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Last week's Madison meltdown had a positive effect in Allen ending their hubbing experiment. Outside the 11am and 4pm shows, the Wisconsin stations now originate their own newscasts, but the audience reaction to it in a negative manner certainly didn't help with the advertisers.

I'd put this in the category of "Things You Didn't See Coming". I'm not exact shocked that this happened, especially because of all of these media conglomerates merging or acquiring each other quite frequently. Out here in the West, a Cox-Spectrum merger give them practically total control of service in all of Southern California (from Bakersfield on south to the Mexican border), the Las Vegas region, and most of Arizona (particularly the Phoenix and Tucson DMAs). I'm in a Spectrum service area (Los Angeles), but there are also of pockets of the DMA that have Cox as their main MVPD, such as the beach cities in southwestern L.A. County, the Harbor area in the city of Los Angeles (San Pedro, Wilmington), and the southern half of Orange County.

Johnny Archer had been doing the 11AM weekday news recently, but he did the weekend evening news after Frances Wang left. I don't know if Keith & Erin will continue with the 11 AM.

Really surprised they are keeping the Cox name, but with Spectrum being front-facing for the last decade, it makes sense to abandon Charter (which always sounded similar to a drug rehab center that existed until 2000). Besides price though, Spectrum is rock solid for me and I rarely lose service, so I must be in a good part of their service area (originally Marcus). It's just sad to see Cox in so many aspects wind down, though.

Leon Harris went on former colleague's Daryn Kagan's podcast about his alcoholism and how that led to his departure from WRC-TV:

While the Spectrum brand will remain, the Charter name won’t (per a CNBC report): Cox Enterprises will also own 23% of the shares in the new Cox Communications, which will maintain Charter’s existing Stamford headquarters and old Cox’s existing offices in Atlanta post-closing.

Alex Wilson posted on Facebook that she and Mike are alternating weeks and wont be together until some time in June. This is due to severe weather and one of them would be on after Weather Unfiltered for coverage when needed. They're basically in standby mode. The schedules day to day have been crazy. I believe this is due to the simple fact that people are taking time off. With Chris and Jacqui's exit that leaves them a little short so there has been a lot of shifting around when one is off or they just go to a 2 anchor format.

No more advanced talks. It's official: Charter has agreed to buy Cox for $34.5 billion. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-16/charter-agrees-to-combine-with-cox-in-34-5-billion-cable-deal-maqpb06a

Oof. Those poor Cox customers. I've heard nothing but awful things about Spectrum. Maybe Xfinity can put Mediacom out of its misery too. They're so bad they won't even hook up my street, leaving AT&T fiber as my only option.

It looks like Cox Cable could go bye bye as Bloomberg News is breaking a story this morning about a potential deal to merge with Charter a.k.a. Spectrum. Wow. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/charter-advanced-talks-combine-with-cox-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-05-16/

If there's a positive on TEGNA, its that it allows stations to create their own original programs for their streaming channels, KTHV Little Rock being one of them. Chief Meteorologist Tom Brannon now has his own show on THV11+, The Tom Show. In this one excerpt from episode 2, the morning show crew of Tom, B.J. Sams, and Robyn Richardson got together for the first time in nearly two decades to reminisce about their time together on what was a 5:30-8:00 a.m. weekday morning show that, at one point, was #1 for a decade in the morning.

Yes the Nexstar graphics used by WSPA do look similar in font to GrayOne. In Charlotte, WBTV has GrayOne but the Nexstar graphics on WJZY look a bit different than WSPA. I receive very strong signals from WBTV and WJZY in Spartanburg, even though WSPA and WHNS are my true locals. But from Charlotte, I think WSOC is the best overall news station, although you need more of a strategic antenna to pull in their main signal or the translator here. From Greenville, WYFF is my preferred news station.

