MEDIA BIZ TREMORS. Undoing a ban in place since 1975, the FCC has cleared the way for companies to own TV stations and newspapers in the same market.
■ It also eased regulations governing how many TV and radio stations a media company can own in a single market—a move that paves the way for Trump-friendly Sinclair to take over Tribune Media, which owns WGN-TV and Radio.
■ The conservative Koch brothers are on-board for a bid to buy the parent of Time, People and Sports Illustrated.
■ Chicago’s WXRT, WBBM and other CBS radio stations today have a new owner: Entercom.
■ Comcast is talking about buying big chunks of the Fox empire.
■ Columbia Journalism Review: “Winter is here for digital media.”
■ Mashable has been sold at “a fire-sale price.”
■ The Onion, ClickHole, Gizmodo and others are at least partly up for sale.
■ What the Tribune’s Heidi Stevens sees in that incriminating photo of Franken: “I see a guy making sure we know this woman doesn’t belong here.”
■ FiveThirtyEight guru Nate Silver: Democrats “missed a chance to draw a line in the sand on sexual misconduct” by not “pushing Franken out the door.”
■ President Trump—still silent on the harassment accusations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore—nevertheless found time to condemn “Al Frankenstien” (sic).
■ Former Trump adviser Roger Stone seems to have been in on the Franken story before it broke.
■ One of Moore’s accusers tells NBC’s Today “He scarred me for life.”
■ The Onion: “Democrats Call For Convincing Amount Of Condemnation For Al Franken.”
■ Following charges of sexual assault against Star Trek veteran George Takei, publishers are backing away from questionable deals under which they paid him to promote their stories.
■ Gov. Rauner has signed two new laws—requiring sexual harassment prevention training for Illinois lawmakers and lobbyists, and ending a one-year statute of limitations that would have kept the new legislative inspector general from investigating old complaints.
AN ‘ALMOST CERTAIN … LOSS OF A DEDUCTION FOR STATE INCOME TAXES.’ The Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet and Tina Sfondeles take a look at what the U.S. House-approved tax-overhaul plan would mean for Illinois.
■ Al Franken’s problems cripple a Democratic fight he was supposed to lead against the tax plan.
■ Neil Steinberg: “Construction in Chicago is booming at a rate not seen in a decade.”
CRIMINAL TEAMWORK. Chicago police are hunting a group of thieves who’ve beaten and robbed people in three separate incidents downtown in the last couple of weeks.
■ Two people posing as delivery men attacked a woman during a home invasion last night in West Town.
■ Shots fired on the Dan Ryan Expressway yesterday left one man dead and two women and a child hurt.
■ After a week missing, a chef at a trendy Chicago restaurant has been “safely located.”
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK—IN VICTORIA’S SECRET. Federal investigators say an educator has been looting federal food subsidies for low-income kids at a suburban school she founded.
■ A suburban public school superintendent is quitting amid charges of “inappropriate or offensive” conduct.
‘I NOW SEE THINGS MUCH DIFFERENTLY.’ And yet, a Homeland Security adviser has apologized and quit after CNN outed him for 2008 remarks blaming the nation’s slums on the “laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity” of African-Americans.
■ Activist Chicago priest Michael Pfleger is protesting Fifth Third Bank’s installation of double-security entrance doors—“a discriminatory trap,” he says—at its joints in two African-American communities.
‘DC AND WARNER BROS. HAVE F**KED IT UP AGAIN.’ Esquire’s Matt Miller calls the new Justice League movie “a disaster that fits with our times.”
■ But Richard Roeper says it’s “executed with great fun.”
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ANNOUNCEMENTS.
■ Yesterday’s Chicago Public Square was missing an article in the phrase “working at a mall as high school senior.” Guess who spotted it?
■ Most-clicked article in yesterday’s Square? Far and away, this one.
■ Good luck to New York Times veteran Mike McPhate, getting ready to launch a newsy email for California later this month, and who’s been kind enough to cite Square as an inspiration.