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Good Lord, what a time when networks used to PAY affiliates to run their programming.... When exactly did the tide shift from actual to reverse compensation? Retransmission Consent and Must-Carry rules debuted in 1993 and the only deals at the time were between corporations and their "sister" cable channels in the few places they overlapped. As companies consolidated, these overlaps became more common. KRON getting bought by Young was the lynchpin of the modern arrangement since NBC enacted onerous demands they did not want to follow. So they took their ball over to KNTV to rechristen themselves as NBC for the Bay Area. Other stations like WJXT and WISH followed because they either did not want to pay for network programming, or balked at the rate that they were being charged for network programming. And then, Perry Sook decided to shake down the cable companies at the source, demanding cash for the carriage of Nexstar's stations. Then the networks wanted their cut of this, and our jacked up form of paying for free TV exists to this day, but for how much longer? And most of the defections in recent years? CBS. Because they wanted more money. CBS shot themselves in the foot in Raleigh to get Media General / Nexstar to pay them more $$$. NBC gets on WRAL and runs with it since it's their best ratings EVER there. And with what just went down in Atlanta, they'll take their ball and go home where they can when it's not working.

I'd say ALL of the stations that pulled Politically Incorrect were that of Sinclair. They would later go on to pull that Nightline episode that read out the 9/11 victims and "almost" aired the John Kerry hit piece "Stolen Honor" around the 2004 election. This was the first time Americans were exposed to their antics as they were amassing more and more television stations across the country. Networks have such iron-clad contracts with their affiliates that there is virtually ZERO deviation from their offerings. 20 years ago, Jimmy Kimmel was delayed and even dropped form several stations, and it wasn't until only 2 years ago when WEAR in Pensacola was forced to air the show "live" at 10:35 after having an hour-long 10pm show for many years. Going back to 1993, rogue CBS affiliates like WJW (mired in bankruptcy under Gillett/SCI) were freely pre-empting shows like half of CBS This Morning and pushing David Letterman back to midnight for some random piece of syndication. They had already pushed Dan Rather back to 7pm to make their 6pm show an hour back around the time they regained the WJW call letters. I have to wonder if THIS was why they cut the deal with FOX (along with the other Gillett/SCI stations about to be sold to New World) instead of FOX getting the NFL and wanting to upgrade their affiliates. Did the other Argyle or CitiCasters (Taft/GreatAmerican) ending up under New World pull the same antics?

Worth keeping in mind that Kimmel moved to the early slot when Leno & Letterman were still on. ABC was planning for the future, when it was clear those guys were sunsetting. What a world where the dopey fat guy from The Man Show is basically the elder statesman of late night.

eh. We thought linear cable was a sacred cow and Comcast just purged that out of its system like it was nothing. Discovery, the must have at one time even 10 years ago, would now get rid of cable nets and shove almost their debt onto them. The sacred cow is sports. The entire business model is now built on it. Everything that gets in the way of that will be excised - ABC didn't flinch when they had to cut WPLG to get more retrans cash money. It's said ABC wanted more money for retrans and considered tieing up with WSFL, which is almost as good as dead air, but WSVN apparently was the better offer.

Ron Pereleman had already taken over Gillett Communications by the time Letterman debuted on CBS. The station simply netted more revenue from Murphy Brown reruns and delaying Dave to midnight. Of course, they never cleared Pat Sajak because of the hometown kid Arsenio Hall and WOAC 67 cleared Crimetime After Primetime. One has to remember that CBS cut payments to the affiliates in June 1992 and asked stations to repay 25 percent of what CBS had already given them. All that in the middle of a recession. There was already antipathy towards CBS among the affiliates even before they fumbled away the NFC rights. The Fox deal in that regard was a no-brainer for a station group like New World, which also benefitted from additional local revenue at the 10 p.m. hour and the News Corp. cash infusion.

Because they're not rebroadcasting that newscast?

Someone who knows more about the NBC union contracts might have to correct me here, but it's very possible that NBC has some operational efficiencies available that would make the costs of production slightly lower. A camera operator could be scheduled for an 8-hour shift with 4 hours working on Late Night and 4 hours working on SNL rehearsals. If the union has even a 5-hour minimum call, then they are "saving" money by moving people around, as neither show would theoretically pay for more than 4. I am fairly confident they moved Kimmel because, given the choice between Nightline and Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert, the young eyeballs these networks so desperately need are going to go to the latter.