Wanted to give a quick update on what's been happening at TWC ever since the departure of Chris Warren and Jacqui Jeras... and actually some changes that happened slightly before that as well. Starting I believe the week of March 17th, if memory serves correctly, Weather Unfiltered was reduced to a two-person show. Dr. Knabb is the only constant on the show now. On any given night, he hosts the show alongside either Mike Bettes or Alex Wilson, but not both. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable pattern. I've seen Mike and Alex swap from week-to-week or sometimes mid-week. If Dr. Knabb is on vacation, which he is right now, then Mike and Alex will host the show together, as they did this past Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. With that being said, now that neither Mike Bettes nor Alex Wilson are on the network full-time, does anyone know if they're covering the local Allen stations, or if they've simply been cut back to part-time? With all of these cutbacks, the hosts of the 10am-2pm AMHQ and the hosts of the 2pm-6pm TWC Live are now responsible for sliding down the schedule to cover any gaps. It seems that in general, Jen Carfagno stays put on the 10am-2pm AMHQ, but over the past several weeks, Alex Wallace and Dr. Greg Postel have repeatedly been tasked with hosting the 2pm-6pm block if Chris Bruin or Felicia Combs are out. Sometimes there are also double swaps, such as today, with Mike Bettes and Dr. Knabb both out, Felicia Combs slid down to the 6pm-10pm Weather Unfiltered block to cover for them, and Dr. Postel slid down into the 2pm-6pm block to cover for Felicia. On weekends, the any one of the hosts of Weekend Recharge (Paul Goodloe, Molly McCollum, or Lynette Charles) are responsible for covering the 6am-10am America's Weekend Headquarters shift if either Kelly Cass or Reynolds Wolf are out. If that happens, then Weekend Recharge is reduced to a two-person show for the day.

I just have to wonder if GrayOne has existed alongside a Nexstar station (like WSPA) that looks very similar. WSPA's is modified heavily, but it uses practially the same fonts as GrayOne and others (like WYTV, WHTM, WYOU/WBRE, WIVB, etc...)

I'll do better than the last poster...

Maybe for now this is what the producers feel is right for the show. Also each broadcast is operated by different producers and etc, so what may work for the 11pm broadcast probably doesn't work for the 4, 5 and 6 broadcasts, which I also believe are different, etc..

WHNS in Greenville-Spartanburg is overdue to update to the Gray graphics package. They are still using old Meredith graphics. And will they follow the Gray trend and remove FOX Carolina from their branding? They haven't used Channel 21 in years.

I know that the morning news was cut to 2 hours some time ago, and I happen to catch the 11am show today, and both Keith and Erin were anchoring. Are they the regular anchors at that time now, and if so, I wonder if the cut to the morning news was done for that purpose?

Yeah, it's getting common. In DC, WTTG, has the FOX 5 Live Zone from 12-2pm, the only 2 hours between 4am-7:30pm where they don't have local programming over the air. Reminds me of how KTLA had 5 Live to fill in time online when they still aired syndicated shows in the daytime.

More and more FOX O&Os are incorporating original programming onto their streaming channels, which can be seen via FOX Local. I know KMSP goes All Day from Noon to 5:00 p.m., and now, another great example from WITI Milwaukee. I already told you about their daily Wisconsin Weather Experts program that airs at Noon, right after the midday news at 11:00 a.m. Now, they have The Wisconsin LIVE Desk, which airs from 12:30-2:30 p.m. https://www.facebook.com/benhandelmantv/posts/pfbid08LiarWvmsVdsMfgKE75j3bMHdMrXEEc5cHXd8dJT14aGmsmYdB26BVM6BuMRVwzEl

Hahaha. I try not to. I do it for all of y'all. This is the stuff we nerd at and dork at. If I find them in time, I'll share them so y'all don't feel left out.

As we approach the 25th Anniversary of this classic show, here's 106 & Park's 9/11 reaction episode (2001)

You don't miss a beat! I've seen numerous articles calling Deborah Norville the longest running female US anchor which isn't true given Liz Bishop's tenure. Perhaps they mean national anchor but that distinction isn't clearly being made.

I don’t get this rumored turmoil around GMA3. It’s hard to see anything else bringing in more than what’s there now. Has to be pretty cheap to produce as a pre-recorded 3rd hour of the morning show.

‘GMA3: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW’ DRAWS ITS LARGEST AUDIENCE IN 5 WEEKS, OUTDELIVERS NBC IN TOTAL VIEWERS AND ADULTS 18-49 Looks like the 4-anchor format has been a game-changer for GMA3. ABC has been touting the rating gains (via press releases) for several weeks.