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Sure! When TEGNA split with Gannett, Gannett was saddled with a lot of debt and at the time of the split, Gannett would not have been able to pay it down given the meager success of their newspapers. The television group, on the other hand, had the ability to pay down that debt if they were structured effectively. This structure separation would help the papers survive as a pure-pay business. So when the split happened, TEGNA, which is technically the original Gannett (same business license) with a new name kept the debt tied to that legal entity, and new Gannett (new business license) kept the papers, their debt tied to the legal entity that is now Tegna.

It's called KCAL NEWS MORNINGS Meet Rudabeh Shahbazi, the new co-anchor for KCAL News Mornings - CBS Los Angeles (cbsnews.com) (VIDEO - PREVIEW OF NEW SET)

Honestly, I hope this is just for the (hopefully, mercifully short) remainder of his contract, because there'd be more dignity in just letting him go.

Only to be reassigned to weekends. I feel sorry for Patrick

Looking forward to the launch. Should keep KTLA on their toes during the 7a-11a block. GDLA is absolutely dreadful to watch (watching now due to Rose Parade being on KTLA today). Mornings in LA TV news should be a little more interesting now that there are more options.

It's also just a declining pool of viewers; at maximum you can have 15 million on a good night, and on a night where nothing is happening, it's down to 5 million. That's 1-5% of the country, and even then how many of those TVs just have it on for background noise? You have so many places where the TV is just set on FNC or CNN just for the sake of visual noise, and to try to talk a declining audience to switch to this 'new' network you associate with reruns and multiple programming directions, and you're not going to do that because you'll just get customers who are like 'put it on a REAL news channel' (or are in a place at 3am wondering what the hell a campmeeting is). Also don't forget just how much FNC is just in so many routines. Fox News Radio is now the main radio news service, along with their features on even mainstream full service stations, so even if you're nowhere near a TV with cable, Fox is going to be on something. NewsNation has just one radio station, WGN, along with whichever leftover affiliates somehow decided ABC, CBS, FNR, USA Radio, Salem, or Westwood One don't provide a good news product. WGN has become the most mid station to ever mid and is run godawfully (their schedule page thinks Jim Bohannan is still doing his show in his casket, I guess). And Fox has Fox Nation, MSNBC has NBC News Now, CNN has their app. At the start of 2023, I still cannot stream NewsNation on Spectrum or even in their app off wifi. Nexstar failed terribly at getting their ducks in a row before launching NN, and Perry's 'the web is a fad' thinking is going to come back to bite him sooner than later.

Personally, I wouldn't ever boast about beating taped programming on two nights the NFL buried anything with a (live and on-air and not involving home shopping) pulse, but for NN, I guess beating a taped show about the 'war on Christmas', on Christmas, in a very asterisk-heavy demographic manner, is an achievement in something, something enough to have your classic TV network being forced to acknowledge it on Facebook.

You're exactly right! And I'm a Social Democrat agreeing with you. So you know this is cold water on the subject. A few thoughts that I will add: As many pension accounts tie themselves to PE, returns are not as strong as they would be using the stock market or index funds. The only people who make out well in Private Equity are managers at the top. That industry itself is a sham. Also, given the debt/equity ratio, companies like Sinclair, Gray, Scripps and Nexstar are known as zombie companies. When the debt comes due in the next few years, these businesses will not be able to refinance at a low interest rate and they will default. They have sold their shareholders a bill of good, mainly in economies of scale, that they cannot live up to. Tegna is one of the few groups of their size that can survive because they've intentionally been structured to pay down debt (the balance sheet transfer made when they split with Gannett).

Not that I want to toot my own horn, but I redid the history of channel 23 on Wikipedia. @Samantha redid the history of WBPX in Boston (which as WQTV was an unprecedented financial failure for the Church of Christ, Scientist, and as WABU had a good amount of local programming attached to it; it just struggled to find viewership at any point in its existence). WPXN and those two stations—and to a lesser extent WOAC, which indeed was sold to “Whitehead Media” and LMAed to Paxson—are the only ones in the Paxson chain that genuinely had history attached to them. The others were struggling or failed U indies which never had a chance in their respective markets, but were bought … mostly for the broadcast spectrum and must-carry on cable, which in 1996 hadn’t been upheld yet by SCOTUS. Inyo is a shell operator that explicitly exists so Scripps can continue to operate at the 39% national ownership cap for OTA stations. Ion Media didn’t have to worry about an existing chain of network affiliates (having sold off WPBF in 1996) when they set up their chain that also corresponded to the 39% limit. It’s the only reason why WVPX-WDLI was “spun off”.

Scripps spent all that money for the broadcast spectrum, not the content featured. Replacing Ion Life (nothing but CanCon drama reruns) Ion Plus (an infomercial farm) and Qubo (the only Pax diginet that had some bit of care to it but ultimately felt neglected and didn’t have a chance) with Scripps’ Katz diginets absolutely constituted an upgrade.

The entire business world has operated under some misguided theories this past couple of generations. One of them has to do with creative destruction. A lot of people's livelihoods have been ruined in numerous consumer businesses because this mentality has been allowed to run rampant throughout our economy. It has killed the broadcast industry and made it irrelevant (although technology and a multitude of choices is also part of that). There has been a lot of unnecessary sacrifice and disruption in our economy, mostly borne by employees of these takeover targets. Screw the banksters, I hope this transaction fails. Just for reference, I am about as pro-business and conservative as they come. But that's not what happens these days. It's very little about building a better mouse trap and all about plundering what someone else built. They decimate every industry they touch and they've been a big part of the reason our economy has been hollowed out. Broadcasting has been destroyed enough by these people.

With the CBS-mandated Next/First alert, it seems a 'yellow alert' is issued for weather that will have some form of impact on a person's routine, with a 'Red alert' as weather having a major impact on a persons routine. I would like to think that it's the meteorologist/weather producer who issues/decides these and not the ND, because otherwise they would totally overhype the yellow/red alert days for rating purposes (next thing you know there would be green alert days for good weather days ). From what I've seen so far, WCBS (at least here in NY) doesn't 'over-issue' these alert days and they do seem warranted. The 7 day then just gets colored red or yellow on that day. Hopefully people are able to recognize that a "red alert" or "yellow alert" is not an actual government warning lol. But yeah I've definitely had this thought in my head about it confusing people with actual necessary government alerts (and I definitely wonder what the NWS thinks of this new trend and if they also share this fear of confusion).

WTOL in Toledo has had alert days for a few years now. They do it for severe T-storms, tornadoes, extreme heat and cold, high wind, and accumulating snow. WTVG has done it since earlier this year too. I don't mind it myself.