A group of watchdog organizations cited a study of 2004 election coverage in attempting to get a blanket denial of license renewals for television stations in Chicago, Milwaukee and Portland OR. Andrew Schwartzman of Media Access Project ran point for a group calling itself Oregon Alliance to Reform Media. They claimed that according to the study, less than 1% of news time in the four weeks leading up to the election was devoted to state or local elections, only around 9% was spend on ballot issues, and less than 1% was spent on other local elections. The FCC reiterated its inability to get into programming and journalistic judgments of broadcast licensees and denied the petition to deny. The stations included two owned by Meredith, and one each from Fisher, Tribune, Montecito, King, Ion and National Minority TV.
