterly naive at worst.
For years, Brownsville has experienced a drain on local coverage. Channels 4 and 5 have always covered believed the Rio Grande Valley ends at the Harlingen city limits. Fox is too busy looking for well-endowed supermodel weathergirls and splitting their coverage between McAllen and Laredo. The print media is worse. The Brownsville Herald stopped being Brownsville's newspaper long ago. They might as well re-brand it the McAllen Monitor South or the Valley Morning Falling Star. We'd probably be better off looking for Brownsville news in the Laguna Vista Ledger or the Port Isabel Town Crier, or whatever their one sheet newspapers are called.
It seems as if the only time Brownsville gets any news coverage is when there's some gruesome crime or some other story that makes Brownsville look bad.
The only hope Brownsville had for decent local coverage was KVEO. Their broadcast center is in Brownsville, after all. Their coverage of Brownsville, Port Isabel, and the Island was decent — not spectacular, or adequate — but at least it was decent.
Now, with KVEO pulling up their roots and transplanting themselves in the old KGBT studio, the Harlingen and McAllen bias will begin to creep into KVEO's broadcasts.
Large media conglomerates are not a good thing. Now, more than ever, independent television stations and newspapers with their respective news directors need to cover things that affect the areas they broadcast in. We do not need corporate boards and executive news directors or presidents of news divisions telling our local stations what to cover, and we certainly don't need two local channels merging to cover the same news stories.
We need more variety — not less.
This is exactly why I encourage more people to start blogs and post news stories to their social media pages. Citizen journalism is a product of large media monopolies and conglomerates buying up newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. People didn't start blogging about news stories because they wanted to compete with old media, they started blogging about news stories because old media isn't covering the stories that need to be covered.
We are treading on some very dangerous ground when we're allowing a select few corporations control the flow of information to an area that already gets very poor media coverage.
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