Leaderboard

In addition to soaps and game shows, isn't that how it's always been? That's better than all news all day long.

Newsmax is far from a liberal group. Far right/MAGA, friend of trump. Wherever Nexstar operates with more than one station, they close down newsrooms and consolidate. The same news is broadcast on multiple stations. Local newsroom voices get deleted. That’s not good.

All three are in the top 20 (#s 11, 17, and 19) and should be considered large markets. Perhaps we should consider NY, LA, and Chicago very large markets.

Pie in the sky from that article sounds to be PBS lite to me and I'm not into PBS I'll leave it at that. Kinda how I feel about townhall meetings which are on the public access channels which I find them to be boring, and I'd not watch it on a main channel with better video quality either.

And only could the WGN Morning News welcome her in style...

And now WSMV.

Audrina recently celebrated a decade with CBS2. She currently stands as the second longest running morning news anchor and the youngest promoted so far.

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.

But those are in a few locations. The local alternative here just publishes press releases, or says an accident happened. They are NOT substitutes for good reporting across the country. Many areas are news deserts as Alden and Fortress close papers and slim down the rest, including reporting news 2-3 days after it happens. The competition Nexstar claims is weaker today than even 5 years ago.

If Trump was so upset about Colbert, he'd be gone already. The show would have gone on summer hiatus and never returned. They would have paid out the rest of his contract and that would have been that. It would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the purchase price. They, instead, gave him ~10 months to continue to make jokes at Trump's expense. Not sure if you've been watching the same Trump I have, but the one I've been watching would have wanted him gone immediately, not next year. The show was losing money, it's that simple. His contract was up next May, they chose not to renew. It was cheaper to continue the show as-is than pay out whatever is left on his contract plus penalties. This isn't some grand conspiracy, it's the realities of the industry. Late night is dead.

Also... in honor of the new news director, 9 reasons as to why WGN is better than WMAQ.

Stan Verrett and Neil Everett are coming back together for a new twice-weekly sports show on Twitch.

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:

I had to post this here because its the closest you'll ever see WSVN call themselves FOX 7. Also, for the first time ever, WSVN is adopting a weather brand... the 7 StormTeam (Next Weather, First Alert Weather, and The Weather Authority are already taken in the market).

Agreed 100%, getting rid of Andrea was a giant mistake. She was well-loved by her colleagues and viewers. I have no doubt she will end up somewhere great soon. Elaine is fine, but doesn't nearly have the personality and authenticity that Andrea had. As for the weeknight job, it would be nice to see Natalie Dudridge either get the morning or night role. I wouldn't say that Elaine is gone just yet, I've noticed during anchor intros over the last 2 months that WCBS has stopped altogether saying "in for ..." (except for meteorologists). Don't know why, but it's something noticeable. That is why Kristine was never mentioned when she was on vacation for ~ 3 weeks. Perhaps it is to de-emphasize the anchor?

WDJT just had to interrupt their 5:30 p.m. newscast and cut over to CBS 58 Sunday Morning due to a gas leak in the building; the West Allis FD asked them to evacuate.

Watching today, looks like WCMH is still on the temp set and only showing tight shots of the weather center as well.

KNTV Sep 1994 6pm open. Intro dates to late 1990 and was retired in 1995.

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.

***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.

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.

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.

WOIO is bringing back a 9pm newscast…on WUAB! https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/08/22/wuab-become-clevelands-43-launch-additional-newscast/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR41hPUEXaCHLdE6VtuoRgeLdluK4jKJ5lneMAzRHjHvcdlHRsjkjBVTxhGYXA_aem_df6TFbZBVYgP03QBvCuyGw#eqwl4s795hvcy68vqxza6i56qksvrw3

KWQC is partially changing their weekday daytime lineup starting next month. Kelly Clarkson at 2pm is out and Local News Live at 1pm is in. https://www.kwqc.com/2025/08/20/kwqc-change-weekday-programming/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMUOOdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvoATzfObbiOpUsHCGoMEWR2Pu6iiqdiUIOkKT8BudaznC0fRAZzzvF-UtPq_aem_JCp7OdcVIwz1-5XoQPuf8Q

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.

Agreed... This particular topic of CBS programming issues/debates/cancellations/etc should be moved to the CBS forum or the Speculatron...

Meanwhile, Newsmax, whose cable opinion channel is a direct competitor with Nexstar's NewsNation, is against the deal. They hilariously claims NewsNation is "left-wing" because for Newsmax, facts always get in the way of the narrative they want to push.

https://latenighter.com/features/analyst-network-late-night-talk-shows-became-unprofitable-in-2023/ And it was happening under Letterman too. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-letterman-s-late-show-by-the-numbers-214329990.html Read both of those articles closely. In 2009, The Late Show was pulling in the same ad revenue as all of late-night television in 2024. TV is a dying medium, it doesn't need conspiracy theories to explain why things are getting cut. EDIT: As a bonus, days before the Colbert cancellation announcement dropped, Nielsen reported that broadcast television viewership had dropped below 20% for the first time. You tell me how the show is magically extremely profitable when there's barely more people watching than there was under Letterman 10 years ago.

Comprehensive exhibit for the first deal (the Scripps trade): https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/api/download/attachment/25076ff39819f0d001982eaeca591644 Overall, Colorado Springs is the market that looks to be a potential issue. However, they have an out in that Scripps can turn off KOAA and use the Pueblo satellite (say, have 11.1 and 30.2 as CBS and 11.2 and 30.1 as NBC), even if the waiver doesn't happen and the ruling is overturned - neither Gray nor Scripps have a duopoly there. The rest looks fair game. This shouldn't be a huge issue. While Lansing would be a top-4 duopoly (currently permitted due to the court ruling), it also shouldn't create any antitrust issues. The gap between #2 and #3 in the market is gargantuan.

