TENNESSEE: Chattanooga NBC Affiiliate Refuses To Air Freedom To Marry Ad

Dominic Holden reports at Buzzfeed:

“It’s just a very controversial and personal issue, and we just choose to not air a commercial on either side of that debate,” Tom Tolar, the president and general manager of Chatanooga-based WRCB, told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. The ad crossed the station’s lines, he explained, because “people probably have really strong opinions on one side or other of the debate. It’s just an emotional debate for many people.” The station, an NBC affiliate that also broadcasts in parts of Georgia and North Carolina, didn’t have a position on ads about same-sex marriage until executives reviewed the commercial featuring Ehrenfeld on Wednesday, said Tolar. “We had not had a request before to run an issue-ad like that.”

Freedom To Marry says that no other station in the country has ever refused their ads, which have also appeared in Memphis and Nashville.