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John Q Public has no clue that KDKA TV and KDKA radio aren’t related. The average viewer has no reason to know they aren’t related. I don’t think that even with solid ratings and historical call letters that stations like KDKA will not get the new branding. CBS wants consistency. And when you let a handful of stations go rogue, you end up with things like hideous black and gold graphics. CBS is looking to the future, and the future doesn’t include call letters or station numbers.

It’s not that Tegna is full of sinister suits that want to see their employees lose their jobs (though they make up for their lack of cynicism with their incompetence at running their stations.) Tegna wants the deal done ASAP for a much simpler reason. Dave Lougee and company are getting golden parachutes if this merger goes through, and there’s a significant termination fee if they cancel the deal. Why terminate the deal when you have everything to lose if you do? And it’s not evil at all to want the thing dead. This deal kills competition, and in turn kills local stations. While someone like Byron Allen would probably just do nothing with the Tegna stations, that’s still better than a hedge fund operating on a “cut, cut, cut” philosophy.

Civil Rights organization Arc of Justice thinks the merger is a good thing, pointing to Soo Kim's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Credit should really go to @ABC 7 Denver for flagging it first in the CBS O&O graphics speculation thread.

This feels like the move of a station on its last legs.

...Or Nexstar is trying to kill off the network. After her disastrous stint on Megyn Kelly Today, all she has to do is say the wrong thing, and she can be the scapegoat...er...savior and WGN America will be back so fast, Bozo the Clown and Matlock reruns won't know what to do with themselves....

The only way this deal gets done is with Hearst, Graham, Allen, or O&Os getting involved to buy stations in conflict markets. You have to prove that Tegna and Cox won't be the same company. According to the language in the deal currently, it suggests they are. The best thing that Standard can do is Do a full merger of the Tegna and Cox stations and have the companies mentioned above get involved and buy the conflicts.

DFW is a growing market, and it’s a different landscape now compared to when it was in the late 2000s-early 2010s. Never say never.

The 7-9am block was pretty much identical for all the stations as the 6am hour. The thing that's a little shocking to me about the LA ratings is just how low the share is across the board – so much competition I guess, not just from all the other news options, but just everything else that's on the air too. I can't see the Spanish stations, but maybe those take most of the viewers, perhaps? I suppose you could say that KTLA and KABC are the leaders, but neither of them seem to have anything that's a dominant news hour over everyone else like what you see in other markets. KTLA stays a pretty constant .5 rating / 12 share in the demo all morning long, which isn't bad, but not a runaway. Compare that to the Bay Area market, for example, where KTVU averaged a 1.0 rating / 23 share in the 7 and 8am hours. Another insight I saw is that I can see why they'd want to do more with KCAL. The primetime block is actually quite strong. KCAL's 9pm hour last week averaged a .6 rating / 4 share in the demo, which was not only the best rating of any KCAL/KCBS newscast, but also one of the better ratings of any English language newscast in LA. I think trying to do something local on KCAL in the morning while leaving all the network garbage on KCBS is a pretty good idea. That doubles the ad inventory, and it at least gives them a chance at maybe siphoning some viewers away from KTLA and KTTV. What KCBS is currently doing in the morning clearly isn't working.

I think this is a brilliant idea. KCBS isn't going to take a ratings hit – they have nowhere to go but up. 6am hour P25-54 27 Jun - 1 Jul KCBS 0.0 rating, 1 share KNBC 0.1 rating, 2 share KTLA 0.5 rating, 15 share KABC 0.2 rating, 7 share KCAL (Relative Justice) 0.0 rating, 1 share KTTV 0.2 rating, 7 share Sure, it's only July when morning ratings are pretty soft anyway with school not in session, but May didn't look any better for KCBS.

Per Fox 5, Ernie was off to Harvard Business School to get his MBA, similar to reporter Baruch Shemtov. Sukanya was pushed out by the former PIX management over allegedly not welcoming replacement Betty Nguyen on social media. To my recollection, no one at 'NYW made mention of Dari's exit.

Eyewitness News was a better fit for Lori, but IIRC WABC was dealing with a…situation with both a horrible GM and a horrible ND. As for Ernie, he was in his mid 70s when he left in 2019. He’d already stopped anchoring the more traditional 5/10p newscasts at that point, and he probably just wanted to retire after a long career. Speaking of which, today is Ernie’s 78th birthday. Happy Birthday Ernie, and keep *plucking* along.

I'm personally not a fan of too much consolidation in the media if for no other reason than it's boring to have the same narrative repeated everywhere. What made this industry fun before was the fact that it wasn't as cookie cutter as it is today. The powers that be like it, though.

Hearst or NBC can take WCNC and WXIA/WATL.

I wonder how much that cost Soo Kim. Cox would have a nice footprint around here with the Gannett stations. WKYC, WPXI, WBNS, WHIO, WTOL, WTHR, WHAS and beyond fit like a glove.

I'm more curious as to how My9 is still a thing. I wonder if the upcoming changes to the 9pm news on 10/55 might actually lead to more news there.

I don't even live in the New York market and I wish WCBS could have kept that. I guess I'm a traditionalist-type. At least KPIX got to keep its Westinghouse-style "5" that dates back to the late sixties.

It’s the CBS News Streaming graphics, only in blue. It’s likely changing whenever the new O&O look debuts this fall.

