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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?

"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.

MeTV Toons has launched on DirecTV, in the channel slot formerly occupied by Universal Kids.

Flew under the radar and found out about it when it was added to the 'junk drawer' tier of my Spectrum system; apparently Herring and Spectrum came to an agreement to add both OAN and AWE to their systems in May, and they're starting to add it now. Not questioning Spectrum because I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank with whatever little viewership OAN/AWE will provide to make that carriage deal (or maybe Herring finally realized overpricing his channels as 'premuim' was stupid in the long run).

I would expect many news staffers at all the soon-to-be Scripps stations to be shown the light straight to the unemployment line as the result of downsizing. It's also a good thing that Coloradans are used to pre-recorded news. I'm sure 11 News and the others will be Scrippscasted as soon as the deal closes.

At this point, if it weren't for Live and The View being #1 in their respective ratings, the network might as well move to officially make GMA a full three-hour show.

I'm sure KUSA and KTVD would have to be pried from TEGNA's cold, dead hands. KUSA has been their baby for decades.

And now the other shoe has dropped. Demarco is departing GMA3 and ABC News altogether. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/demarco-morgan-exits-gma3-abc-news-1236308249/

I think Colorado Springs would be where the biggest cuts would be. The other two markets don't have any Scripps presence, so I don't expect much change personally.

I feel bad for the employees of soon-to-be former Gray stations.

WSYM had its news come from WILX until Scripps acquired WXMI if I recall correctly, so it is like back to square one there. I think the Colorado issue for Gray was that they had zero pathway into Denver. They would have either had to deal with Tegna (who might be looking for assets themselves) or with CBS (which would have been an expensive acquisition or would have required trading crown jewels).

Lansing is a 2 market with Nexstar/Mission CBS/ABC/CW, Gray WILX/WSYM as the only media owners in the Lansing market. Samatha Mesa has left WXMI FOX17 and is now working at WHO13 the Nexstar station in Iowa, Samatha was only with FOX17 for a year & half although I didn't see her until she became the anchor for 6PM newscast when I checked the weather. All the best Samatha I hope that you will return to West Michigan in the near future which isn't going to be Scripps.

Same, really expected Mary to get the role.

Sure enough this new market 7 newsroom is hiring MSK's (MMJ's)! I was surprised to see a multimedia journalist posting for WAGA Fox 5 as-well. The days of top 10 markets being a relief from one man banding are slowing fading away.