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It feels almost appropriate that WPLG's last ABC prime time will be ending with the 2003 Freaky Friday since them and 7.2 will be 'switching bodies' as it were, except it's permanent.

It might be time for Hearst, Gray, Sinclair, etc. to start thinking about working together and producing their own programming besides just news and sports. Kind of like the old regional ITV model, but without the regional aspect and on a larger scale. The networks are going to abandon linear TV eventually and I don't see any other path forward for the local stations and their owners once it happens that doesn't end in them just pulling the plug and going off-air. Unfortunately, how I expect them to respond to the networks leaving them behind is to just keep accelerating the news overload until local TV stations are all just 24/7 news, which nobody watches because we're all sick of it, which then becomes the excuse for them to give up.

I'm trying to make sense of your ramblings best I can, bear with me. I remember the Watercooler too... but let's ignore the fact that you're citing all of your knowledge from conversations in a toxic cesspool 15+ years ago... there's a reason why that message board isn't around anymore (and why this website was created). Public media has absolutely had layoffs, even during 2008. That said, when a beloved 50+ year old institution gets attacked and defunded, of course it's going to make the headlines. If you think public media doesn't report on the local media industry, you're wrong. Just because you didn't see it, and let's be real... you probably aren't a viewer/listener, doesn't mean it didn't happen. CPB's looming shutdown this fall is akin to Scripps closing up shop overnight and leaving all of their stations out in the cold scrambling to survive without any infrastructure support. If that actually happened, public media newsrooms would absolutely report on it. But that hasn't happened. Scripps, Allen, TEGNA... they're all still alive. Commercial media has been slowly bleeding out these past 15+ years like numerous other industries that public media newsrooms are also reporting on. The media industry across the board, public and commercial, is in a tailspin. Public media isn't immune to the changing landscape and has been doing what it can to reinvent itself, just like local news has been trying and both have been doing this as financial resources and viewership numbers drop. With PBS moving into streaming via Passport and NPR getting into the podcast game, their viewer/listener/donor base's average age is trending downward. If you think there aren't public media stations that have staffers doing the work of 2-3 people or that positions haven't been reduced for consolidated/centralization efforts like in commercial media, well, I really don't know what to tell you. Has your local NBC affiliate been reporting on that during the last 15+ years prior to the federal funding fight? Saying that no one is interested in public media and that people are flocking to local television news in droves is the most nonsensical thing you've included in your diatribe. One of the great things about public media is that it is for everyone. If you think an independent press and educational programming aren't worth fighting for or funding, I totally understand that. Not everyone values facts, nuance, or public service. Some people just want noise that confirms their biases. Please, just don't confuse your personal disinterest with the facts. Some of us still care about democracy and the truth. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/26/americans-more-likely-to-support-than-oppose-continuing-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs/ https://current.org/2017/02/farewell-tote-bags-pbs-passport-draws-younger-donors-as-membership-reward/ https://current.org/2021/06/how-to-build-the-next-generation-of-public-radio-listeners/ https://www.npr.org/2008/12/10/98098442/npr-cuts-jobs-cancels-programs https://current.org/2009/06/fiscal-year-end-layoffs-include-10-of-pbs-staff/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gannett-journalists-across-the-nation-walk-out-over-pay-management-issues https://www.pbs.org/video/how-sinclair-broadcasting-puts-a-partisan-tilt-on-local-news-1507678399/

Interesting image posting by a WPLG employee on LinkedIn.

Official…CW is moving to WMYT September 1. Haven’t heard WCCB’s plans/where the MyNet programming is going. WMYT has aired MyNet from 11pm-1am since 2018.

What will the morning anchor lineup be like from 5am to 11am?

From their Sunday AM newscast today:

Wasn't this the plan all along? CBS never once indicated that local news would debut on launch day.

No I didn’t count them.

And another thing PBS stations run by colleges and universities do is to educate and train journalists. This is basically their first job and hands-on experience reporting on the news in the communities they are attending school in. In return, these areas (some of which are VERY under-served) get local news coverage from a mix of students and professionals who work together. Some notable ones that run daily newscasts include WUFT in Gainesville, FL (University of Florida) and WOUB in Athens, Ohio (Ohio University). Even in the 1990s after Paxson shut down WAKC's news department and stripped their ABC affiliation away in favor of infomercials (and later PAX), WNEO and WEAO stepped in with NewsNight Akron which was a discussion show about news in the Akron area. They couldn't afford to start a news department (the stations were a joint venture of the local universities, Akron, Kent State and Youngstown State at the time) but this was a way to fill the void until WKYC partnered with Paxson to start up a local newscast again in 2001 that ran on WVPX (the old WAKC).

He works for ABC through WABC, so I would consider this part of ABC's promotional campaign.

Little public service announcement. Please don't report posts that you simply don't like. That's an abuse of the feature. Don't let it happen again, and I hope to not see anyone else report a certain post in this thread. No rules are being broken by having a differing opinion.

we can do one more, for old times sake

https://www.instagram.com/p/DM0vcYypS-N/ The big switch is so compelling that even former 7 News Anchor, Mike Marza felt compelled to announce it on his IG page from his new home here in New York haha.

You expect anything less from this legendary morning news program? If you can get Dan and Robin to laugh, then you've made it as a comedian, IMHO.

Watching dayside NewsNation and it's getting to be very clear that they barely ever need the studio or even a mic, because their anchors never get to appear on screen unless they're just handing off to the pundit to blather on, and usually it's in a quad box to add insult to injury while the same video loops over and over for ten minutes. It's absurd; LiveNow and Local News Now do a much better job showing off their talent during their shows, and I couldn't name one of those folks in a lineup.They'll only show the talent on this channel that they overpaid for to get ratings that are much worse than the edited movies WGN America they showed in primetime a decade back. Sorry Markie, Marnie and Nichole (not sorry to any of the talent that saw the writing on the wall two years back and fled). This network outside of primetime can literally be handled by their local stations, and it's no wonder to see why cable providers really don't want to have to carry it in order to carry a local Nexstar station. They'd be better off just airing various WGN, WPIX and KTLA newscasts and probably get better ratings for it to boot.

That didn't stop WJXT or WHDH from trying after losing network affiliations themselves. You can operate a news-heavy operation with the right investments made, along with strong marketing.

CBS said the same thing back in 1994/1995, for WGPR now WWJ in Detroit. It took em almost 25 years to get an operation. My goodness WUPA probably looking at 2050 at this point.

Local tv is going away. Network apps will be the future. The tv stations that go local news heavy or can create some sort of targeted local brand will be the survivors. All else will go away or be minimized. The network over the air affiliate model is dead.