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Besides the website archives being dumped for the cable channels it sounds like corporate is about to start another slow-roll cull of big name talent via early retirement (just like the New York and LA offices are heavily filled with Robert Half contractors)...this can only end badly and I feel like Skydance/Son of Oracle is about to give us an even uglier replay of the Tisch era for CBS.

He'd have to actually be convicted of a felony or lie outright to the FCC and get nailed for it. Then the FCC would start a long process to strip him of the license. That's pretty much it.

Found this article about Kevin Adell being sued by family members over fraud and racketeering in the "theft" of land in Novi, Michigan. https://www.metrotimes.com/news/910am-superstation-owner-accused-of-fraud-racketeering-in-federal-lawsuit-34167968 This makes me wonder, how does this man even hold a broadcast license? Especially in a place like Detroit, he uses this as a weapon that has scared away major companies that have kept his WADL-TV from becoming a major factor becuase of his own ego, incompetence and greed. What does it even take to be stripped of a license anymore these days? This is even a picture the Detroit News pulled from Adell Media.

Among all the instability and criticisms of Paramount and the CBSEN, I just wanted to give the program props for finally improving it's aesthetic. After years of the outdated brownish looking sets, the current evening news setup is the best among the big three broadcasts. The Weekend news set looks great with a contrast of dark blue and white with the Cronkite style map. Dimmer lighting and warm colors can do wonders. Similarly the Washington bureau set looks just as good, and the O&Os are getting some nice sets fashioned after KCAL. Steps in the right direction aesthetically.

Flew under the radar, but Tegna's First Coast News has debuted a new 1250sqft studio. Their website has a time lapse. https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/about-us/first-coast-news-unveils-modern-innovative-new-studio-design/77-ca0f6dee-457b-4e0a-b1b1-5eb0ab0d99fb

It might be because either WPLG aired it then or recorded it straightaway for airing at 6:30, but there are some ABC affiliates that air WNT on Sundays at 6/5c, while many others air it at 6:30/5:30c.

I like the corporate synergy and national FaceTime that Maurice and Kristine are getting. Kristine lead initial coverage of Biden dropping out of the election, and hate being a Maurice spammer but he did a segment for BET.

It is distinctive...not my cup of tea but the overhead bulkhead gives it some depth and gives the effect it's a larger space than it is. Elements that add depth and dimension to shots have been missing from a lot of designs the last 10 or so years as screens proliferated so nice they gave that some thought here.

Correct.

Many years ago, traffic services like Shadow Traffic actually did the reports from their own offices. If the regular person was out, a different Shadow Traffic person would sub. They sat in a cube with WNBC 4 logos etc. Stations now employ their own, and just receive data from whoever provides those services these days. This week clearly became an unusual situation, with Adelle on family leave and Emily taking the week off (probably a pre-planned vacation or whatever). Raphael is a known face to viewers and may have been asked to sub or he volunteered. That's all internal to WNBC. Whether he gets additional compensation that is part of his contract. It is good they did not go the "let the anchor read it approach" or worse, just include the data in the ticker. Especially on a day like today.

Man. This hurts. Both Mark and Vic were icons at WJZ. Now that Mark is gone, who’s going to do sports?

Kristine Johnson joined Jessica Moore for the 11pm tonight

The RSNs get the updated graphics package in the fall.

WSVN is a station atypical of the norm, in every way possible. That's all that needs to be said. That they are a solid #2 among English-language outlets in Miami—in spite of the lack of any synergy opportunities or not being in any larger chain—speaks to how well they read the market and shaped it in a way to also be heavily atypical of the norm. You don't have to be a cheerleader of the station to realize that.

Having watched WSVN 7 as my preferred news station for 19 years now, this is exactly true. Also, they RARELY run FOX News packages from FOX NewsEdge, if ever. And when they do, they make them use custom tagouts so that its 7 News and not FOX News (for example, for Madeline Rivera, a correspondent for FOX News Edge, she would say... in Washington, Madeline Rivera, 7 News. She would never say FOX News on reports sent for WSVN.). And yes, WSVN mainly does their own coverage for national news stories, including the Biden presser from yesterday. They rarely take anything national from FOX News.

