by: Diane Benjamin
At next Monday’s City Council meeting, the Council will be asked to approve paying the Pantagraph $38,000 for advertising BCPA events. This is just a small part of the advertising income the Pantagraph earns form the City of Bloomington.
Any chance the Pantagraph will investigate spending at the BCPA? Will they investigate anything in the City of Bloomington? Will they report the facts when they hear them?
Did the press in Dixon Illinois notice a City employee was getting filthy rich with more than $50,000,000 of taxpayer money and fail to investigate? Would the Pantagraph notice it here?
http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=6894 Page 213
This is very interesting. I wonder which other City agencies pay the Pantagraph like this? Do you know if there are any independent newspapers in the area? We tried to put a tip line ad in the classified section and they refused it but wouldn’t give us a reason. We had a protest event in front of the courthouse last March, and they covered it, but disallowed comments. I wonder if they have a similar deal with WJBC?
WJBC has exclusive rights at the Coliseum. Cities 92.9 is thrown off the property if they show up to events, they aren’t even allowed to park a vehicle with their logo outside the Coliseum.
Does WJBC pay to be the exclusive radio station at the coliseum? If that’s the case then I can understand not letting other radio stations on the property.
Yes they do pay, but the real question is why would the city want an exclusive radio station? Wouldn’t event be better advertised if a wide range of media was used? I’ve heard that most older people listen to WJBC. How does that sell tickets to Coliseum events?
Good question. Is there any way to find that out? From reading your other articles, it doesn’t seem like the city really has any idea what goes on at the coliseum. Would they have any influence in negotiating sponsors? If so I could see them possibly trying to influence who gets picked. Of course it could also be that WJBC was the only radio station who wanted to be involved with the coliseum.
Stay tuned!