Gannett and by extension, Tegna, have a lot of allies in Washington because that's where they are based. I wonder if a lot of the employees are whispering in the ears of their buddies to kill the deal. Good for them if they are.

Is it evil to hope the FCC flushes this one down the toilet? It's looking like they are. Whatever people say about Tegna, I don't have a lot of confidence that these new people would run anything other than a cut rate slash and burn operation. Why would Tegna do that? I think they would love seeing these people crash and burn. I wonder how much management has already bolted for the exit doors. Money and hassle to replace.

Easy money on Standard General’s legal counsel being that bad. Soo simply thought he could buy Tegna out of sheer hatred for Dave Lougee, and the details didn’t matter.

I'd also like to see the viewership of Ch. 9 - aka the family feud station. I would suspect the news gives WLNY a slight edge on less least watched station.

Their public statements have been this mix of playing the victim card and tepid deflections (“It’s not true! Proof? Bro. Trust me!”), it’s stunning how unprofessional Soo and Deb have been throughout this process. I’m employing Occam’s Razor for this analysis, and with the level of opposition, FCC scrutiny and Standard General in amateur hour mode, this deal needs to set up an appointment with Dr. Kevorkian.

If my memory is right, a few weeks back both Soo Kim and Deborah McDermott have made statements in response to the some of the criticism. Including investing in news product, not cutting as well as clarifying Apollo's limited role as a funder and not involved in any part of the operation. I'm sure they have had to file and answer directly to the FCC much of this in more detail that may not yet be public. As I read earlier, the FCC giving this more scrutiny vs. the previous FCC regime that except in the Sinclair/Tribune fiasco, rubber stamped most mergers quickly is not a bad thing, but may not indicate a deal is dead. There can also be negotiations of how to build the wall to prevent Apollo input and if there are any station swapping or selling needed. It's still playing out, so making conclusions yet is premature.

According to the SEC filing there is a termination fee of $163 million and to address @GoldenShine9's question about when Tegna could terminate this deal, the earliest they could get out of the deal with Standard is in May of next year.

It looks like KCNC is going for a full rebrand to CBSNewsColorado. https://twitter.com/CBSNewsColorado

Which could renew interest for Allen Media.

Perhaps a throwback to the 1997 logo

I’m assuming you’re referring to WLNY, now WNYW. Thing is, you can’t really compare the two. WLNY was a small LI station that was allegedly bought in exchange for a golf membership. There were never serious investments made, and when CBS bought the station, they actually cut WLNY’s news department entirely. Meanwhile, KCAL is a station that built a solid reputation for itself in the 90s, and carved out a niche audience by doing news in prime time. It also helps that they hired away Jerry Dunphy to give them credibility on day 1. By the time CBS bought them, they had been well-established for a while. I’m not an expert on the market, but it seems to have gotten to the point that KCAL has a better reputation than KCBS, even though they’re under the same umbrella. And besides, if your stations are going to air local news from 4-11am, why split it between KCBS and KCAL and force viewers to change channels at 7am? KCBS gets to show live national news (which no other station does), while KCAL gets better programming in the morning than it has now. Both stations can concentrate on their specific audiences. It’s better than showing a newscast that pulls a whopping 0.0, which in turn hurts the national morning show.

I feel bad for Cheryl honestly. She’s been there so long and paid her dues but she’s just not very good. Watching her feels like you’re watching someone who is trying to play an anchor rather than be one.

In retrospect, the move to WCBS (which is where I remember her from growing up) might have been an attractive offer, but didn't have the best outcome. If Roz still had as much popularity at the time, it would seem like they'd put her on the critical 6 and 11 PM newscasts, but That's the nature of broadcasting. Stations are often ready to put the next new face in the chair. One can say the Liz Cho move paid off as she's still with the station almost 20 years later.

IIRC, WCBS gave her an offer to do 5p and 11p with Ernie Anastos, her former Ch. 7 colleague. Considering that she had been passed over for Liz Cho when Diana Williams reduced her workload, perhaps she figured Ch. 2 was her best shot at a main anchor seat. Unfortunately for her, Ch. 2 dropped a #2 on its anchors by constantly shuffling them around, and she didn’t last there very long.

Graham is well within their right to deny such a merger, since virtually their entire commercial competiton will be tied to Apollo, and that these stations have most of the networks. If one of the networks was to bolt from the Tegna or current Cox stations, ABC would look good on Channel 17 once again. This way, each owner gets a secondary station to complement their primary affiliation (or the other way around since WFOX and WJXT are the senior partners and the normally "primary" networks play second fiddle. Jacksonville is a screwed up market all because of Allbritton swiping ABC from Media General. Then they bombed and sold out to Gannett. Then Post-Newsweek cheaped out on CBS and lost them to Clear Channel. In an alternate universe, had all these companies stayed the course, Sinclair would have kept WJXX, or gotten the Newport stations, or Nexstar would still have Channel 17 through the MG merger, not because of an earlier divestiture. The ownership picture would be a lot more diverse and not as clashing as it is today.

I wished that KCBS and WBBM would've had WCBS logo.

The set has been under construction for awhile now and Kathy's been in the position on an interim basis for much of that time. I'm pretty sure she signed off on it. That said, with as much as the station is bleeding money, I doubt they'd rip out a set this close to the finish line.

NY1’s weekday afternoon anchor Russell Boone has pancreas cancer. https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/07/11/ruschell-boone

Learning the most devastating news of his life after perhaps achieveing one of his life's dreams. Damn! RIP!