Staples/Sinclair percolates on
Office supply retailer Staples Inc. continues to get ink on its relationship with Sinclair Broadcast Group. The war of words was carried forward by the two entities closest to the dispute on either side, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Media Matters for America.
SBG weighed in, saying it is pleased that Staples "..states that it intends to continue to advertise on Sinclair television stations and has no policy against advertising in Sinclair news programming. The Staples' statement also note that political agendas do not drive its media buying decisions and that its media buying process with Sinclair 'has recently been misrepresented by an organization with no affiliation to Staples.'"
Sinclair goes on to talk about "...several organizations with what appear to be far-left leaning political agendas who have engaged in an ongoing Internet-based campaign of harassment against Sinclair." It calls the effort an attempt to abridge its own right to free speech by bringing "economic pressure to censor the speech of Sinclair," charging that they are misrepresenting the facts to do so. Calling it "trade defamation," SBG says the courts are an available alternative, and that it "...will aggressively pursue any organization or any individual which engages in such defamation, including individuals who lend their names to mass email campaigns spreading such misinformation."
Media Matter for America, on the other hand, says the only misrepresentation of late has come from Staples, which it says was involved in approving and even editing the release in which it was revealed its Sinclair advertising decision. "The release stated that Staples was not renewing advertising on Sinclair local news programming due in part to concerns registered by visitors to the SinclairAction.com website...," wrote MMFA.
MMFA also quoted Staples spokesperson Owen Davis, who told the Chicago Tribune, "In general, we don't explain our decisions regarding our media buys. But we did consider the concerns expressed by our customers with some political partisan programming, specifically 'The Point.'" ["The Point" is Sinclair's nightly conservatively-oriented opinion piece]
RBR observation:
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. We'd say that this may be the exception that proves the rule. We can't see that this controversy is doing Staples any good whatsoever.
Sinclair, on the other hand, says it has strengthened its bond with many viewers and advertisers, and even though this sort of thing no doubt makes many others think twice about supporting the group, the fact remains that claiming a piece of the media pie is not a zero-sum game. If there is a little as a 20% hardcore Sinclair-loving demo out there, Sinclair can make a very nice living off just that. And most people aren't thinking about who owns the station when they're channel surfing.
Still, we think that Sinclair can expect more, not less, of this sort of thing in the future.
Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
