Hearing rumblings last night and today that SNN 6 may not be down for the count after all. Sure all the employees were officially terminated and sure people around town have been saying SNN was done for. But there might be life yet in this local favorite — meaning SNN 6.

I put in a call to Linda DesMarais (hoping for a return call — more on that below) and fingers crossed, the rumblings are all true!

And boy, would I be happy. As I’ve written of late — I”m a huge SNN 6 fan and so are most of the people I know. Okay well, maybe not HUGE, but you know, it’s a great station — great information about the community and beyond and really good reporters on air and in the field. I particularly loved it when they did live coverage of Obama’s visit to Sarasota. Good stuff and I hope the power couple behind LDB (the entity that has been hoping to buy SNN 6 from Sarsaota H-T Media Group) — Linda DesMarais and her husband, Doug Barker — can pull this baby back together.

Having a local station such as SNN 6 is really important for the community on a lot of levels — it provided a very healthy competition for the only other game in town — Channel 7; provided jobs; gave breaks to young up and coming reporters and took advantage of the talents of the seasoned journalists who come to Sarasota for the great lifestyle. It was also just a very feel-good offering for the local community. I’d love to see SNN 6 come back for these reasons and more.

I’m not so sure everyone’s as happy with me, however. I spoke with Doug Barker this morning — trying to reach Linda for comment on the stories I’ve been hearing since early this morning — and when I told him who I was and mentioned this blog site and my coverage of SNN’s demise, he said, “Oh, yeah, we’ve read some of those [believe he was referring to my recent blog posts];” “There’s a lot of misinformation on there,” he added.

Yikes. “Well,” I answered, “If there’s misinformation, I’d love to have a chance to correct it.” So, he said he’d give Linda my name and number and the message that I’d like to speak with her.

Hope she calls me back. Hope she’s able to confirm what I’ve been hearing today. Would be good news for all of us.

And, hey, thanks for all the emails and phone calls from so many of you about my coverage of this “news” news story. I know many of you say you don’t want to post blog comments, but really … there’s nothing to be afraid of — we’re talking as a community and isn’t it just nice to see that people actually care about the access to news? I think it’s only a good thing that so many folks care about what happens to SNN 6.

Will keep you posted (literally).