ABC probably realized Kimmel was getting higher ratings. Also, have you seen Nightline lately? Episodes start with an opening teaser about stories that will be covered....and then immediately goes to the first break. WTF, ABC?

That looks awful.

Shocking news:

That really unfair, especially that a lot of young tv personalities get to large markets in under 10 years more like 6 years a face pressure. A long time ago it would take a decade to hit a large market. Honestly I don’t like big markets personally I prefer small markets even with the shitty pay because at least you’re comfortable mistakes are made but at least you don’t have to deal with high pressure and inflated egos of being in a big market. I told myself if I reenter I’m not even gonna go my hometown, ima try to stay 30 and up. Kansas City is the most tolerable market.

Anchor and reporter Morgan Parrish is joining Good Day Philadelphia. She's a South Jersey native and is coming from Fox 35 in Orlando, FL. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2025/07/21/morgan-parrish-fox-29/

It's a murder of how to manage a logo. You could drive a truck between the O and X. Tighten that up and it's a forgettable bad logo.

It's not bad. It's just basic and really really boring. =

I wouldn't trust a quote from the New York Post as much as I could throw a knuckleball effectively.

Yes but has continually been maintained. Comcast/UniversalNBC bought most of the floors NBC and NBCUniversal occupy (the remaining floors are owned by a real estate firm) and have received many city benefits to maintain the upkeep and upgrades as needed. Because of the building's landmark status, it cannot be left to go to crap, and all changes NBC makes are reviewed and approved. This includes the changes made to house both WNBC and T47 in Studio 3B, as well as their new high tech newsroom on the 2nd floor. Although some studios occupy old radio studio footprints, the building is a far cry from the original look or even when converted for mostly tv broadcasting in the 40s. It helps it was originally built as a broadcast facility, as compared to CBS whose facility was a dairy. Today, most NBCU east coast operations are at 30 Rock, the exceptions being NBC Sports (Stamford) and pre spinoff CNBC in Englewood Cliffs (which serves as soon to be Versant cable channels transmission hub) now that T47 has been relocated to 30 Rock.

My theory is that a lot of the non-writing staff for Meyers's show (camera operators, stagehands, cue card wielders) also work on SNL and thus have to work on Saturdays, so the doubling-up on Mondays is solely to allow them to have Tuesdays off.

Reading that, it makes sense now why Seth's Tuesday show is more 'evergreen' with no new "A Closer Look", with it taping two shows on Monday; I was curious as to why they upload the full A-block on that day and not other days to YouTube. (Yes, I'm part of the problem in that I consume the show there rather than on DVR, but I also hope that Peacock eventually fulfills their promise to have NBC's late night at 9pm ET, which they got talked out of by people who don't look so smart five years later) It also helps that NBC owns 30 Rock and knows every part of the building inside and out, while the Sullivan, despite all the work done over the years, is still an old adapted theater building that needs constant upkeep, along with a full office building above it that isn't much better. I've also noticed many fewer musical guests on late night, and many more of them have adapted the COVID era allowance of taping them elsewhere on location just because that reduces a lot of union expense to set up the stage for one performance (CBS used to do "Live on Letterman" extended performances, but that died with his version). Really, The Talk cancellation was the first sign of distress for CBS; they could've easily just added even more sponsored content to keep the show profitable but knew it would turn off viewers, and by the end its guest base was pretty much down to whoever they could get from CBS prime time on a taping dark day. And there was no way The Gates would work being taped in California thanks to Georgia's tax credits alone. If we're just looking at CBS's real estate, they have by far the oldest and most depreciated portfolio of studios and facilities; 30 Rock may be old, but it has a solid foundation and walls to work around, and the Iger building is basically a reset and clean slate for ABC. Even with the cost savings of switching every light to LED, that building still has an old fridge of an AC and is expensive to heat and cool, and despite the timing of the announcement, I think they just knew the economics of the show just can't work any more when you've gone from cars, P&G and films as your biggest advertisers to...Prevagen, Iberogast, and other various snake oil, along with legit prescription drug ads that will make anyone under 40 flee for YouTube and Netflix.

The New York Times is reporting that the show was already unprofitable, and had been that way for three years.

Resurrecting this from the dead because this old package still lives on... on Blue Ridge Communications' weeknight local newscast at 5:00pm for the Poconos. EDIT: Also, for a cable company, they have a decent set.

