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News :: Media |
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Local CBS Affiliate Runs Basketball Coach Show Instead of Presidential Debate |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ben Grosser
Email: grosser (nospam) uiuc.edu (unverified!) |
01 Mar 2004
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The local CBS affiliate, WCIA, ran a women's basketball coach show instead of the much publicized CBS democratic presidential debate Sunday morning. |
The local CBS affiliate, WCIA, ran a women's basketball coach show instead of the much publicized CBS democratic presidential debate Sunday morning. While the debate, the last one before the Super Tuesday primaries of March 2nd, ran on other affiliate networks, WCIA chose to run the Teresa Grentz show instead. The national CBS network has been under much fire in the last many weeks, due to its refusal to air a MoveOn.org commercial critical of the Bush administration, its airing of Janet Jackson's breast during the superbowl, and its decision to run (and then pull) a political medicare propoganda ad.
I sent the following letter to WCIA's program director protesting their programming schedule, but unsurprisingly have received no response. If you feel similarly, I suggest sending your own letter.
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Dear WCIA Program Director,
I was shocked and dissapointed to turn on WCIA this morning at 10am to find the Teresa Grentz show instead of the last democratic presidential debate before the tuesday primaries. I returned to WCIA at 11 just in case it got delayed an hour, but of course then found that you had moved on to covering yet more basketball.
I would hope that our local CBS affiliate might consider a presidential debate of more importance than yet another sports coach show. Perhaps this event wasn't available from the network?
It would be appreciated if you could pay more attention to serving the local community with a variety of interests instead of pandering to the narrow interests of university sports so heavily. The public owns the airwaves that you rent for broadcast, and it would be nice if some sort of public interest was occasionally served by your programming.
However, considering CBS' decision to ban MoveOn.org's calm commercial during the superbowl, only to then bare all during halftime, and finally to violate your own policies on airing issue ads to accomodate political advertising from the Bush campaign for a failed and unpopular medicare "reform" bill, I suppose I am not surprised.
Needless to say, I won't even try turning to CBS next time.
Benjamin Grosser
Urbana, IL
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This work is in the public domain |
