Leaderboard

This feels very dystopian to me.

I feel fortunate that I've only ever worked for bygone-era small station groups that no longer exist and O&Os. I think the likes of Scripps, Tegna, Nexstar, Gray et al are in for a perilous financial future as they have far fewer alternate revenue streams. The O&Os at least will be able to rely on live sports in major markets and the backing of the network to stay relevant to some degree. For a rural market ~120 station with no major national or college sports team, what is the roadmap? Advertising is way down everywhere. Retrans fees will likely go away. The networks don't really need partnerships with affiliates much longer now that they have their own streaming platforms (not that those are making any money either.) Syndicated programming is going away, and these kinds of stations can't really replace it with more news as it's near-impossible to find more 22-year-olds willing to endure the grueling quality of life of working in small market TV. I think what's happening at Scripps, particularly in the small markets, is a telltale sign of just how rocky the industry will become in the next 5-10 years at the lower end. I'm not sure if the other station groups will go to the same extreme lengths that Scripps is currently taking, but I think we will see more small market stations shut down news departments and farm out their news to regional and national divisions within their station groups. I don't think these problems are confined to OTA television either. I think the economics of the entire entertainment industry are fundamentally broken. The only thing that still makes money is advertising on conventional distribution platforms, but that audience has been shrinking for decades. Nobody other than Netflix has been able to figure out how to monetize online media in a meaningful way. Streaming has become so saturated that I'm not fully convinced it'll work out for any of the media conglomerates.

Full House reruns aired on NBC in summer 1991 right before it went into broadcast syndication but that wasn’t while original episodes were airing.

https://arcwestmichigan.com/ They already have it on the website

No, ARC West Michigan is the brand they'll take once they lose CW. It'll just be an independent. Why they chose that name, I don't know.

WFLA Newschannel 8 11pm 1997 (link in the description below ) WTVF Eyewitness News 1988 WFLD FOX News Chicago 1992 WSMV The scene at ten 1986 WPEC Eyewitness News 1985 (clip starts at 38:21)

Aside from MyNetworkTV, that has to be a first...a broadcast network airing repeats of another network's show.

And just out of curiosity about what 41.2 will air, it looks like Dabl is completely done after December 29th; according to its national schedule it's becoming yet another Paramount Global specialty with their networks that need to die; a rerun feed of 90s UPN/WB sitcoms; no network name known yet, so expect another big exodus of stations at the end of the year switching networks on their Dabl subs. The network's social feeds haven't been updated since mid-September so it already was on borrowed time.

Great...more things for David Zaslav to run into the ground.

I'll bite. Just had a nice little glass of bourbon, so let's see what we can come up with: When I first started working for TEGNA, I felt like they didn't get enough credit for what they were trying to do. They were investing a ton of money into the brands of these stations and bringing in some interesting people to shake things up on the marketing side. It sounded really exciting and I got sucked into it, leaving a well established market-leading station to jump into this mess. It's no exaggeration to say when I was sitting in the hotel the night before my first day watching WUSA9, I felt immediate regret in my decision and I started working immediately to leave. (It took nearly three years to get out... woof.) When I look back at it all, I think one of the biggest problems is that the news and production folks at these local stations have absolutely no idea how to make good television. Is that really their fault? I don't know. Local news has looked essentially the same since the 1940s. Desk. Chair. Backdrop. Want to shake things up? Have the anchor stand. That backdrop? It's now a monitor. That's about as groundbreaking as these people know what to do. (And that's not just TEGNA, it's an industry-wide issue.) So now you want to revamp your morning show and you bring in a comedian... again, not exactly revolutionary. It's been done. But news leadership is really afraid to lean into this concept, so it's just another straightforward mediocre newscast with a comedian randomly dropped in. The comedian has no one to play off of. Your news anchors and reporters aren't funny, they don't know humor. So you have awkward interactions throughout the show. You blow millions on marketing this 3rd or 4th place show to get folks to "sample" it. Sure, there is a slight spike in ratings - people drop in, have a look, say "what the hell is this?", tune out and never come back. TEGNA would fly in folks from various departments from their stations all around the country every few months for "innovation summits" at their HQ. I got invited to one. A lot of interesting ideas. Absolutely no way to execute it. An idea I had got piloted in Cleveland (of course, I never saw a bonus, not that I expected one ). They flew out the comedian from DC to host it. It was awful. You know why? Your producer who graduated from Elon's school of journalism has absolutely no clue how to make good television. They know how to copy and paste from the wires and re-write stories from the 11p to drop into their AM shows. (Just kidding, that gets copy and pasted as well.) I could go on and on. I haven't even started in on the mediocre general managers with sales backgrounds - that might be an even bigger issue. You think the guy from sales who got the corner office knows how to make good television?? They have an eye for talent? Absolutely not. Local television news isn't dying, it's dead. You're just watching zombies now. Waiting until the next hedge fund comes in to turn the lights off.

Especially with Sinclair and Nexstar, the amount of control the top management forces on the lower ranks. While many of the stations they acquired had great ideas from veterans that could have been implemented throughout, instead you have the same management who ended up acquiring these stations, imposing their will, and turning them into mindless drones. The industry is poorer because of it and the great stations they have collectively run into the ground.

The only local TV news broadcaster that might be “good” is the Disney O&O group. Those stations are typically number one in the ratings and have a Disney-backed budget to make things happen. But, as we learned this year from CEO Bob Iger, Disney may eventually get out of linear television. And I’m sure the likes of Perry Sook and Byron Allen will be ready to make an offer. TV news has always been about the money, especially local TV news, regardless of the owners. It’s just that some companies are more open about it, like Nexstar and Sinclair. The other companies — like Gray, Scripps, Tegna, Cox, Graham, Allen, etc. — are all watching the bottom line just as much.

Tegna must have forgotten they have acquired some long-standing juggernauts, for some of those crown jewels were lost in the shuffle are now a shell of themselves (see WFAA, WWL) thanks to the tomfoolery over the years. I understand company mandates, but everything isn't meant for everyone.