This. Genuine question: would streaming not be a problem if studios and networks didn't make their content available on the internet thereby forcing people to watch TV??? If Craig Ferguson didn't want it, I always thought James Corden was the natural choice for the 11:35 PM slot. He had A list guests, good material for viral videos, and an overall lighthearted show which made him perfect to go up against Fallon and Kimmel. Colbert's primarily political approach to me felt natural against Seth Meyers at 12:37. I questioned why they would take a comedian famous or playing a character and give him an important show that required him to drop that character. All in all it worked out because Colbert has the highest ratings of the crop and outlasted Corden. Again, CBS probably wanted to make this move for a while, and the Trump situation finally pushed them to do it.

Didn’t the CBS Evening News‘s ratings struggles begin during the Rather-Chung era, though?

And now the WGA is breathing oxygen into the ongoing conflagration https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/writers-guild-bribery-investigation-colbert-cancellation-1236464878/ Even if CBS is being fully truthful, it doesn't matter. Colbert's fanbase and audience is already seeing it as nothing more than a political hit job and that's being baked in as we speak. If it is revealed as a political favor, then that's a scandal worse than Rathergate and the death knell for CBS. Simple as that.

Local on the 8s persisted at the :27 / :53 timeslots through the end of the 2pm ET hour today and then returned to :18 and :48 as of the 3pm ET hour. Very strange. I guess we'll see what happens during the morning hours over the weekend and especially during the weekdays next week.

Which is hardly unexpected. It's almost as if this is being done to manipulate sentiment on the left side of the aisle. Look, I'm going to say my peace here. I'm highly, highly distressed seeing people fall for conspiracy theories on here and on RadioDiscussions over the past few days. I've personally been in contact with @Weeters about this behavior on social media and it legitimately sounds like the left is falling for the exact same "this is autocracy and Trump is consolidating power" like it's an endless Sarah Kenzidor thread from 2016. There's also people continuing to amplify the falsehood that the election was rigged or that the shooting in PA last July was fully staged. Absolutely scary stuff. Everything is not okay. Loathsome, slimy vermin are indeed at the controls. But it is also not okay to not have any semblance of perspective. And linear media was dying long before November 2024 and Paramount Global was dying under Shari Redstone and I will die on those two hills. It's not autocracy but talk that that plays right into the hands of the aforementioned vermin.

I was trying to scour on here and online -- Do we know of any "big name" anchors, etc. that might be headed here?

I personally doubt Trump had anything to do with it at all. All of these late-night shows have spent the past decade telling the same jokes about him that were probably already posted a million times on Reddit before their writers' rooms even thought of them, but the only one getting cancelled right now is the one on the network that's spent the last few years cancelling or giving away everything to save money. I always thought Colbert was a baffling choice to replace Letterman anyway. What made Colbert famous was the parody of Bill O'Reilly he did on the Colbert Report, but he had to retire the character to host the Late Show as himself. Without that character, it turns out there's nothing special about him in particular, thus there was no strong hook to keep Letterman's audience invested in the show. They should have just promoted Craig Ferguson instead. Yet another awful decision by CBS in hindsight.

It probably depends on market and how well funded they are from outside sources. I just read a state PBS/NPR in a small state but medium sized city will lose about 10% funding. My gut says that may be an low estimate but time will tell. That's bad, but not a kiss of death. Big market stations will need to do more fundraising but can probably survive. The real issue is money for program acquisition. Small markets/stations will have the toughest time as the federal funding makes up a much bigger part of their budgets and the ability for big donor fundraising in those markets is limited at best. When WNET first went on the air, the local network owned stations all contributed to the start up costs to get it on the air. Some media companies may consider some level of support to support the public interest - just not at levels lost by this action.

I've been watching AMHQ all week and the Local on the 8s were all normal except for what you observed today.

Not sure if this is permanent and/or applicable to all dayparts, but on the 6am-10am ET edition of AMHQ today, the "Local on the 8s" is now airing at :27 and :53 past each hour instead of :18 and :48. (The studio segments now start at :18 and :48 instead). Straight out of the "This makes no sense" files.

CBS is in such a terrible state right now maybe bringing Jeff Zucker back may be a good thing.... And that's after seeing what he did to NBC and CNN....

Promos are beginning to roll out for CBS Atlanta...

How will they try lowball the NFL again when the AFC package is up for renewal?

Spirit Halloween?

