Kevin O’Brien, the former owner of ABC 6 who fought unsuccessfully to hold onto the local station last year, is back in the news. This time O’Brien is making headlines in Detroit, where he was fired last week after as a consultant to independent station WADL-TV, which hired a former FBI agent to investigate him.

TV Spy reports on the latest:

After his very public termination as a WADL consultant, Kevin O’Brien is firing back at the independent station and its owner Kevin Adell.

Today an attorney representing O’Brien circulated a press release defending him against the “defamatory” press release WADL sent out last week announcing his dismissal.

In firing O’Brien, WADL cited his use of company equipment to “obtain a deal with the San Jose Sharks” as the reason for his termination. O’Brien denies trying to land a deal with the NHL team, and contends that he was fired because he disagreed with Adell about how to discipline an employee for excessive use of a company vehicle.

Love “Parks and Rec”? You’re probably a Democrat. Prefer “Hawaii Five-O”? You’re likely a Republican.

Those are the findings of Experian-Simmons’ annual survey on partisans’ consumer preferences, as reported by EW.com’s James Hibberd. Even more interesting are the two groups’ least favorite shows – conservatives hate “Weeds” and liberals don’t like “Swamp Loggers.”

Notably, the survey found “Newsmakers” is extremely popular across party lines.

(I might have made that one up.)

WLNE-TV’s top executive, Steve Doerr, will resign at the end of this month as Citadel Broadcasting takes over management of the station, WPRI.com has confirmed.

“After discussions with Citadel over the last week, I want you to hear – from me – that I will be stepping aside as Vice President and General Manager of WLNE-TV/ABC 6 at the end of the month,” Doerr told employees in a memo sent late Tuesday and obtained by WPRI.com.

In a phone interview, Doerr confirmed the memo’s authenticity and described his departure as a mutual decision arrived at by him and Citadel, which bought ABC 6 at auction last month in a deal valued at roughly $5.8 million.

“They clearly have a sense of the direction they want to go,” he said of Citadel.

Doerr’s announcement came the same day WLNE said it would reshuffle its weekday schedule on April 25, reducing its local news programming by 30 minutes and reshuffling its afternoon broadcasts.

Doerr will continue to run WLNE until May 1, when a local marketing agreement allowing Bronxville, N.Y.-based Citadel to operate the station is scheduled to take effect, the memo said. (Citadel cannot become the station’s actual owner until the FCC approves a license transfer.)

Doerr said he will stay involved at WLNE after May 1 as a consultant working for Matthew McGowan, the station’s court-appointed receiver, until its license is officially transferred to Citadel.

The outgoing GM praised ABC 6′s staff as “extraordinary” in the memo, adding: “We’ve been through a lot together, and through it all, your professionalism, dedication, focus, competitiveness and talent have kept us going.”

Doerr joined ABC 6 in October 2007 after working as a consultant with Audience Research & Development, where his clients included WJAR-TV. He was previously a senior executive at NBC and also worked for a number of broadcasters in different parts of the country.

“It’s been an interesting time and we’ll see what’s next,” Doerr said by phone. “My plan is to stay around here,” he added, noting his daughters are still attending school locally.

(photo: Ted Nesi/WPRI)

A Superior Court judge approved the sale of insolvent WLNE-TV ABC 6 for $4 million in cash Tuesday to Citadel Communications Co. Ltd., a small New York broadcaster founded by a former chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters.

The total value of the deal is more than $5.8 million because WLNE will retain cash, receivables and other assets in addition to receiving $4 million in cash from Bronxville, N.Y.-based Citadel, its court-appointed receiver Matthew McGowan said.

Citadel and ABC already have an affiliation agreement in place that is just awaiting the two parties’ signatures, ABC’s attorney Jennifer Doran said. The Disney-owned network effectively blocked three competing bids. Sovereign Bank, WLNE’s biggest creditor, also supported the sale to Citadel.

Citadel owns four TV stations in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, three of them ABC affiliates and the fourth a CBS affiliate, founder and CEO Phil Lombardo told WPRI.com last month. The company is not related to radio giant Citadel Broadcasting, which owns WPRO-AM and other local stations. Lombardo, who was in court Tuesday, said he is also an investor in a 24-hour cable news station in Sarasota, Fla.

