Karen Brown wins TV tussle over "equal time" with NBC10
Mayor Nutter's live "town hall meeting" at NBC10 is about one-quarter over but Karen Brown, the Republican nominee for mayor, has already ended her protest outside the City Avenue studios. Why? NBC10 has apparently caved to her demand for a televised appearance to meet the "equal time" federal law she and an attorney cited yesterday.
Mayor Nutter's live "town hall meeting" at NBC10 is about one-quarter over but Karen Brown, the Republican nominee for mayor, has already ended her protest outside the City Avenue studios. Why? NBC10 has apparently caved to her demand for a televised appearance to meet the "equal time" federal law she and an attorney cited yesterday.
Brown's campaign manager just forwarded to us an e-mail from NBC10 spokeswoman Kathleen Burke, who offers for Brown "to appear on our air on a date and time to be determined." Burke adds that the station will be in touch by the end of this week.
Brown's attorney, Republican Ward Leader Matt Wolfe, had argued in a letter to NBC10 yesterday that the town hall did not seem to meet the exemptions in the equal time federal law for how televisions offer air time to candidates. Those exemptions are for newscasts, news interviews, on-the-spot news events and news documentaries.
Burke and Nutter's campaign on Monday insisted that the town hall event was not political. Brown complained that it comes six weeks before the Nov. 8 general election.