All Activity

Nexstar operated, Cunningham Broadcasting*-owned station WYZZ in Bloomington–Peoria, Illinois absolutely MeritTV on 43.2. * Cunningham Broadcasting could just be considered an offshoot of Sinclair.

Agreed. I loved Ryan's joking "what time is it? Am I on the right show?" Though too bad they replaced the sports as usual, missed whatever he was going to say as it got cut off. https://abc7ny.com/videoClip/17011185/

Yes, WILX did do news for WSYM before the Scripps takeover. I think this is great for WSYM.. They totally got the shaft from Scripps... Especially when they were having WXMI do their weather for awhile. The only good thing that KKTV will get out of it is hopefully a brand change. Some point this year, they changd their branding to KKTV 11 Alert News and Weather... Not sure what is worse, First Alert News or Alert News....

How exactly is Nexstar involved in this? Sorry if this has already been asked?

I know it’s prime vacation time, but an interesting 11pm team tonight: David, Liz, and Dani.

I'd assume Calvi continues as weekend anchor and fill-in, so her. She hasn't been off since Deb left, though, so we might see one of the correspondents show up as host, at some point, too.

Wow. Good for them! They’ve been the low-budget cellar dweller for years. Morgan Murphy has spent some money here after downsizing in the last decade. There is a real set (super basic), news programming in competitive slots, and better on-air presentation than their competitors. They’re up against Cowles’ KNDO/U and their boring “NonStop Local” brand, and Sinclair’s standard output with KIMA/KEPR. Although, big props to KIMA’s John Kennedy O’Connor.

Per anchor Andrew Perez's IG, the expanded Local 10 Morning News promos are out.

This station swap is good news for Lansing and Lafayette and terrible news for Colorado Springs. Even with pending deregulation of ownership rules, I still think Scripps is going to have to sell something in Colorado Springs to get it through. Unless there is a dire reason for consolidation (like if a gutted Allen Media station was involved), this won't pass. In Twin Falls, Scripps getting KMVT would actually give KSAW a local counterpart instead of having to pipe in KIVI news from Boise. Being low powered, It's not a regulatory issue for Scripps to get KMVT.

Two things... I don't think I've ever seen a report about KAPP/KVEW win in any timeslot. Thanks to great help from good 'ol pal Austin Reed, KAPP/KVEW is #1 at 5:00pm. https://www.facebook.com/AppleValleyNewsNow/posts/the-ratings-are-in-apple-valley-news-now-is-rated-number-1-in-the-5-pm-time-slot/1156950043128548/ Some asshat decided to cause harm or damage and temporarily turn off KWTV's radar. Thankfully, it has been restored but police are looking for the person who did it. https://www.news9.com/story/686c1415dfc52927077f9d5c/vandal-disables-power-to-lifesaving-news-9-weather-radar?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_KWTV_-_NEWS_9&fbclid=IwY2xjawLZbSNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHqvXGpTnqv2DvzIfxifew946WE_oFArEDgATi_ON4tEn4eDyNFkTfVfcQdBW_aem_qCNLydYvaqth3ItxeOT3UQ

Unless I'm missing something, Colorado Springs is very likely to lose an entire newsroom if this goes through. What a terrible deal.

With today's news, I will NOT be shocked if Marcelle Fontenot and Jim Hummel leave the last of the crap that is KADN/KLAF and return to KATC under new Gray Media ownership. I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest.

It sounds like come the end of the year, if this goes through, Merit TV will either be finished (shut down) or something and COMPLETELY different with new ownership.

The ability to be plaintiffs in lawsuits against TBN and the Professional Bull Riders, supplier contracts (including carriage deals, program rights and the uplink), the "Merit Street" and "Merit TV" trademarks, a year and a half of (dated) newscasts and commentary programs including Dr. Phil Primetime, and office space and supplies, along with the repeat farm that the channel is still operating as and its few remaining employees, along with the website and Merit+ free streaming platform.

Just speculation, but Cowles may sell. They sold off their daily newspaper, The Spokane Spokesman-Review, to a non-profit. They are a real estate company primarily with a handful or so of crappy (one great) TV stations.

Eva Pilgrim got the job. She obviously left ABC after they reworked GMA3 and started using regular GMA hosts. They've been running promos welcoming him to the team, including one with Jessica Moore. Seemed odd, I haven't seen that sort of welcome on other stations.

So, for those of us who don't read legalese, what assets...er, Assets, does Merit Street have?

Spectrum, at most, will get ad inserts in the ad breaks that they can sell. The "rumor" is they get around $0.14 per sub per month, so at 35 mil homes Herring is snapping $5 mil per month for retrans. They had ~14K viewers in any given minute during a Nielsen test in 2019 but they aren't paying to track them.

"powergate92" on RadioDiscussions found the bankruptcy docket and this looks really bad. I'll quote them: "So I found the bankruptcy docket. It looks like the plan is for Merit Street assets to be sold at auction with final sale to be completed by the end of September." Here's the link to the dockets.

Fantastic. Spectrum drops News 12 Connecticut and promotes the NYC-focused Spectrum News NY1 to cable channel 1 despite my town being nearly two hours away from the city, but hey, now we can get far-right lies and a channel geared towards rich people. I love cable TV!

QOTD.

So, if she's not starting till this fall, who's hosting in the interim?

Correspondent isn’t a bad thing right…

I think in this case he had good reason to walk; whatever they offered beyond 20/20, it's all a downgrade.

He always leaving something, he can never stay somewhere a long time dammit Demarco. You got a network job very few journalists get a network job and you leave it, if I was him I would’ve stayed.