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This is from 10+ years ago, but promos that taunt the other station for their perceived shortcomings, orders from management for field crews to go scorched earth with the competition when out on stories everyone was covering - block other stations from getting interviews that they happened on first (witnesses to car crashes, fires, and crimes and other things where there's really no meaningful reason to sandbag the competition), on one occasion WBBH deceived the widow of a murdered police officer saying they would share an interview they did with every other station but really used it as a heavily-promoted exclusive (to be fair, they did give WINK and FOX4 the video a few days later after it aired and other stations learned of the sketchy tactics they used to get the interview and possibly a chewing out from the police department PIO) And management where I work definitely frowned upon being friendly with people from the other stations socially. All things that didn't happen in any other market I worked in. Healthy competition? Yes. But respect and understanding the biggest difference we all had with the people working at the other stations was the name of the company on our direct deposit.

Can someone please elaborate as to what is the toxic culture in the market?

I’m sad to see WBBH get sold, but I’m glad it’s going to Hearst. Hearst has done a good job of pouring resources into its stations and they are one of the gold standards in broadcast journalism. I will say that it’ll be interesting to see how they handle WZVN.

Also consider that Florida is a hot political state.

What a shame. There's a saying that goes "don't go too hard on the competition, you never know if you might end up working for them".

So was Ohio in 2019!

Also if you look at the Hearst map in terms of resources and geography, it compliments WESH and WPBF by giving them coverage on the Gulf coast.

The political ad dollars Florida brings in? Their already strong presence in the state?

The scripted part is what kills Allen's court shows. Is there not a production company out there willing to do a real cases?

Nice to see they're both getting new shows. I think it will be weirder to me not seeing Marilyn on the People's Court. I'll miss so much of the elements People's Court had, such as the music, the iconic logo, the typewriter and gavel sound effects, and Curt Chaplin's deadpan introductions. Now I'm waiting to see if Byron brings back judges Joe Brown, Alex Ferrer or Lynn Toler back to Daytime TV. I just feel Byron's new shows won't be the same compared to WB's longrunners.

This is a vast improvement over previous opens. Still gotta inject the logo sucks though .

shame WVIR couldn't have gone to Hearst too. Probably too small of a market for Hearst to care about

As old as Waterman his, he probably has some connections everywhere. My first thought is he feels Hearst would be most likely to maintain whatever standard/level he thinks WBBH is and that Hearst would touch it the least out of the others. As for Hearst, it's definitely a stunning move. There could be endless motivations behind it. They're like that quiet dude at the party that says some off the wall thing you didn't think they were capable of.

The GrayONE look has launched at WCSC.

I noticed WCSC's Weather Banners have changed to the GrayONE package. After seeing WCAX's, this is certainly going to be their best look yet. (As of noon today, the new look has not launched, will check at 4pm ET.

Whoops! Someone’s getting an email from a sales rep right now! (Blame the new graphics!)

It's too small of a market, NBC Universal isn't interested.

WOW!!! I'm surprised but not surprised, I'm just glad it's not sinclair getting the station. I would love to see WBBH & WZVN out of the LMA at some point.

Always a bummer to see local ownership selling to a larger corporation, but the economics of it just don't work anymore. The press release also mentions Hearst will be taking over the existing SSA for WZVN as well. It'll be interesting to see if Hearst continues to operate WZVN as its own distinct news operation, or if we'll start to see more cross pollination between the two newsrooms.

That desk looks similar to what WEWS would use in 1995.

Don't know where to pose this question but I'll ask it here. With the concentration of local station ownership by just a few companies, what happens if a talent has a falling out at one station? Does it now blacklist them from all other stations in th group, or do individual station managers have the disgression if hiring someone ousted from another station? Overall, is this media oligapathy, so to speak, good for the local news industry?