Miami NBC station up for sale

NBC, in need of cash, is seeking buyers for South Florida's WTVJ-NBC 6 as well as a Connecticut station. The network is holding onto the flagship Telemundo station in Miami.

BY GLENN GARVIN

ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com

South Florida television station WTVJ was put up for sale by its corporate parent NBC on Wednesday in a move that startled other local broadcasters.

NBC executives told station staffers in an hour-long meeting that they'll sell WTVJ-NBC 6 but retain Spanish-language WSCV-Telemundo 51, the flagship station of NBC's Telemundo network.

The sale, which is expected to take a year to complete, will mark the first time since NBC acquired WTVJ in 1987 that a major broadcast network's affiliate in South Florida has changed hands.

That sale touched off a mad scramble of call letters, channel numbers and affiliations as station ownership and broadcast alliances changed. And some local broadcasters wondered Wednesday if history will repeat itself.

''My e-mail is just jammed right now,'' said an executive at one local station. ``Everybody wants to know what it means.''

Officials at NBC and WTVJ refused to comment on the announcement. But, in an NBC memo to WTVJ staff members obtained by The Miami Herald, the network said it plans to sell both WTVJ and its station in Hartford, Conn., to raise money to expand its operations on so-called digital platforms like the Internet and cellphones.

''We've taken a hard look at our portfolio and made some difficult decisions about what's best for our business going forward,'' John Wallace, head of the division that oversees NBC's owned-and-operated stations, wrote.

Wallace's memo stated the network will operate stations only in the top 10 U.S. television markets. Miami-Fort Lauderdale is 16th, Hartford 29th.

NBC's decision to sell WTVJ while holding onto WSCV puzzled local broadcasters, who said owning two stations -- a ''duopoly,'' in industry lingo -- cuts costs and increases profitability in a business that is under pressure due to shrinking audiences.

''It caught people off-guard,'' said Dave Boylan, general manager at WPLG-ABC 10. ``Generally speaking, when you own a duopoly, you're pretty happy.''

The economic advantages of a duopoly prompted a wave of speculation among station managers that one of South Florida's lone-wolf stations might try to snap up WTVJ, expected to bring a sale price between $350 million and $400 million.

The biggest stations without broadcast partners are WPLG, owned by the Washington Post Co., and WSVN-Fox 7, owned by Sunbeam Broadcasting.

Said WPLG's Boylan: ``We've learned of the news just as you guys have. There's no effort on the part of the Washington Post Co. that I know of to buy WTVJ.''

Ed Ansin, owner of Miami-based Sunbeam -- which recently bought another station in Boston to create a duopoly there -- declined comment.

Patients taking aspirin to reduce risk of second stroke 'should avoid ibuprofen'

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Aspirin helps prevent the blood from thickening in stroke patients

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Patients who take aspirin to reduce their risk of having another stroke should avoid taking ibuprofen to relieve pain, say researchers.

They found aspirin stopped working effectively when patients took the two drugs together.

In a group of patients seen by doctors at the Dent Neurologic Institute in New York, 28 patients were identified as taking both aspirin and ibuprofen daily and all were found to have no anti-platelet (thinning) effect from their daily aspirin.

Thirteen of these patients were being seen because they had a second stroke while taking aspirin and ibuprofen, and were aspirin resistant at the time of that stroke.

The researchers from Buffalo University found that when 18 of the 28 patients returned for a second neurological visit after discontinuing ibuprofen use and were tested again, all had regained their aspirin sensitivity and its ability to prevent blood platelets from aggregating and blocking arteries.

The study is the first to show the clinical consequences of the interaction between aspirin and ibuprofen in patients being treated for prevention of a second stroke.

The NHS currently warns that ibuprofen might make aspirin less effective, but states the current level of evidence is not sufficient to make clear recommendations.

"It's unfortunate that clinicians and patients often are unaware of this interaction," lead author Professor Francis M. Gengo said.

"Whatever number of patients who have had strokes because of the interaction between aspirin and NSAIDs (ibuprofen), those strokes were preventable.

"The results showed that platelets resumed aggregating within 4-6 hours when aspirin and ibuprofen were taken close together, leaving patients with no anti-platelet effect for 18-20 hours a day. Normally, a single dose of aspirin has an effect on platelet aggregation for 72-96 hours," he said.

"When I lecture to pharmacy students, I tell them 'Please, you have a responsibility to the patients you care for. When you counsel a patient taking aspirin to lower stroke risk, tell patients they may have some transient headaches, but to avoid ibuprofen. You may have prevented that patient from having another stroke.'"

The study was supported by the Dent Family Foundation.

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