Gulf Coast Congressional Report - Hiatus

Hiatus

On June 4, 2006, WKRG halted further airings of Congressional Report in response to an equal-time complaint by Jo Bonner’s opponent in the 2006 election for Congress. Mobile lawyer Vivian Beckerle also accused the program of being a political promotion for Bonner’s campaign. The station had planned on putting the program on hiatus August 6 due to federal rules requiring that such programs not air 90 days or less before an election, but the May 26 letter to WKRG made station officials put the program on hiatus two months earlier than expected.

The last pre-recorded program, which never aired, featured not a politician, but two emergency management officials from Mobile County and Baldwin County discussing hurricane preparedness. In exchange of the hiatus, Beckerle was offered two 30-minute segments of airtime. The segments aired respectively on June 11 and June 18 in Congressional Report’s former timeslot. Bonner was re-elected in November, but he has never received word on when his program will return to WKRG. In February 2007, Bonner’s spokeswoman Nancy Wall acknowledged that her boss has accepted WKRG’s decision to drop his show as a permanent one and that he is looking at alternative means of getting Congressional Report back on the air.