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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.

Why do you insist they sell CBS?

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

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.

ATSC 3.0 is a fever dream of the broadcasters who choose to push it on to the consumer....who have virtually no way of adopting it even though stations have been pushing it out for the last 5 or so years. All it is at the moment is the same channels available in upscaled HDTV, aside from a few worthless subchannels no one will go out of their way to watch. And is any of this in 4k? I can't for the life of me even figure out a TV or even a dongle that's readily available to pick up these channels. Until it's an actually regulated thing (likely by force), it's dead in the water. Streaming delivers the 4K and is readily available through easily obtainable devices without the headache and bureaucy of the FCC. But it will cost you.

This article is fascinating, especially in the wake of WPLG Miami and WANF becoming news-heavy Independents. The title is: The Independent Station Era Is Coming — Here’s How Local TV Can Survive It. https://www.tvrev.com/news/the-independent-station-era-is-coming-heres-how-local-tv-can-survive-it

Newsmax CEO, and friend of President Trump since the mid 1990s, filed a personal letter with the FCC on August 21, 2025, against expanding the ownership limits. He called on the FCC to leave the ownership cap in place at 39%, and remove the UHF discount because it goes "undermines Congress' original intent" --- https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10821310342987/1 He went after Sinclair personally:

Yes, I came back to point out that Lisa was on today and also did not say "in for" in her intro. And yes, they never should have gotten rid of Andrea, and Elaine was an odd choice.

This is the fourth weekend in a row without Elaine. It was kind of an odd choice, especially since she did nothing for WCBS other than anchor Saturday and Sunday mornings. While Jenna DeAngelis has filled in most of the time, this morning Lisa Rozner is anchoring with Dave Carlin. They should have just kept Andrea Grymes!

The scorebug font has been discovered:

It appears that Elaine Quijano has left the weekend morning anchor slot and moved back to the network, and Jenna DeAngelis has gotten the job. Or at least she's been on for three weeks and isn't saying she's "in for" anyone. Or it could be that she's got the job until they bring someone else in.

Wow. I did not know that story. But hey, her colleages all seem to love her so it must be a different story now.

In Mobile, that adds a third sports station to the area, after longtime local broadcaster 105.5 WNSP (which is regarded as the very first FM sports talk station in the nation) and iHeart's Sports Talk 99.5 (a translator from WRKH 96.1 HD2) with some local hosts and mostly syndication. On top of that, there's FM Talk 106.5 which runs Paul Finebaum's show daily. The radio market here leaves a lot to be desired since it's mostly iHeart and Cumulus competing against each other with the same crappy formats. The only unique operator is DotComPlus, who runs 92.1 WZEW and associated translators 96.5 the Crab (WZEW HD2) and 92.5 the Soul (WZEW HD3) along with WNSP. And I don't know if other iHeart markets are like this, but the personalities on the stations are leveraged to the point of being literally sold out to their clients. You know them more from their client's commercials from their actual radio gigs!

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.

Rumor is that was they tried to do 20 years ago when Emmis was getting out of TV. No idea how close they got, but what is now WXCW was likely their plan B.

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.

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.

***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.

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

my TV came built with 3.0 tuner, most/many have it now, outside of LG which doesn't want to pay $6-$10 per ATSC 3.0 tuner. The cost to get approval for decryption is also high so there are many TVs being sold that will see 3.0 encrypted channels but won't play video. Lon.TV reported people have contacted him saying their TVs periodically fail to decrypt with video and audio are cutting out or becoming entirely unavailable for periods. A big thing with ATSC 3.0 encryption many people are unaware of - every ATSC 3.0 tuner comes with a cypher certificate inside it that expires on a set date. The duration depends on what the manufacturer paid ATSC for decryption rights but reports on AVS Forum and elsewhere say it is as short as 5 years, and others 10 years. Same model devices could have different expiration dates set in the factory. Once the decryption certificate expires encrypted channels won't be viewable and it will require a new device as there's no mechanism to update the certificates. A lot of devices also deploy decryption with Google Widevine (Big, bad BigTech) that requires connection to the internet, either once or periodically to get a decryption key. Here in Charlotte the big 4 are airing from WAXN's tower to the north of me in uptown. Clear from the skyscrapers, TV tuner couldn't see them with the paperclip even though I picked up nearby LPTVs. Had to get antenna. All but WJYZ are encrypted, 1080p, WAXN is at 720p. I saw no discrenible difference, maybe a scooch better than 1.0 but hard to tell, granted Family Feud and QC Life were on at the time, it didn't look to me like a real 1080p broadcast. Youtube 1080p looks much more clear and sharp so they're probably upscaling.

In April Lilly acquired PR and USVI stations. https://rbr.com/lilly-broadcasting-secures-carib-broadcast-homes/

So you're saying the only alternative to video news is print? I know Colorado's AG personally. I'll have a direct conversation with him about this and the KKTV and KKCO swap.

Here's hoping that several state attorney general's will oppose this merger. KUSA says that the Colorado Attorney General is concerned about the negative impact. The Colorado AG previously stepped in to oppose the supermarket merger of Kroger and Albertsons, which fell apart. Personally, I am writing to my state attorney general to ask that they oppose this merger.

An alternate possibility is that some stations may farm out their weather to these independent startups and abandon their departments. It might be cheaper to send them contracts than to do it in-house.

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.

It sucks that both Josh and Sam jumped to ship for gigs that did not work out.

I didn't know she joined in 2005. But today, WTVJ colleagues came together in the newsroom to celebrate Roxanne Vargas' 20 years with the station. I know I don't watch WTVJ as much as I do with WSVN. However, Roxy is one of the few from there that I enjoy watching. I'm only surprised she's been there 20 years as I thought she joined much later but wow. I offer my congrats to Roxy indeed! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNrB3NPwm5Y/?igsh=MTVhYnh5ZmI0aTRtbw==

It's a cute pie-in-the-sky pollyanna wishcasting piece. Which is all that can be said.

They could save a lot of money selling off CBS while it and the owned-stations still have a bit of value left in them... just saying...

Paramount Job Cuts Coming In November, Cost Savings To Exceed $2 Billion

Loud whispers: All of this requires more money, planning, and thinking than making existing underpaid and overworked producers, anchors, meteorologists, and directors add additional newscasts that sound nearly identical to the previous hour to their existing responsibilities. This would take investment at a level very few station ownership groups are willing to do in 2025 and beyond. Great idea in a vacuum. I'll believe it when someone tries, appears to succeed, and the new programming lasts multiple budget cycles.

KMAX's Good Day's 30th Anniversary special as aired last week during their 10am hour.

She debuted today. Nothing groundbreaking, just plugged her into the current opens.

I'm only posting this because... the spirit of Jim Vance still lives on. My Mood by MFSB still lives strong.

The ideas sound noble on paper but the reality... IMO the main way for independent stations to retain what little broadcast audience remains is decent syndicated programming -- * but the options are few and stations don't want to pay for it.

Roxanne was a secretary or something such when she started at WTVJ. There was a lot of drama surrounding her doing on-air work because WTVJ staff with on-air experience and journalism education got passed over by the then bosslady who had her do on air work when they were broke and waiting on the WPLG buyout. Let's just say not everything is as it seems over there

Davis Nolan has officially retired as of earlier tonight after a 44-year amazing run at WKRN Nashville. At one point, he was 1/4th of the station's dream team alongside Anne Holt (who was also on this special), Bob Mueller (who hosted the special), and Steve Phillips.

Tracy Davidson just announced she is retiring from Channel 10 this fall.