“There is a lot of work to be done,” Lombardo told reporters after the hearing before departing for a celebratory lunch at Hemenway’s Restaurant. “We now need to formulate our plans to make the station very successful.”

Lombardo said he planned to “refocus” WLNE’s newscasts and make it the first high-definition station in the Providence-New Bedford market. Layoffs are “possible” but it’s too early to say whether they will be required, he said. “We’re going to evaluate every person in the station,” he said.

Associate Justice Michael Silverstein denied an objection by ABC 6′s previous owner, Kevin O’Brien, who argued McGowan was not obtaining enough money for the station. O’Brien paid $14 million in 2007 to buy WLNE from Freedom Communications.

A total of 54 investor groups expressed interest in buying ABC 6, about 12 of which were “very interested” and received a term sheet, but only four submitted formal offers, McGowan said.

The four were Citadel; former Providence Mayor Joseph Paolino’s group, which bid $2.2 million; former WPRO-AM general manager Mitch Dolan’s Brine Broadcasting, which bid $4.2 million; and Tim McDonald’s Liberty Investors Group, which bid $4.3 million, McGowan said.

ABC’s network officials negotiated with all four bidders but declined to approve any group except Citadel as a potential affiliate, both sides’ lawyers said in court. McGowan said he could not support a buyer who did not meet ABC”s approval. ”They’re asking me to take a huge risk here” if he did, McGowan said.

WLNE began paying ABC for network programming at the beginning of this year, and Citadel’s Lombardo said he does not oppose that so long as the affiliate payments are reasonable. He also said Citadel planned to “put its armor on” and negotiate new retransmission payments with cable and satellite companies like Cox Communications, Verizon Communications and DirecTV.

Citadel will formally take over management of the station on April 25 under a local marketing agreement, or LMA, just days before the key May ratings period begins. Lombardo said he hopes the FCC will approve Citadel as WLNE’s new licensee by the end of June.

ABC 6 General Manager Steve Doerr, who joined the station in October 2007, and Chief Engineer Jim Brown will remain in place at least until Citadel receives formal FCC approval.

ABC 6 has struggled since it came on the air as WTEV-TV in 1963. “The only way to fix the station is to work hard, be consistent, be patient,” and thereby win the trust of viewers and advertisers, Lombardo said.

This post has been updated and expanded since it was first published.

(photo: Ted Nesi/WPRI)

With less than a week to go before the auction of WLNE-TV, ABC has warned potential buyers there’s no guarantee the network will keep the station as an affiliate or let it continue branding itself as “ABC 6″ once their current deal expires at the end of this month.

“ABC has the right to approve, in its sole discretion, any operator of the station,” the Disney-owned network’s attorney wrote in a March 4 court filing obtained by WPRI.com. “The consent of ABC is required before anyone may operate the station as an ABC affiliate after March 31.”

ABC said WLNE can only use the name “ABC 6″ and the website “abc6.com” as long as it has an affiliation agreement with the network, which it is not promising to renew without knowing the identity of the new owner.

ABC did not say where it would air its programming in the Providence-New Bedford market if it ended its affiliation with Channel 6. WLNE has been an ABC affiliate since 1995, when it switched with WPRI following CBS’s purchase of this station. That reversed a previous affiliation swap they did in 1977. (WPRI is now owned by Providence-based LIN Media.)

In a separate filing this week, WLNE’s current owner, Kevin O’Brien, disclosed that the station’s gross sales last year totaled $8.47 million and argued its court-appointed receiver, Matthew McGowan, is asking far too little in exchange for Channel 6. He called on the judge to block the sale.

Citadel Communications Co. Ltd. has offered less than half that amount – $4 million – as the stalking-horse bidder for WLNE, CEO Phil Lombardo told WPRI.com last month. Another party will need to top that price to take over the station at auction next week.

(more…)

Phil Lombardo

There is “no way” the New York company that’s emerged as the top bidder for WLNE-TV ABC 6 would close the station’s newsroom to save money if it takes over the channel, the firm’s founder and CEO told me this morning.

