Leaderboard

I can't remember the last time any media company listened to these analysts. They've called for Disney to spin off ESPN so many times, and that's never happened. They were calling for Time Warner to spin off HBO in 2015, and that never happened.

Weigel is not going to build out a news operation for an ABC St. Louis affiliation for the same reason Sinclair hasn't: There's no demand for another news operation in the market. ABC isn't going to pull the affiliation over not having news, because there's nowhere for it to go. ABC knows this. That's why it hasn't already happened, end of story. The market is dominated by existing news operations. None of those are places for ABC to go. Nexstar is being openly hostile to ABC, Gray has been semi-openly hostile towards the networks in the recent past, and Tegna has been desperately trying to not exist for years now, and will likely become an extension of Nexstar. None of these seem like good options for ABC to even start negotiations with. Look at Miami. They had to settle on a .2 of what is ostensibly an "independently-owned" station with an existing news department. You have to assume they went to Scripps during these negotiations, as they own both WPXM and WSFL in the market. Scripps probably said "no" to the idea of building out another news operation in Miami, because they've done it before, and it's failed every time. At best, ABC would end up as KSDK 5.2 in St. Louis. Weigel does not seem interested in owning network affiliates as their entire business at this point is diginets. This is why the rumors frequently swirl about CBS buying up WDJT. It just makes more sense than what is currently happening. KDNL is probably what most "network affiliates" will look like at some point, anyways. It's no secret that Nexstar and Sinclair are dreaming of a world where they control 100% of the airtime on their stations. As the networks increasingly become commercials for streaming services, I can see a future where the "Big 4" simply bounce around low-powers and diginet trees with a deal that they get to program 2 minutes of ad time an hour. The big owners won't want them, because they don't want to air an all-day long commercial for Disney+/Paramount+/Peacock. CBS in Atlanta, ABC in Miami, and the Kimmel thing, are all symptoms of the early stages of the death of the current affiliate model. Not to mention, business analysts are starting to suggest that ABC (and probably the others) get out of traditional broadcast altogether.

That music just doesn’t work. It look good but the sound is dreary.

I'm more curious about what this "beyond expectations" audience feedback is. Music is way too weak.

Here is the top 50 for the 2025-2026 season: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/09/29/us-media-market-rankings-bay-area-passes-boston-strong-growth-for-austin-west-palm-beach-okc/

This entire situation is reminding me of what ABS-CBN went through when their license was pulled under obvious political pressure...and somehow the company seems to be working just fine with several time buys and adjusting their cable channels to that new reality, so there is a template for a move from broadcast to cable/streaming in the world, and as I said when they began to ramp up their stake in Hulu, a rebrand of that to ABC is not out of the question at all (or as a Disney+ sub-brand). Freeform is back on Spectrum too so they can easily shift that channel and finally talk CBN out of giving up their time for a good financial price. But there's also the affiliates that are happy with the network and found the entire Kimmel thing stupid because they don't run entire news arms devoted to being lower-tier Fox News Channel clones and as long as they don't have someone drop a C-bomb on purpose or expose anything on-air, they're just fine, grumpy old viewers be damned. Those are the stations I worry about more if that happens. That, and I'm not ready to give up on dramas and sitcoms that still exist.

But will anyone watch? It's not compelling TV.

Exactly this. All of this is crazy wishcasting. Was there tension between Nexstar/Sinclair and ABC? Of course. Does each party understand the other side's motivations? I think so. If it becomes a repeated thing, then there's definitely the potential for something to change. For now, this is like hearing your parents have a disagreement over something minor and assuming they're filing for divorce. Miami was a rare exception where ABC reached an impassse with a single station operator and took an unexpected path forward with an established operator/brand - who could accommodate ABC with the cost of engineering a HD .2 subchannel and a time brokerage agreement with a LP station to get a .1 for it. But, I do think if ABC/Disney decides to abandon a large ownership group, they'd rather temporarily subsidize the cost of people getting their product direct to consumer in those markets rather than starting fresh on little known stations that have no history at a time where linear TV is in rapid decline.

Noticed in the video mentioned in the thread about the possible Allen Media group pack that the recent Defiant demo reel has what looks to be a prototype of a Scripps look that never made it to air.

Why would Allen spend money when they can roll this gem out? From KHSL Redding.

That's a really nice logo. It looks good at the top of the station's website, too.

Technically, the new logo revives the 1992 WKRC-style “12”.

Cue excessive attention to detail...Looks like they're keeping the minimalistic white bugs when the L3 ribbon is absent. I don't mind it, it's not distracting. I do wish they'd color the station logos when the ribbons appear though. I wish some stations still did transparent screen bugs.

Fantastic. Spectrum drops News 12 Connecticut and promotes the NYC-focused Spectrum News NY1 to cable channel 1 despite my town being nearly two hours away from the city, but hey, now we can get far-right lies and a channel geared towards rich people. I love cable TV!

I don’t love it. I don’t hate it. It’s just there. Kind of like Scripps as a company.

Actually more limited. Assuming Nexstar is rewarded by taking over Tegna, (owning KTVI, KSDK & KPLR) a subchannel on KMOV (Gray) is a the unlikely only option. Truth is ABC should have e dumped KDNL decades ago. Now they are stuck.