KRON is in a little bit of trouble these days. Due to the fact an entire schedule of local news and Dr. Phil does not attract the biggest audience, they’ve been having trouble paying the bills. So instead of laying off more and more people or figuring out something that would attract a bigger audience (hint— 24 hours of "Buffy") they went and dangled their integrity in front of the highest bidder. So that weeklong special on traveling to Australia? Sponsored by the Australian tourism board. Same with an in-depth, investigative, eleven part special on spas.

Note to local spas or Australia tourism board— if you want SFist to do a special investigate pieces, feel free to drop us a line. We’ve always wanted to go to Australia and we love spas.

The problem is that ever since KRON went indie, they’ve been losing money left and right. No money means trying to figure out ways to get money so the station director has been creatively exploring ways of bringing advertisers in to sponsor parts of the news. Which could explain why Gary Radnich stopped right in the middle of last night’s report to down a Mountain Dew or why Jan Wahl now has the X-Men III logo attached to her hat.

Sadly, this is all part of a new trend out there as other local broadcasts have been doing the same thing, and not all of them by paid Republican operatives. KRON is saying that they made it clear that they’re doing something for pay and that it’s not necessarily the news by mentioning it in the shows credits, you know, when everyone is totally paying attention and not flipping to something else. We also couldn’t help but notice that on the Web page for KRON’s Australia reports, the only mention of what’s going on is the tag line "Voted California’s Best TV Website by A.P." Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

Things might change in a few months when KRON becomes part of a new Fox affiliate chain. We’re sure that will make things better as one thing FOX is known for is there journalistic integrity.