WJLA Moves Wheel, Jeopardy for Ferguson Town Hall

Sinclair's WJLA-TV Washington is preempting popular syndicated shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy Wednesday night, at least on the mother ship, to air an hour-long town hall meeting on Ferguson that will include Michael Brown attorney Benjamin Crump, among others, talking about race relations as it relates to the aftermath of the shooting of Brown by a Ferguson, Mo., policeman.

"Your Voice, Your future: Ferguson-America Reacts" is the fifth in an ongoing series of periodic town hall meetings. The others have aired on co-owned NewsChannel 8, but using station talent and streaming on the station's website.

This time around the 7-8 p.m. show will air on WJLA as well as streamed on the website and those of Sinclair's 78 other TV stations, as was the case with the previous town halls.

Wheel and Jeopardy will be moved to digital multicast channel 7.3, which carries the Live Well network, where they will preempt Mexico: One Plate at a Time (7 p.m.) and My Family Recipe Rocks (7:30).

Anticipating game show fans will want some advance notice; the station will provide notice in its 4, 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts of the channel change for Wheel and Jeopardy, as well as a program change announcement immediately prior to the town hall.

The program will be hosted by WJLA anchor Leon Harris. Guests in addition to Crump will be professor Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University and author of an upcoming book on President Obama and race; Gary McLhinney, former Fraternal Order of Police president; Armstrong Williams, Syndicated columnist, entrepreneur and talk show host; and St. Louis radio talk show host Jamie Allman.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.