“We are very committed to news,” Citadel Communications Co. Ltd. CEO Phil Lombardo said in a phone interview with WPRI.com. ”All of our properties are very committed to news.”

Matthew McGowan, ABC 6′s court-appointed receiver, revealed Thursday that Bronxville, N.Y.-based Citadel is the “stalking-horse” bidder for the station. Other potential buyers have until March 18 to submit their own offers, and the new owner will be selected March 22, WLNE said.

Lombardo confirmed that Citadel has offered to pay $4 million for ABC 6. That’s 70% less than the $14 million that Kevin O’Brien’s Global Broadcasting of Southern New England paid to buy WLNE from Freedom Communications in 2007.

Citadel owns four TV stations in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, three of them ABC affiliates and the fourth a CBS affiliate, Lombardo said. The company is not related to radio giant Citadel Broadcasting, which owns WPRO-AM and other local stations.

“I think Providence is a great market,” Lombardo said. “It’s a state capital, and I think that we can take that facility and make it into a very competitive and good citizen of the community.”

ABC 6 has struggled financially for years. Its revenue from advertising and other sources fell from $15.1 million in 2000 to $5.9 million in 2009, according to BIA Financial Network Inc., a Virginia research firm. But Lombardo said he was confident his team can turn it around.

“I know the station has had problems in the past and that doesn’t deter me at all,” he said. “I think that the way we operate can make it a very successful entity and a good citizen of the community.”

Lombardo also said Citadel would move quickly to convert WLNE-TV to a high-definition signal, which no station in Providence has done yet. “We’ll be the first ones,” he declared.

While WLNE isn’t located near Citadel’s other TV stations, Providence and Bronxville are not too far from each other, Lombardo pointed out. “That’s part of the attraction – I can be there in no time at all,” he said.

Lombardo is a former joint board chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters, according to his biography. He said he founded Citadel in 1982 with a cluster of East Coast stations. Those were later sold and the Midwest stations were picked up.

Disclosure: My employer obviously has a vested interest in the future of the Providence television market.

Update: Looks like Citadel made a much smaller acquisition recently. RBR.com reports the company paid about $150,000 for W48CN, a low-power station in Sarasota, Fla., last month.

(photo: National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation)

After my story about The Providence Journal’s valuation ran yesterday, I was asked which nine television stations the Journal Co. owned at the time it was purchased by Belo in 1997.

The stations were all out West except for one in North Carolina and another in Kentucky. Here’s the list, along with their current network affiliations – I listed them by market size as of 1996:

1. KING-TV (Seattle, Wash.; NBC)
2. KGW (Portland, Ore.; NBC)
3. WCNC-TV (Charlotte, N.C.; NBC)
4. KASA-TV (Santa Fe, N.M.; Fox)
5. WHAS-TV (Louisville, Ky.; ABC)
6. KHNL (Honolulu, Hawaii; NBC)
7. KREM-TV (Spokane, Wash.; CBS)
8. KMSB (Tuscon, Ariz.; Fox)
9. KTVB (Boise, Idaho; NBC)

Seven of the nine are still owned by Belo. The two exceptions are KASA, which is now part of LIN Media (WPRI’s parent company), and KHNL, which is owned by Raycom Media.

It’s funny the things you remember from your childhood. At this time of year, I have some very distinct – and random – recollections of TV during the holiday season.

For example, does this old WGBH spot ring a bell for any other Massachusetts natives? I remember wondering as a kid whether the turkey was eating turkey:

And I agree with the person who posted this – no matter how long “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is shown on another network, this CBS opening is the way I’ll always remember the special starting:

Blogging will be minimal tomorrow – though watch this space for the funny story of the year I had to cover a Black Friday riot at the Wrentham Outlets. Back to normal on Monday.

A safe and happy holiday to you and yours.

you paid for 6.75 of those dresses

Rhode Island’s tax credit for movies and TV shows has been controversial ever since it was enacted back in 2005. The law offers companies a credit to get back 25% of their production costs if they film here so long as the production costs at least $300,000. Since it was created, state taxpayers have helped subsidize flicks like “27 Dresses” and “Dan in Real Life.”

