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Did whoever wrote this just crawl out from under a rock? Seriously. Some of this is already happening ("Community roundtables and town halls") and it's usually a snoozefest that doesn't attract any more eyeballs than normal. Nobody is going to run "Neighborhood lifestyle shows, spotlighting local eateries, artisans, cultural scenes, and hidden gems." without there being some kind of time buy for the privilege. Broadcasting high school sports would have been a big deal 15 years ago... when a lot of schools started streaming themselves. A lot of stations with union representation would find the costs to do this in-house enormous and not worth the effort. This reads like broadcast stations should turn into public access outlets, which already exist.

Considering the shrinking airspace, the idea of narrowcasting to the same audience is the anthesis of broadcasting itself....serving a wide audience. Niches are easily served online where the bandwidth is unlimited and regulations are non-existent for the most part.

The Internet is the great equalizer. Corollary: Podcasts are the fulfillment of the promise of spoken-word radio.

This. But I'll add that these stations are in for a rude awakening if they think they can succeed being "the CNN of [insert market here]" with a schedule of 95% redundant local newscasts. People's brains have not been rotted by local news like they have by national politics over the past few decades, so there is no real audience for 24/7 local news. At the same time, syndication is absolute crap nowadays and these stations would be left to pick from the least desirable shows, so you can't build a station on that either. Any serious attempt at making independence work would have to look more like ITV's old system in the UK. Gray, Hearst, Sinclair, Nexstar, etc. would have to become full-scale production companies making a variety of programming (not just news) to fill out each other's schedules. I'm not particularly optimistic for that to happen either. If anyone in the linear TV business had that much ambition or competitive spirit, this would all be a moot point because they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked by streaming in the first place. What they'll most likely do is run their news operations into the ground and then use their failure as an excuse to give up and take all those stations off the air, and blame Netflix for it.

When Sam left for TWC, it was professional and very respectful. Josh called Disney’s bluff and got the Bankers Box to NBC. Funny how Comcast bought them only to keep them on ice for a few years. I’m sure that was the plan. Sam’s place is perfect where he is and should just get GMA3 full-time. That 2012-4 GMA team was their best lineup. I feel bad for Josh since he seemed to have a good thing at CBSN only for office politics to screw him. He looked very humbled when he came back to GMA for that 40th reunion.

That seems like a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen, especially if the TVs are otherwise still fully usable.

This is why you don't see more of these outlets. I hate to say it, but a lot of these newsrooms, whether they be TV or radio or print, only exist because they were once wildly profitable, not because there's enough news in the area to need three, four, or more newsrooms covering it. They were all covering the same news and trying to win the game of Capitalism. I don't think you'll see more independent voices out there until market conditions exist to justify it, and that won't happen until there's fewer outlets delivering it. It will be smaller, perhaps you could say "right-sized" for the market, because it won't ever make the money TV, radio, and print once did. There will be no massive Channel 7 News Cavern studio with 30 people running around in the background. The weather streamers are, themselves, a late response to an already ongoing trend: Weather streamers like Ryan Hall pull in hundreds of thousands of views just on their forecast discussions, and I've seen their live streams with 150k+ people watching in the middle of the night. Folks, The Weather Channel isn't getting numbers like that, and they have a way more polished broadcast. The future will be independent journalists.

I heavily doubt anybody wants to invest time or money in areas where too much competition exists. Nowadays to find success and stability is like a lottery.

these industry people really are stuck in their programming from 1995. Someone update their firmware. Yesterday, I wasted $15 on a Philips antenna because the paper clip wouldn't pick up 3.0 Charlotte stations. Ran into WBTV's QC Life, while browsing channels, which fits into what TVRev sees as the future of local TV. It' has worse production values than a kid Youtuber. Minimum viable content vibes, a cooking segment, segements featuring area small business which is good but overall probably a paid program. With a male host that should really go check his voice and a blonde female host version of Mortitia Adams in civilian clothes, with giant pink claws gesticulating at viewers while talking. It looked so ridiculous on my 70-inch tv. DecoDrive at least has a bite and moves with creativity.

With Sam back in the mix with Robin, George and Lara, they have 4/5 of the team back the catapulted them to #1 in 2012.

