Saturday, news sources from the Virginian-Pilot to Vivian Paige are reporting two separate stories – WVEC canceling Joel Rubin’s “On the Record” tv program and a special prosecutor being named in the flier-without-a-disclaimer case with Will Sessoms’ successful election campaign.
There are some pretty astute folks in Virginia Beach who are wondering if the two stories are so separate.
Joel’s been pretty vocal about the fliers. His WVEC blog which just started this election season (not exactly a sign that the show is going away, by the way) shared Joel’s thoughts on the flier, which advocated voting for Obama and Sessoms as “change.” Joel fired three posts off about the fliers, and Joel wasn’t exactly hiding his opinion.
“It is curious to me why the mainstream media is not more curious about how this happened. If a violent criminal was loose in the city, the cops would be looking for him.”
“Virginia Beach Mayoral candidate Will Sessoms and his campaign have some explaining to do”
“The fliers did not just appear out of nowhere. Someone wrote them, designed them, printed them, paid for them and then delivered them to designated precincts. Someone recruited people to hand them out.”
“Political people will always wonder whether Oberndorf could have won a fifth term if she had staged a more vigorous campaign, or if those controversial fliers linking Sessoms and Barack Obama had not been distributed at certain precincts with high African American populations.”
“Regardless, 38.5% is not much of a mandate” (culled from several of Rubin’s blog posts)
Pretty fired up about it, I’d say.
Virginia Beach’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Harvey Bryant (Republican) investigated the flier controversy, and he’s turned it over to Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney Earle Mobley (Republican). At issue is a lack of a campaign disclaimer, but activists are screaming about more than that. They think Obama voters voted for Republican Sessoms and that swung the election. They think the flier was misleading.
But the two stories in the same newspaper on the same day made some light bulbs shine.
One well-placed source opined this over a cup of overly-strong coffee: “Doesn’t Joel have election winners on his show after election day? He had Glenn Nye on first chance he could. You’d think the only person to defeat Meyera Oberndorf in her entire 32-year career would get a spot.”
I don’t know if Joel invited Will or not. And I don’t think there’s any real connection between flier investigations and the canceling of the only local political talk show outside of public broadcasting.
I’m as curious as those who seem quite sure there is some connection. I will say this much, though.
If “On the Record” was losing money, I doubt it’s a recent phenomenon. WVEC’s constant shuffling of its timeslot is evidence enough of that, and its current slot of noon is insane. It has “Panthers Huddle” as a lead-in at 11:30. Are Carolina Panthers fans are just chomping at the bit to watch Virginia Politics after their North Carolina football pre-game show?
WVEC has a second station (LNC 5) to do nothing but rerun the WVEC news so at 4 pm Sunday, you can watch what the weather and traffic was like at 6 am.
In past years, I’ve bought ads on Joel’s show. You can’t tell me WVEC lives or dies from the amount of revenue spent or generated by Joel’s half hour. If it does, it’s in worse shape than GM.
So the cynical Brian thinks there’s got to be more to the end of “On the Record” than economics. I just don’t know if I think I’m cynical enough to believe that the coincidental stories are more than curious timing.
