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An Investment in Balanced Media |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 16 December 2008 |
Are you a libertarian/conservative millionaire frustrated by the bias of the media?
Are you looking for a business opportunity that may or may not make money?
Then I have a deal for you. How would you like to buy your own ABC affiliate?
That's right. You can be the proud owner your own TV station in Topeka, KS. Forget Twitter Tweets, and blogs, and streaming video, you can have your own broadcast signal and have a direct impact on North East Kansas.
More importantly, you can have a larger impact nation-wide.
How can the third ranked TV station in a small market have an impact
nation-wide? By building an infrastructure of reporters, producers and
photographers.
In the current market segmentation of the media, most of the
conservative/libertarians are analysts and commentators. They are
commenting on the news, not gathering and creating the news.
A liberal/moderate producer, reporter and photographer team gathers the
news. This initial gathering frames the debate that the
conservative/libertarian then comments on. But, by that point, it is
too late.
In cable and broadcast news, the producers, reporters and photographers come from places like Lubbock, Texas.
60 Minutes' Scott Pelley follows the typical track.
He started out at KSEL-TV in Lubbock, TX--a very small market. From
there he moves up to a large market, KXAS in Dallas. After putting in
years perfecting his craft, he gets called up to the majors.
Small stations like KTKA in Topeka, KS are where cub reporters go for
their first job. KTKA would be a great place to start building a 'farm
team.'
After a year or two of grinding out news packages and news casts, young
conservative/libertarians would then have the credentials to move into
a larger market where they would have a larger impact and possibly make
the leap to the majors.
They would also be in position to create the new media as they have
practice in gathering and packaging hard news in a professional manner.
Appointment television may be dead, but the basics of creating and presenting a professional product will still be applied.
Conservatives and libertarians often complain about the media and try
to mimick the media and think they should be able to jump in at the top.
Liberals have made this error with talk radio. Rush Limbaugh was a
disc jockey for years, perfecting his craft, before he moved to the
talk format. Same with Glenn Beck, who started out as a top 40 DJ.
Sean Hannity started doing talk at a college radio station, then got a
job in the small market of Huntsville, AL before moving up to Atlanta,
then Fox News and WABC in New York.
My success--if you want to call it that--as a documentary filmmaker is
due to a similar track. I learned the basics of TV in the Marines,
then went to work at a local TV station where I did thousands of
newscasts, packaged up hundreds of stories, shot hours of video.
My first documentary was horrible. But each one gets a little better.
I now do work for CBS Productions, ABC Sports, History Channel and TIME.
For a purchase price between $5million and $6.2 million, you could have
your own TV station and start building a farm team of producers,
reporters, anchors and photographers who will move up to larger
markets. A few of them might make into the major leagues, some of them
will jump into new media ventures.
And the project has a chance of turning a slight profit.
It could be even more profitable, but that takes a vision to understand
how to deploy the infrastructure and equipment 24 hours a day in a
global market.
If you are interested, contact me. Serious inquiries only please.
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