Fair points. It is interesting though when stations completely de-emphasize network branding. It's like they want the benefits of a network affiliation such as primetime programming and live sports, but they want to have the guise of an independent operation. Now for Fox stations, it's obvious why they would want to distance themselves from the brand.

A lot of stations get a clean feed, and since it was during local time (Deco Drive), WSVN preferred to do that and stick with it rather than an awkward rejoin of the network at 8. In network time, stations can do what they want, and it wasn't a 'red alert' event requiring taking the network feed. I've seen a lot of stations do it before because they prefer both to make their own calls and not to be left in the lurch if the network doesn't cover it.

I always get this vibe that WSVN doesn't want to be associated with Fox. Ironically they are the model Fox affiliate. Looking at their coverage of the Biden press conference they did not have any Fox graphics on their feed compared to my local Nexstar/Mission station which does. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I hardly see them use Fox News packages. Very little reference of the Fox network is made on their channel. EDIT: To my recollection the only time they took Fox's coverage was 9/11 My history based assumption is when Ansin ran it he wanted his stations to have strong independent identities so that if they got into another affiliation battle they could stand on their own. WHDH's success post NBC has proven carving out an identity outside of the network is useful.

Add WMC to the list.

Even as CBS and Fox now more openly carry games that they wouldn't usually have in the past, there's still more Niner games on KTVU than Patriot games on WFXT. At the time of the trade, we were just ending the era where WFXT couldn't air more than two Patriot regular season games a season. But with all this in mind, Patriot games are still more likely to be on WBZ.

Does that really matter? NFL games are still NFL games and WFXT will carry several Patriots games anyway.

You can add KSWO to the list

I'm surprised that CBS hasn't sold that Indy Start TV channel to someone else why keep it truth be told.

Several are top 10 markets including N.Y., LA and Boston. Along with WPIX that’s a large amount of stations Nexstar would need divest to buy them and stay under the cap when FCC scrutiny is already a factor. Good luck with that.

Almost like the trade was a part of the plan all along. I really believe they used WJZY as a guinea pig with the Hey, Hey Carolinas and never intended to keep the stations long term. Your second statement….the Panthers were actually playing better when FTS owned them. The Rivera/Kuechly/Cam years were under FTS ownership. Almost like they wanted to build up the team. Now obviously the sale of the station had nothing to do with the ownership change. But the sale to Tepper and the culture changed for the worse right about the time Nexstar bought the stations. So I guess you could say FTS made a good decision when it comes to NFC markets. WJZY has come out all right under Nexstar but the Panthers under Tepper…not so much.

Fox did such a poor job in Charlotte with "Fox Carolinas", "Fox 46" and whatever else....that trading for Seattle and Milwaukee was almost a certainty. Besides the Panthers have had a rough time in the NFC.

Yes, hence why Fox re-acquired WITI - part of a deal to get KCPQ/KZJO (Seahawks) - twelve years after offloading it to a private equity group in 2007. They did have to sacrifice another NFC market in Charlotte (WJZY/WMYT) to make it happen though.

Hence why Fox dumped WJW (Browns), WDAF (Chiefs), KDVR (Broncos), KTVI (Rams at the time), WITI (distant market for the Packers) as well as non-NFL markets like Salt Lake City, Greensboro and Birmingham. The only reason Memphis was kept was likely LocalTV's desire not to re-sell WREG to another owner, so Fox kept Memphis until the KTVU/WFXT swap and Cox got WHBQ as a consolation prize.

I think you misunderstood. Fox’s strategy was to own the Fox station in every NFC market. The Patriots are an AFC team. Fox holds the rights primarily to the NFC. It made having a station in SF more attractive than in Boston. It’s about keeping the advertising $$$ for themselves.

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 thought that the government was going after Kevin for not paying his taxes as well I read that when Mission wanted to buy WADL last year. No one wants to do business with Kevin not surprised that family members aren't in good terms with Kevin as well. I think a godcaster buys WADL on the cheap.

Per Deadline, with some cozy revisionist history on the failed Standard General (and Apollo Global Management) takeover of Tegna to boot. I find it hard to have sympathy for groups like Nexstar, Sinclair and Tegna that bought stations for the sake of buying them with zero strategy or consideration. Just because you took advantage of companies that didn't want to exist anymore like Belo, McGraw Hill, Allbritton, LIN and Tribune didn't make the future any brighter. The problem facing local television is the same crisis facing newspapers and commercial radio and public radio, and no amount of deregulation the likes of Dave Lougee and Perry Sook are openly coveting right now won't be able to paper over it. All you'll get are larger dinosaurs with bigger, more oppressive debt loads.

