Total Control

On Friday, FTVLive told you that News-Press & Gazette Company announced it has agreed to acquire KQTV (St. Joseph, Missouri) from Heartland Media, LLC.

NPG is based in St. Joseph, Missouri, so that means that the local station would have a local owner. That sounds great on the surface, but looking a bit deeper, this is scary.

You see, NPG is the publisher of the market's only daily newspaper, the St. Joseph News-Press. The company also already owns low powered stations in St. Joseph with CBS, FOX, NBC, CW, and Telemundo programming, plus a local News/Weather service News-Press Now that is available both OTA and on the local cable system.

And, NPG has a partnership arrangement with the only radio station ownership group in St. Joseph, Eagle Radio, to share resources and content.

So, if the FCC approves the sale of KQTV, News-Press & Gazette will basically control all the media in the market and residents will get their news and information from just one source.

Does that seem right?

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