KRON Channel 4 president and general manager Mark Antonitis (pictured) is quoted in this morning’s Chronicle as defending the station’s practice of allowing advertisers to buy promotional news segments. “[W]hen business is bad, you have to consider opportunities,” Antonitis told the Chron. “And you have to be creative and do things you might have found difficult in the past.” KRON’s average rating for its morning news in early March was 1.14 — “extremely low,” as the Chron put it — with approximately 28,000 households tuning in. Antonitis said KRON discloses all such “partnerships” with advertisers in either the anchor’s script or during the program’s credits. [If this story sounds familiar, the PPC reported March 16 that the Hollywood Reporter had done a story on how TV stations across the country were dabbling with product placement, including San Francisco’s KRON.]