I think station groups small and large could be vulnerable. Small groups could be vulnerable because they lack the resources that the larger groups have. And the large groups could be vulnerable simply because they have grown so big that if they should fail, their failure would have a catastrophic impact on the communities they serve.

KXAS (not surprisingly for an NBC o&o) is the best looking station in the market.

No, what I'm saying is that the megagroups have resources that the smaller ones do not, and the megagroups are better situated to rapidly deal with stuff like disaster recovery as a result. Stations that don't have the same resources (i.e. WINK) get stuck pointing a camera at a laptop while their transmitter wails in the background. Even when WVUE flooded during Katrina, they had WALA to fall back on. They briefly used the KUHT control room before WFAA brought in their production truck, and eventually they rented fiber to run their shows entirely out of a secondary production control room at WFAA. Master Control was rapidly moved to WFAA as well. KUSA also did some stuff for them as the WFAA setup was patched together. The only thing they did with the KUHT equipment was switch cameras in the first few days, everything else was done from Dallas or Denver. They only used the KUHT cameras until the WFAA truck showed up, and they only used the WFAA cameras until they pulled their studio cameras (which were moved to the second floor as the building started to flood) out of the old building. The Dallas arrangement continued for many months until they got a trailer built out to "Tegna specifications" and brought production back locally. Save for the first day or so when they used the KUHT control room, all KUHT did was provide studio space.

The number was a compromise between Congress and the White House back in 2003. In June of that year, the FCC relaxed ownership rules to allow a 45% audience cap. Congress didn't like it and wanted to pass a measure to roll back the FCC's decision. President Bush said he would veto it. So the White House and Congress began negotiating and in November 2003, they settled on a compromise of 39%. That's the official record. But the scuttlebutt was that CBS and FOX were both at 39% and so instead of forcing them to sell stations, which could have begun a lengthy legal fight, Washington chose 39% to get it wrapped up.

I still don't understand why it's 39% and not an even 40%. Did someone hate round numbers?

Let me see if I can help you here. The rule is that a single entity can't own full-power broadcast licenses that combine to cover more than 39% of the country. (There are some nuances here like the UHF discount, duopolies, Class A stations, etc. But that is the basic rule.) The broadcast networks are subject to this same rule. Their O&O stations can't reach more than 39%. What is not covered in that 39% is programming reach. The broadcast networks, and syndication programmers for that matter, can set up agreements to have their programming broadcast by stations covering 100% of the country. So NBC Prime or Live with Kelly & Mark don't have a limit on their national reach. But NBC and ABC can't directly own stations that reach more than 39% of the country. Hope that helps!

And you can see how well SBC has done as AT&T Mobility. Cell service still largely relies on POTS and ISP provide the data services (coming from a former Lumen Network Eng ) We've seen consolidation, but companies like Lumen Technologies, Comcast, Dish, Charter, Cox, Frontier, Altice USA, and several hundreds of other LECs wouldn't exist without the AT&T breakup.

Broadcast TV is likeky long past its chance to be broken up by the government. When Ma Bell (AT&T) was broken up into the RBOCs, it only took 20 years for many of them to merge back together as....AT&T. By then, cellular phones were a regular part of life and customers had options. Nowadays, the very POTS that comprised phone service is a rarity that has been largely replaced by VOIP and cellular. At least we still have competition in TV, even if it's the same three owners and many markets. The stations are going to have to start falling before anyone intervenes. I think on the internet end we could start seeing some regulation since the content pool is getting smaller.

I know Sinclair has been basically blacklisted ever since. No one has wanted to do business with them and now they are in a deep financial hole after being "forced" into cable after terrible behavior with the FCC. Even in a free market, any company would be foolish to deal with them.

Rand Paul can propose all he wants but there's a good chance it doesn't see the light of day, particularly should the Senate remain in 50-50 Democrat hands. I don't think people appreciate just how much Sinclair permanently poisoned the well against further media consolidation among the left with their "dangerous to our democracy" stunt. This about-face by the FCC did not happen overnight.

