Now that most of the Sinclair Broadcasting fiasco appears to be winding
down, along comes a privately-held broadcasting company here in California
to try to show that Sinclair's real mistake was to even attempt the pretense
of even-handedness.

Pappas Telcasting Companies has apparently decided to drop all the various
"public interest" fig leafs and niceties (along with a good bit of black
letter law) and has done directly and overtly what Sinclair seemed to want
to do indirectly:

Fresno broadcaster donates $325,000 in air time to GOP committees

One of the state's biggest broadcasters has given 13 Republican county
committees $325,000 worth of free air time to promote candidates on its
radio and television stations that serve communities from Sacramento to San
Diego.

Pappas Telecasting Cos., which calls itself the largest privately held
broadcast firm in the nation, made the donations earlier this month. While
it is unclear how much of the time has actually been taken, Democrats
complain the offer unfairly benefits GOP candidates in violation of federal
law. 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/25/financia
l2007EDT0199.DTL


To be sure, California is no battleground state so this story will never
achieve the kind of critical mass that the Sinclair fiasco did, but many of
these state leg races are really tight and outside of the LA/SF/SD metros
$325,000 will buy a heck of a lot of airtime.  


________________________________
Joseph M. Birkenstock, Esq.
Smith Kaufman LLP
777 S. Figueroa St., Suite 4050
Los Angeles, CA 90017
(213) 452-6576
*also admitted to practice in DC