All kidding aside, while I totally believe Nexstar is going to try and acquire more, let's keep the discussion to the Nexstar-Tegna deal. Anything else is pure speculation, and there are appropriate channels for that. Otherwise, we'll cross that bridge (CBS or whatever) when we get to it.

Nothing. We just have one or two conspiracy theorists here who are absolutely convinced that they know what Nexstar will want to buy after swallowing Tegna. Hopefully one of the moderators will clean things up and move all the non-Netflix-buys-Tegna posts to another thread.

Respectfully, what does CBS' decisions on programming have anything to do with Nexstar and Tegna merging? But the day Tegna would sell was nearly inevitable for a number of years by this point. They just don't have the scale in today's economy to survive as a standalone company and operate as a large player. Nexstar would be wise to divest stations in bigger markets especially. I'm personally very concerned about Knoxville, Charlotte, and Denver. Despite the apparent lack of language in the announcement, I suspect Nexstar will need to divest some stations. And certain aspects of the current rules literally require an act of Congress to change. I don't quite see this as a done deal, but time will tell.

Why do folks make such subjectively inaccurate statements based on personal biases? Of course people still watch local news–perhaps not in the same numbers they once did, but the viewers are there. And if you're not one of them, then don't assume everyone else is.

Half-hour 9pm? On the Fox O&O in market #3? That's awful. Should have kept the hour-long 9pm and slotted CST after at 10pm.

I agree. They have reduced the 9P newscast to 30 minutes M-F. My guess is that 'Chicago Sports Tonight' will be slotted in at 9:30P this Fall.

thats a big no. looks cheap. Particularly whan judged against the other big FOX O&Os thats a badly designed re-fresh. Typical for Chicago stations. The Chicago stations always get shanked whilst NY and LA get nicer updates.

ESPN went old school when Rich Eisen came back to SportsCenter tonight.

So the channel's full name is Microsoft NOW.

she wasn’t laid off - that would imply budget cuts and her position eliminated. Her position — general assignment reporter— was recently listed as open, as was the position of weekend anchor/reporter. It sounds more like she and WABC couldn’t come to an agreement on a new contract and/or she was told the anchor position was not something she would be offered.

***polled the table at lunch Opinion was that Nexstar is making a spectrum play ("we're thinking of them now as a spectrum company that happens to have broadcast TV"). One of them said he was presented by Nexstar, I guess when they were looking for cash money, that only talked about spectrum, the whole strategy shown was about spectrum, TV only so far as ad revenue/retrans propping up the rest of the operation. refused to say, but the vibe I got was that Nexstar expects to lose network affilaites ala WPLG and is rushing to plan for it because it can be significant. There was a suggestion, rumor or fact not clear but sounded authorative like he knew something, that the networks will be dumping the affiliate model completely and going to their streaming products. The talk revolved around how cable is now bundling Disney+, and ESPN's new app into their TV service etc. is it going to pass? "their current probabilty gauge is 86% of an approval" but court injuction will more than likely happen. Unsure what the end will look like. Said to watch the spread between the $22 offering and the current stock price. Simply, if Tegna's stock begins to drop away from the $22 floor, traders/market believe the odds of approval are worsening. It doesn't say whether this is passing as sold or passing with caveats. so I had one of my AI minions troll around Nextstar's SEC disclosures. It found that Nexstar had "profound and sustained evolution in the conceptualization of how they refer to their broadcast TV stations", firmly referring to them now as "spectrum assets". Most notably after 2021 but especially the last 2 or 3 years this language has intensified, and is more apparent. And it mentioned a recent Nexstar presentation to investors where they described themselves as a spectrum company, I can't remember now but a quote of such, I lost the tabs. So Nexstar probably isn't building news operations.

A few things: Who says they shut down great stations in place of keeping their own? Usually they keep the good one. In Denver for example, I could see them keeping KUSA, and LMAing Fox31. They know which station is stronger. Also, station consolidation isnt bad. They cant survive on their own anymore. No one watches local news! The days of having 5 newsrooms no one watches makes no sense anymore. If they can combine into one strong profitable center.. great.

Wild that a station like KUSA will inevitably end up shutting down as soon as the end of next year.