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** David Zaslav, who's a hack.

Chuck made the announcement during NBATV's postgame coverage of Game 4 of the NBA Finals. He'll be sorely missed after next season, especially when you see the garbage fire that is the studio show of the main NBA broadcaster ESPN. https://awfulannouncing.com/tnt-sports/charles-barkley-retirement-announcement-next-year.html

I think so as well. It sounds like WarnerBros Discovery CEO is ok with losing the NBA rights on TNT. I told someone that TNT version is way better than ESPN doing NBA basketball.

For those outside of Central Indiana, this move, like the one from ABC to NBC is big. The Indy 500 is seen as a state holiday. Trust me, the people at Fox59 are very happy right now about this. When WTHR (NBC) got it from RTV6 (ABC), they were very happy and started planning right away. Now, the blackout is still probably in tact and will stay that way from now until the end of days. How are the people at WTHR feeling? Not happy. for a number of years, the big three network stations in Indy had a share in The Month of May. WISH-TV had the One America 500 Mini Marathon and Indy 500 Parade, RTV6 with the race (tape delay), and WTHR with the awards banquet the next night. Shortly after WISH said they were losing CBS, they also lost the rights to the Mini and Parade to WTHR. I should add the Mini Marathon and Parade are outside of IndyCar and the IMS. The awards banquet is also something outside of IndyCar and the IMS. Unless Fox59/CBS4 make a move for those, don’t expect those to change.

I wonder if WBD will sell its stake in NBATV after 2024-25 NBA season is over. I think Charles Barkley will remain on TV in some form the money is too much for him to retire if he does retire all the best enjoy retirement Sir Charles.

Yeah a major hack at that. If you ever listen to The Powers that be podcast. He never painted in a good light.

Lougee is getting out while the getting is still good for him. He made $10.9 million in total compensation in 2023, and stands to make at least $6 million simply by retiring. I’m certain Tegna will have a nice and comfy arrangement for him in his “senior advisor” role as well. Source: https://investors.tegna.com/node/29976/html#executive_summary

Either that or they just figured that while they had their news set in the smaller studio, it wasn't worth it to try to move to the bigger one. Or, I don't know if KGO operated this way, but perhaps they rented out the larger studio to other outside productions. KTVU did that – KTVU rented out their much larger Studio A to other productions (including the filming of Mrs. Doubtfire) before they finally moved their main news set into there in 2012.

A March Madness without Charles Barkley is unthinkable for CBS Sports and David Berson

Is it possible that TNT could just air some games nationally during the regular season, without the playoffs at a reduce amount of $ so that they can remain in business with the NBA instead of just being on the production side of things running NBATV for the NBA?

It's not the first time that he says he's retiring, so I'll belive it when he actually does it.

This tells me that he already has inside info that TNT won't be retaining any sort of NBA contact. I'm sure that will be revealed shortly after the NBA Finals end, and then TNT will gear up for its farewell season.

If we’re going to complain about stations wasting money on sets, I don’t think this is the example. This is replacing a set that was more than 10 years old and had very few modifications to it. (Looks like in those pictures too that they are even saving the updated video wall from the outgoing set for something else.) At a certain point, things get old and outdated and need to be replaced. What KCNC just put in there is nice, modern, and not particularly excessive or opulent. Plus, as others pointed out, they probably saved some money on design by reusing the KCAL designs. I don’t think replacing a 10-year-old set with something functional, modern, and not over-the-top like what KCNC did here is a bad decision at all. If we’re going to talk about irresponsible excess, look no further than KDVR. They replaced a set that was what, barely three years old with something that has so many monitors that it probably cost a lot more than it looks. And the end product has terrible lighting and looks worse than what it replaced.

Then even more! Pay your journalists more than minimum wage.

It didn't happen after Hayes and Scarborough attacked them for the 2018 "Dangerous for our Democracy" script.

There are certainly some dog NBC affiliates within Sinclair. Notably WTWC in Tallahassee and more recently, WPMI in Mobile and WGFL WNBW in Gainesville. WTWC doesn't even air TND during local news slots like the other stations that have given up on news. Also, their affiliations are apparently up at the end of the year. We shall see if they renew. It seemed like an eleventh hour thing the last time. But like the ABC affiliates keeping stations like KDNL the way they are, it's probably worth it to keep NBC around for stations like WTOV, WJAR, WCYB and WJAC.

Even thought the Patriots have ended up playing in quite the number of Super Bowls on Fox, KTVU aired more regular season Niner games than Patriot games on WFXT.

I don't believe that'll happen I doubt it.

Daily Blast Live is ending September 6th: https://www.nexttv.com/news/tegna-ending-daily-blast-live-effective-september-6

No. It does look stupid, but it's because Cox doesn't have a clue.

The real toxic part of contracts many station groups are making people sign are financial penalties if you resign even if you are leaving the business. Thousands of dollars. A one-sided agreement like that should scare away any reasonable person. Stations will argue it is the cost of the training they gave you and recruiting/hiring your replacement. And you can maybe justify some of that cost on a first contract, but in a second employment agreement the training cost isn’t there.

This is an area where it's endemic to society as a whole. I don't know you could say it's disillusionment with journalism more or less than all kinds of fields. Even if someone feels a calling or a passion, reality sets in no matter the field (teaching, journalism, first responder, etc) and the bills are sometimes going to win out over the "calling." Wages for most sectors haven't kept up with inflation and haven't for decades for rank-and-file type roles. Contracts and non-competes are dreadful at lower salaries, and thankfully at least one of those is seeing some action.

The contracts should be shorter. Being locked into a $16 to $20 an hour job for 2 to 3 years is insane. Call me an extremist but contracts should be abolished for all low wage employees making perhaps less than $100K/yr. What the news industry seems to not care about is that their toxic work environments, unrealistic timing expectations, the expansion of the MMJ role and low salaries have all contributed to mass turnovers and low recruitment. Many of these conditions were in place before the digital age so we cannot blame loss of viewing habits for the current generation's disillusionment with the profession. This is the "I quit" generation. Millennials and Gen Z are not as loyal to their jobs and not willing to tolerate crap from their bosses so they will walk away faster than previous generations.

And it debuted today on WNYW:

Looks like the old TVNewsTalk.net domain is active again. I accidentally typed it in, and it redirected back to here after being in limbo since the outage.

Likely better than what TEGNA would’ve built from scratch, for sure.

It's still a good looking set so I can't complain too much about them keeping it. I can't believe it's been 11 years.

'CMNG P TNGHT T 10'

If you loved NXT, you'll love this.

I'm not gonna post the video because it hasn't made it on-air yet, but WMC-TV could be switching to GrayONE this week, and from what I've seen, from the graphics to the music itself, it's one of my new favorite implementations.