Gov. Carcieri proposed eliminating the credit when he put together his budget proposal for this year but lawmakers opted to keep it, although they did cap its total cost at $15 million last year. The credit is managed by the Rhode Island Film & TV Office, which has an annual budget of $278,157.

It remains to be seen whether the film credit program will survive next year’s $300 million budget deficit – but Rhode Island won’t be alone in dumping it if that’s what winds up happening, Bloomberg News reports:

Incentives for Hollywood have been scaled back in Wisconsin, capped in Rhode Island, suspended in New Jersey, Iowa and Kansas and scheduled to expire in Arizona. While states continue to expand and introduce subsidies, programs around the country face allegations of corruption, doubts about job-creating power and, most of all, questions about affordability.

“We are starting to stem the tide of state government pandering to the film industry,” said Bill Ahern, policy director for the Washington-based Tax Foundation, which advocates lower taxes.

In the last five years, $3.5 billion in tax credits, rebates and other financial assistance have gone to makers of films, television shows and commercials, according to a calculation by the foundation. In the next fiscal year, states will face $72 billion in budget deficits, the National Conference of State Legislatures estimates.

The subsidies began in Louisiana in 1992 and today are offered by 42 states. A shakeout will halve the number in the next decade as lawmakers conclude they can’t sustain funding, according to Larry Brownell, head of the Association of Film Commissioners International in Redondo Beach, California, which represents every state with incentives except Massachusetts.

Speaking of which, the Film & TV Office’s website lists the 1956 musical “High Society” as a past project – I know that movie’s set in Newport, but was it actually filmed there?

This seemed like an appropriate choice for a TV station’s website.

Andrew Shears, a geography expert at Kent State, created this map identifying all 50 states by the most representative TV show set in each one. He picked “Family Guy” to represent Rhode Island (“No competition”) and “Cheers” for Massachusetts, though he noted that the Bay State is home to a lot of legal procedurals. Check it out:

This is actually Shears’ second version of the map. He remixed the original based on the huge amount of feedback he got in the two weeks after he first posted it. From Shears’ comments, it sounds like Minnesotans were particularly aggrieved that he originally chose “Coach” rather than “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” for them.

As it happens, Shears was inspired by a similar map on The Huffington Post that went through the same exercise with movies instead of TV shows. “There’s Something About Mary” stood in for Rhode Island there, with “The Departed” doing the honors for Massachusetts.

Shears has offered his own take on that map, too. He stuck with “Mary” for Rhode Island but switched to “Good Will Hunting” for Massachusetts. (I support that.) Here’s his film one:

Other suggestions? Leave them in comments.

The Red Sox are promising to make some big moves this off-season, and for good reason – without a new superstar, their TV ratings won’t recover, FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal writes in a column today:

The decline in ratings on the New England Sports Network, of which the Red Sox own 80 percent, is nothing short of a call to action.

For the first time in eight years, the Sox didn’t lead the majors in local TV ratings, a major-league source said. They finished tied for fifth, according to figures obtained by FOXSports.com.

The Cardinals had the best local TV ratings, followed by the Twins, Phillies and Reds. The Rays, a low-revenue club with disappointing home attendance, generated the same ratings as the Sox, who show all of their local games on NESN.

The Sox’s ratings on NESN fell 36.6 percent from ’09 to ’10. Only one team, the Cubs, had a larger percentage dropoff on local cable. The Cubs, though, had a less severe decline than the Sox in their 70 over-the-air network games.

While the Red Sox remain a hot ticket at Fenway Park, playing to over 100 percent capacity, their sagging ratings indicate Red Sox Nation is somewhat spoiled by the team’s recent success — six postseason appearances in the previous seven years, including two World Series titles.

Read the rest here.

The man himself, Tim White, had me on Newsmakers with Ian Donnis and Arlene Violet this week to discuss the latest political ads – Segal, Cicilline, Gemma, Block, Costantino and Chafee all get discussed. Watch the video below, or check it out this weekend at 10 a.m. Sunday on Fox 64.

Be nice – this was my first time going on the tube since I arrived here. (You can see us laugh at my nerves when the credits roll.)