I know Rand Paul has proposed a bill that removes all caps to the ownership rules. If that ever passed... As far as the Tegna ownership level, I think they are at about 32% with the UHF discount. That means they still have a bit of room to make moves, but there are no good options available that don't blow past the cap since they focus on larger markets - something like acquiring Graham or Hearst. In the Speculatron, I created a thread wondering what could happen if the caps were all eliminated and companies could go to 100%.

The nerve of the government for preventing companies from monopolizing the public airwaves so an oligopathy of companies can't control the flow of information to the public Pardon my lack of knowledge. So local station owners can't broadcast to more than 39% of Americans, but the national television networks can? Is it legally okay for networks to do so because they don't own all stations they broadcast on?

Kim Godwin is out as ABC News head.

Not sure where else to post this....Apparently the Federal Trade Commission has banned non-compete clauses. The announcement from the FTC website promotes NDAS as a better alternative to keeping trade secrets rather than non-competes. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes The report criticized the clause as an exploitative practice to keep employees locked into low wage jobs rather than employers treating their employees better. During the State of the Union President Biden criticized non-competes for banning a fast food worker from taking a simultaneous job at another fast food restaurant. Any thoughts? My question is.... does this ban now mean that a reporter can work at say ABC 7 and NBC 4 simultaneously, or does it just mean that ABC 7 cannot tell a reporter they are banned from working within X miles of their station for X months (post employment)? I'm thinking the latter.

One of the biggest rationales for non competes in journalism is safe guarding intellectual property. From my time in a newsroom I can tell you that photographers and digital writers (who aren't under contract) are privy to just as much intellectual property and "company secrets" as reporters/anchors and producers (who were under contract). So, IMO that doesn't hold up. This might be a radial leap but contracts should be abolished for all LOW WAGE employees. It's one thing to lock in Hoda Kotb or Robin Roberts for two years when you pay them millions. But small to medium market MMJs/Reporters making around $20 an hour should have the freedom to leave if necessary, especially because companies do not care about living expenses etc.. Aside from wanting your face exclusively on their channel, contracts are typically a mechanism for stations to curb high turnover. They lock talent in rather than improving the working conditions (and pay) that cause the turnover to begin with.

He's writing this as if the industry isn't already a revolving door of talent. Has he watched the news at all in the last decade? Even in big markets, it's pretty astounding how much attrition there is on and off screen. I don't think I could name more than a handful of reporters on competing stations. When I turn on Denver TV, there's barely anybody recognizable to me on there. This is nothing but great news for the media industry workforce, and employees can now more freely vote with their feet and escape bad employers who don't pay enough. Not that we have much choice anyway with at most a dozen station groups now. Of course, noncompetes have been watered down quite a bit already. Most stories I hear these days of people breaking their contract involve the station group threatening to sue them, then the employee gets a lawyer to point out all the ridiculous claims. Then, the station group is too cheap to go through with the lawsuit anyway and they back down immediately. There are so many other new laws at play too. Noncompete clauses are already unenforceable in California, but a new law that went into effect in January makes all contracts with noncompetes void *altogether.*

It's almost insane that a company can fire you (or you leave them) yet they can dictate your post employment actions in a "free country". Anchors aside, I highly doubt the audience will abandon a station in droves if a reporter switches from say KABC to KNBC. So the rationale for post employment non-competes doesn't hold up to me. Related anecdote --- During college I applied for a $12 h/r job at Uniqlo who said we couldn't hold any simultaneous retail jobs. If someone is working in retail, most likely they only qualify to work within the industry. So how can you tell them they can't seek supplemental employment in their field? Not surprisingly this same company that recruited directly from college campuses also told students with 8:00 a.m. classes that had to be able to close at 1:00 a.m. a few nights a week --- so I'm pretty sure they don't care.

Unsurprisingly, Hank Price decided to humiliate himself in this op-ed claiming it will be a "body blow" to the megachains and depress salaries for talent, and openly pled for "an appropriate court" (translation: a right-wing court dominated by Republican appointees) to overturn it. It's easily the most depraved, tone-deaf and out-of-step reaction by a man who runs a website—TVNewsCheck—now wholly subsidized by rich old white males Perry Sook, Hilton Howell, Adam Symson and David Smith.