They will need to look to Tegna's shareholders to make the argument that it is a better deal than Nexstar's. Although Sinclair has much bigger financial issues...that would be a disaster in the making.

And if anything, Sinclair is now in deep trouble. They're gonna have to buy another equally-sized chain (Cox Media? ) or they're going to be left behind in the economy of scale game and will be takeover bait. Their "offer" to Tegna only serves to expose how desperate they really are.

I think it's really obvious that Sinclair knew the Nexstar train was almost at the station and was using the media reports to put the offer in front of Tegna. They'd been in talks for months. This was 11th-hour, 11th-minute. By the time we heard of it, the Tegna board had approved of it.

I think the announcement today proved that Sinclair was only bluffing just to make Nexstar enter into that agreement If it weren't for that, Nexstar would've waited until after the FCC's meeting in September to decide if they wanted to buy Tegna or not, I think Nexstar knew exactly what Sinclair was trying to do which was to swipe in there and take Tegna from underneath their rug and Nexstar wasn't going to let that happen.

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.

Would be interested in how that went with people who were in those situations during Tribune and Media General mergers

Since neither Nexstar nor Tegna currently have a duopoly there, with the recent court ruling, as long as market share isn't extreme they can actually merge them cleanly.

The set is good. So much better than the previous one and its miles better than the ITV virtual garbage and the hard sets the regional newscasts have. Id rate it above the weird Ch5 set with the big "radiators" in background and the old colour-blocks Ch4 set. That hasnt really changed much in decades. Its too similar and the same can be said for the BBC sets. Where it falls apart for STV is the graphics, music and the old fashion format. They had the opportunity to do something fresh and they kept the glassy photos montage, yawn. And the stock library-sounding theme. Almost there, but the set is very nice.

Parents... Its 10 O'clock. Do you know where your children are? KFOR is bringing this tradition back. https://kfor.com/news/local/in-by-10-reminds-parents-to-get-kids-home-by-10-p-m/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMQ5RVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHi_9aIoepmWstIm3TbcG9SWEbkH6yyIJnSBV0K9LSejSlEP_VOGTjOGLv9kV_aem_ZFnvMYMKTzYrIKXaLth0iw

3rd? Don't they outperform CNN? They kept the MS in MSNBC after Microsoft left due to brand recognition. MSNBC was so ingrained in the media lexicon that it would've been like Twitter rebranding to X. In that same vein I understand Versant keeping "MSN" is their name. They want the public to immediately recognize MSNOW as the successor of MSNBC. I was initially skeptical of the name, but I can tolerate it. Agreed, the logo is . Versant probably paid consultants and this is the best they could've done! I'm all for NBC distancing itself from that toxic partisan cable network, but if CNBC is keeping it's name, MSNBC might as well. We're already supposed to ignore that MS originally means Microsoft so they can keep that up for the NBC part. CNBC is already covered with Consumer News & Business Channel. I'm surprised the star of their network coverage didn't suggest "MSDNC" as a rebrand.

When even a network like Ion is making more of a name for itself by landing a lot of women's sports. It's basically been a rerun farm for most of it's existence after the Paxson era.

This week on Tegna acquisition Love Island… A hot new bombshell enters the villa… WSJ: Sinclair proposes merger with Tegna

If USA Network truly had the brand equity to justify changing the name of MSNBC to "USA News", then I suspect they wouldn't have picked "Versant" as the spinoff name. We'd have seen a return of "USA Networks". I hear there's a motivated seller with the brand "NewsNet" available!

Bicoastal Media has a cluster right next door to Marquee’s newly acquired Eureka stations (KIEM/KVIQ). They share a driveway.

MeTV and Get are examples of this broadcasting-wise, standing for “Memorable Entertainment Television” and “Great Entertainment Television” (though Get’s backronym is more recent, having been around since 2023, while MeTV dates back to 2003, when it began as a programming block on present-day flagship WWME). Weigel’s upcoming WEST network tries to replicate the idea behind the MeTV name by having it stand for “Western Entertainment Series Television”, but is kinda clunky in its own right. Nowhere near the level of MS NOW’s backronym, but clunky nonetheless.

I’ve always considered 5 letters in a network name like MSNBC to be clunky and unsayable, but this makes my brain hurt. The PR people at this country’s largest Multiple Sclerosis nonprofit need to be on the phone with the network 5 minutes ago to secure as many IP rights to this brand as they can before it gets pushed to the university lecture hall “what not to do in marketing” pile.

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

One of the editors of the Hollywood Reporter imagined a meeting with a whiteboard reading the following: "M__ S__ N__ ___ ___" Crickets came up next for those who had to work with what they were given. "No one leaves this room until we have a new five-letter brand name that starts with MSN and stands for … something." So never mind that "MS NOW" sounds too confusing as a channel name and "My Source | News | Opinion | World" sounds too clunky when used in full (which Versant is hoping people won't have to do when referring to the channel from now on); in trying to come up with the acronym first before the full phrase, they've done the whole process in the wrong order. In branding, the phrases come before the acronyms, which are an "accepted societal shorthand" for what the people have latched on to.

I’ll raise you one. KDFW airs it at 11am too. We’re Market 4. In other news, ABC News is launching a new D+-exclusive show calledWhat You Need To Know. (I couldn’t find a proper place to put it, so the GMA thread was the closest place I could).

ESPN’ers Joe Buck & Malika Andrews will co-host GMA later this month.