Off-color TV party. One of WLNE’s new would-be owners has a checkered past

[Ian David]

By PHILLIPE AND JORGE
March 21, 2007 4:20:23 PM

A lot of cash is a requirement for an FCC broadcast license, but there are a few other hurdles. One calls for the owner to be “of good character.” While this criteria is somewhat subjective, we have an opportunity to test the waters right here in the Biggest Little.

As has been copiously reported in other media, Kevin O’Brien, one of the partners seeking federal approval to consummate the acquisition of WLNE-TV, Channel 6, got fired from his last gig as broadcasting chief for the Meredith Corporation, the Iowa-based media company that publishes specialty books and magazines (including Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens). Overseeing 13 television stations and more than 1000 employees for the past three years, O’Brien was largely credited with the turning the broadcast division around.

According to reports by the Associated Press and other news organizations, O’Brien also made his share of racially insensitive remarks, including, “We can’t right all the wrongs of the Civil War; we’ve got to quit hiring all these black people.” Here’s another: “I’ve never seen a minority broadcast enterprise work in my entire life, especially if they have control.” He is said to have commented to a black waiter at a company picnic, “You probably don’t like the same fruit as me. You look like a watermelon kind of guy.”

In 2005, O’Brien’s lawyer denied to Maynard Institute columnist Richard Prince that he had made the bigoted remarks attributed to him. Yet court documents indicate that O’Brien is apparently an equal-opportunity kind of guy. A number of employees have said that O’Brien routinely expressed dislike for Meredith’s chief financial officer, who is Indian, and according to court documents, “stated on numerous occasions that ‘my father always told me, you can’t trust those Indians.’ ”

Asked to reschedule a news summit in Orlando, Florida, so it would not conflict with Rosh Hashanah, O’Brien reportedly said, “These Jewish holidays — I’ve always thought those existed just so those people either wouldn’t have to work or take the day and do inventory.”

Another classic O’Brien quote was revealed in the court papers: “That woman was so ugly she could knock the balls off a pool table.”

There’s more, much more in the court documents as reported by the AP, Des Moines Register, and the TVSpy Web site (also, a tip of the sombrero to former WPRI-TV reporter, Bob Blanchard). Barbara Ciara, the managing editor/anchor at WTKR in Norfolk, Virginia, a honcho with the National Association of Black Journalists, has suggested that other media companies avoid hiring O’Brien for any position in which “he could do more damage to the careers or psyche of black journalists.”

More:
http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid36049.aspx