Of course it's financial. Letterman's final Late Show episode got nearly 14 million viewers. A decade later, the Late Show has an audience of just over 2 million boomers who forgot to turn the TV off before falling asleep. It's not worth paying Colbert $15 million a year on top of the staff's salaries and the costs of maintaining that theater anymore, especially when its spot in the cultural milieu is now occupied by podcasts with postage-stamp budgets by comparison. Not to mention, this isn't new for CBS. This is the same network that was already too cheap to keep the SEC or the Grammys. They are cutting costs to the bone in any way they can. Not everything in life is hyper-politicized. Sometimes it actually is just about the money.

No! This is not what needs to happen, at all. This is how we're going to end up with more "Shovelcasts" (this is a new term I just invented, you're welcome) like Scrippscast being shoved into the schedule. Nobody is asking for more news, period, and any 11:30 newscasts that get created in summer 2026 are going to be canceled by November 4th of that year. Folks, we're talking about a genre that used to have 15 million sets of eyeballs a night. Colbert's "most watched" status is 16% of Carson's audience. Any profit the show makes is likely sliding every year, and it would not surprise me at all if the bean counters determined it would slide into "unprofitable" territory during his next contract. The Internet is the one holding the smoking gun here.

Fred Silverman almost replaced Johnny Carson with McLean Stevenson. It’s not unprecedented.

Hey, from a housekeeping standpoint for the mod staff, some users need to do better and actually look to make sure there isn't already a thread for a certain topic before posting their own. Just had to merge four threads into one on this news. Too many frustrated, aspiring journalists around here that are too focused on being first on stuff. End of rant. Then cancel everything else, too. 60 Minutes, the Evening News, The Price is Right, and the Late Show are the absolute last things that should be touched, if you're trying to look competent and inspire confidence. I'm not giving Trump credit, but there is a very obvious message being sent here. Either that, or you might start seeing other top talent walking across the network before they get told they can't get paid.

Whether the guy with the vein issue and cognitive decline directly demanded this isn’t the issue. It’s one more in an endless set of preemptive conformity by his allies and those who have or may have business before one of his crony-led agencies. This was a targeted hit that they’re wrapping in nonsense.

we should merge all the late show threads into one. this is big news and it's best to have the conversation in one place than three.

CBS affiliates are replacing it with local news at 11:35 p.m. in three, two, one... However, in all seriousness, this is a shock, yet not entirely unexpected. A shock that the franchise is ending, not unexpected, is that more and more people are tuning away from the late-night genre.

Either this... or the time is going back to the stations. If you're old enough to remember CBS Late Night/Late Movie before Dave Letterman came (or hell, before Pat Sajak and his ill-fated talker), if you know, you know. And that's if your local CBS station aired the network late-night block way back when.

Will be very interesting to see what happens with the late night block.

KDVR & KFCT celebrated 25 years of "FOX 31 NEWS" last night. 25 Years & 4 different owners in that time. https://www.facebook.com/reel/768329848963791

The All-Star Game was last night and the entire lineup outside of Colbert was repeats, so it's probably just more of a 'nobody really noticed' kind of story, or they're waiting for word from CBS about what actually happened is more likely.

Spann has said many times before Sinclair has given him the freedom to do what he wants to do (hints why they don’t do the CODE RED ALERT). This has probably been in the works for a number of years, but didn’t have the backing or tech to do this full time. Now when James does say he is over with 33/40, I would like to see him do weather for smaller community stations (think public access channels, low power stations, or maybe the last ma and pa radio stations).

On the heels of ex-WTVA chief Matt Laubhan launching Mississippi Live Weather, ABC 33/40 chief meteorologist James Spann is launching a 24-hour statewide streaming weather service, Alabama Weather Network, set to launch on August 11. Spann will remain with ABC 33/40, doing weather for its 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. newscasts as well as severe weather coverage as needed, while also appearing on ALWN. The venture is a co-partnership between Spann, hotel industry executive (and co-partner on Spann’s Alabama Weather Blog) Bill Murray, former ABC 33/40 meteorologist John Oldshue, and business and personal finance expert (and former Birmingham Barons president/GM) Bill Hardekopf.

They are solid when it comes to having a bench of backups. Makes sense to keep that pipeline flowing.

Exactly this. He tried to expand from an hour talk show and apparently nobody wanted to subscribe to his channel (or give out their email address to stream it on the TBN website). If someone wants to be the fool to part with their money to keep Dr. Phil afloat, they know exactly what they're doing at this point and that like most investments, it will likely turn out badly. We haven't heard the side of the creditors yet, and I'm sure they're not going to encourage people to trust him again.

Based on the "audience" numbers for Merit Street, it does not seem many wanted to find him. Some people just don't know how to read a room. If he has money to burn, that's his problem.