WHNT’s remarkably timed ‘technical problems’

February 27, 2008

To be sure, the real outrage in the scandal surrounding trumped up charges against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) are the charges themselves. Local Republican officials, in apparent conjunction with Karl Rove, railroaded a sitting governor because he was a Democrat. It was political corruption at its most pernicious.

But if we also take a moment to consider the Alabama media, the decisions of WHNT, the CBS affiliate in northern Alabama, are almost comical in their ineptitude.

In 1955, when WLBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., did not want to run a network report about racial desegregation, it famously hung up the sign: “Sorry, Cable Trouble.” Audiences in northern Alabama might have suspected the same tactics when WHNT-TV, the CBS affiliate, went dark Sunday evening during a “60 minutes” segment that strongly suggested that Don Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, was wrongly convicted of corruption last year.

The report presented new evidence that the charges against Mr. Siegelman may have been concocted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors — and orchestrated by Karl Rove. Unfortunately, WHNT had “technical problems” that prevented it from broadcasting a segment (the problems were resolved in time for the next part of the show) that many residents of Alabama would no doubt have found quite interesting.

After initially blaming the glitch on CBS in New York, the affiliate said it learned “upon investigation,” and following a rebuke from the network, that “the problem was on our end.” It re-broadcast the segment at 10 p.m., pitting it against the Academy Awards on rival ABC, before Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar. As public criticism grew, it ran it again at 6 p.m. on Monday.

WHNT’s president and general manager assured viewers that “there was no intent whatsoever to keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.”

No, of course not, it was only the most remarkable set of coincidences in modern broadcast history.

Consider the tale of the tape:

* WHNT is owned by one of the Bass brothers of Texas, former business partners of George W. Bush and generous contributors to Republican causes.

* WHNT’s broadcast signal was just fine before the Siegelman story on “60 Minutes,” and was just fine after the story ended.

* The Siegelman story was bound to make the state Republican machine and Rove’s office look pretty awful, which was apparent from pre-broadcast commercials.

* WHNT was harsh in covering Siegelman when he was governor.

* WHNT couldn’t keep its story straight about who was responsible for the “technical glitches.”

But no, there certainly couldn’t have been any “intent” to “keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.” Who could ever have thought such a thing?

The irony is, if WHNT was trying to suppress a report that made Republicans look bad, the station ended up creating a backlash — interest in the “60 Minutes” report soared once locals were led to believe they weren’t supposed to see it.

Suppressing the forbidden fruit sometimes only serves to make it more enticing, oddly enough.

Time for a license review.

  • There’s a Global War On a Psychological State going on and all CB can write about is “conspiracy theories”?

    There’s an “Islam-O-Fascist” hiding under my bed. How’s that for a conspiracy?

  • Seems like this would be a good example to use if we ever get to take a look at re-regulating the ownership rules.

  • Do you really think the station was that stupid?

    I have no idea but they made a huge mistake if they thought they could get away with it.

  • This is precisely the problem with enormous, global media corporations. If you can’t trust an inbred, potted-meat-breath, dobro-plucking station manager to run a story critical of conservatives, there’s no way a FOX-run outlet ever will.

  • dobro-plucking

    Dobro-plucking? It’s well known that potted-meat-breath inbreds play banjos, not dobros.

  • Anyone now not think net neutrality is a huge issue? Something about having corporate executives determining what information we should or should not have access to makes me incredibly uneasy.

    The Conservative movement has been all about message control, from the Bush administration’s manipulation of the media, to Fox News, Washington Times, SInclair Broadcasting and even winger websites heavily censoring comments that don’t conform to their viewpoint. The next Democratic president will have to figure out a way to manage information because this method of controlling the public’s perceptions has been a magic wand for the right wing in their quest to get and retain power.

  • ***There’s an “Islam-O-Fascist” hiding under my bed. How’s that for a conspiracy?***

    I can go one better—JKap is hiding under his bed and pretending to be an IOF. Well, I “think” he’s pretending to be an IOF. Actually, after doing a Google, listening to “The Factor,” and reading a few bits of gibberish written by a sycophantic Moonie at WT, I can find no evidence—credible or otherwise—to support the possibility that Jihada Kapistani is not an IOF. Rumor has it, though, that his middle name is “Hussein….”

    Ummm…you DID ask for this, y’know….

  • “Anyone now not think net neutrality is a huge issue? Something about having corporate executives determining what information we should or should not have access to makes me incredibly uneasy.”

    That’s not the issue… it’s all about those having to pay their fair share for high bandwidth content.. i.e., making those parties pay for the bits that they consume/supply. Why shouldn’t You Tube have to pay its fair share to the service providers for clogging the Internet with its videos?

  • Considering the local interest, and the amazingly bad timing, I’m sure the General manager will have no problem airing the segment this Sunday.

  • It’s entirely plausible that they spent so much effort trying not to look like a coincidence that someone did screw up. I’ve worked on amateur stations, and sometimes the worst thing is for someone to interrupt the normal checks for ‘extra’ checks which then means the wrong toggle is toggle twice. Extraneous toggles are bad, and Captain Amazing demonstrated.

    However, this is what we would call, ‘a shadow of a doubt’.

  • Why shouldn’t You Tube have to pay its fair share to the service providers for clogging the Internet with its videos?

    …Because: I already paid my ISP for access to the internet.
    …Because: YouTube already paid its ISP for access to the internet.

    Why does YouTube have to pay my ISP as well as its own? Why do they care if I’m downloading YouTube videos or CBS videos? Why is it appropriate for them to care?

  • Why shouldn’t You Tube have to pay its fair share to the service providers for clogging the Internet with its videos?

    I dunno, JRS, Jr. That sounds more like a lib’ral, big gubberment, reg-yoo-lation idea to me.

  • That’s not the issue… it’s all about those having to pay their fair share for high bandwidth content.. i.e., making those parties pay for the bits that they consume/supply. Why shouldn’t You Tube have to pay its fair share to the service providers for clogging the Internet with its videos?

    Sorry to go off topic but… People are paying for the high-bandwidth things that are moving around. They pay their ISP. YouTube doesn’t “push” anything out; it’s all served only on request. Someone came looking for it — why shouldn’t they pay for the privilege of moving those bits? Content throttling on the other hand puts way too much control in the hands of the backbone providers, who almost always have competing offerings and who therefore cannot be trusted to remain actually neutral.

  • Thanks JRS jr for finally getting liberal.

    Anyone who listens to c-span would observe the sudden abundance in Alabama of middle east experts and foreign relations experts and would not be surprised by the expertise exhibited here by their televised media experts. Stay tuned for more interruptions as reality is readjusted for November.

  • Someone is surprised that the dumbest political shit happens in the dumbest state of the country? Alabama – dead last in everything other than political hypocrisy. They’re a world leader there.

    But thus it has ever been – go back to the original founding of the place and it is one looooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnggggggggg record of mendacity and treason.

  • Ah yes, the Streisand Effect strikes again.

    And when you say “Islam-O-Fascist”, do you actually mean Islam O’Fascist? I think I know that guy. The most confused Irishman ever.

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