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Current bosses' decisions in 2026 might differ from former bosses' decisions in 2003. Crazy thought, I know.

Anyone else just read that in Walter Cronkite's voice?

This has been in the making for weeks. It was down to Perry and Ike Ejiochi. Part of moving everyone together into the same building, studios on 4 and newsroom on 6, was to combine resources and this is an example of that. I’m sure you have all seen the frequent appearances of ABC network talent on local since the move. Most notably would probably be Aaron Katersky and Darian Sutton. Conversely, the same with weather - Lee doing WNT W-F, and Dani or Jeff doing weekend evenings. It’s all part of creative cost savings - which we all need to do as the landscape changes. Perry will continue to contribute to network 3 days a week - but eventually his role at local will grow. Some 411 - Toni does not want a regular anchor slot. She enjoys her role in NJ and being close to home. She’s always happy to help wherever needed - but she likes her weekends to spend with her boys.

Or like the 1st Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.... Otherwise, this station has been a dumpster fire, even under Meredith. Has Gray really cleaned up this place that much?

I worked for Waterman 20 years ago. My first job. I left after two years because it was such a toxic sweatshop (and I got better and moved on). But the Anchorman reference is spot on! It was an odd mix of young kids looking to move up and out, and old lifers with HUGE egos. The competition between BBH and WINK was obsessive to management. As for this weatherman.. it will blow over. Viewers love to say “Im never watching again!” and they do. And I agree.. a station doesn't just fire their most popular talent unless they have a reason. Its not money.. WINK has plenty of it. The whole.. he was taking long dinner breaks.. thats an excuse to fire him. Not a reason. If he was so valuable to them.. they wouldnt care how long he took.

My view of SWFL is that of a very large Midwestern retiree population. Is that a correct assessment? And with that, a large number of them share the same "views" as the McBride's...well except when they fire the popular weather guy for a stupid reason.

I’ve worked for them. It was a long time ago, and a first post college job, so my naive 20 something mind at the time thought the whole experience was just how things were everywhere. The culture of the Fort Myers market is weird. I legitimately thought the Anchorman fighting in the street scene would happen eventually and on that day it would make snowbird season traffic on McGregor Blvd. or US 41 even worse than usual. The demographics of the market are odd with a large seasonal population and wild sprawling growth over the last half century. (It was a 130s market in the 1980s, now almost a top 50) I’m too far removed to have any inside information about the events leading up to the termination of their now former chief meteorologist. I did not work with him. I have not met or interacted with him. I can count the people who would know me in that operation on one hand, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to fish for information. I will say this I worked for half a dozen companies in my TV career, including time as a manager, broadcast employers are highly risk averse regarding terminations with cause of a non probationary employee where they intend to hire a replacement for the position. It is a deliberate and intentionally slow process which requires extensive documenting of the employee’s unwanted actions/behavior, written warnings and/or other disciplinary measures, unsuccessful completion of a PIP that can last several months, and corporate HR/legal review and approval before a decision is made to terminate with cause. Employers are far more likely to passive aggressively nudge people they want to leave by making them unhappy through schedule changes, reduced visibility, decreased responsibilities, or other ‘soft’ actions in hopes they will voluntarily resign . Contract non-renewal is also used as an alternative when necessary. The potential legal exposure is much greater for employers to discuss in public what they say led to a termination compared to a former employee or their supporters sharing their version of events. Which is why that perspective is going to gain traction and control the public narrative. Actions have consequences for both parties. It appears the consequences for WINK, at least for now, are very real. Whether those consequences endure is anyone’s guess. People are a weird mix of never forgetting and moving on quickly. My only meaningful observation from the reaction is this: The unfiltered parasocial relationships between Facebook fans and on air talent is one of the most problematic, unhealthy, and unsustainable parts of the 21st century broadcast media landscape. It is something leadership industry wide has opted to embrace at the most toxic form and refuses to develop solutions to create boundaries on how much social media engagement consumes many people at all times and how to protect people from unhinged online fans who do not respect reasonable behavioral norms. As for the Sun WFTX acquisition: It is what it is. Every company that wants to grow is going to push existing rules to the limit as they stand now, and any future changes to ownership regulations will cause the dam to break nationwide on consolidation and operations/newsrooms being merged or eliminated.

They put Deco in Boston on WHDH many years ago, in the late 1990s but it struck out. I was asked once years ago how I see DecoDrive.com develop, told them it should carve out a niche like Perez Hilton/TMZ but they didn't want to invest in resources. Same as now, they don't really need to expand it, Deco rates better than or on par with Jeopardy/Wheel/ET whatever it was up against, so they've kept it going for little overhead. It is very South Florida centered, other than Deco news, all of the segments about events and businesses are for Fort Lauderdale/Miami/Miami Beach

Yeah it’s clear that Toni herself isn’t interested in the role. She’s the station’s New Jersey reporter and has been the primary fill-in for weekend mornings for 10-15 years now. Michelle on the other hand responded to fan comments online that she wanted the weekday morning spot after filling in for an extended period when Ken Rosario was fired.

Hopefully to make it easier for fans watching on satellite/cable TV, the channel for Nationals baseball will be the channel space occupied by MASN2.

Re Kev's suspension... This is why I am VERY cautious on what gets uploaded to the AVTB YT after losing thousands of videos on my personal accounts in March 2021. Most entire sitcoms w/ commercials are off the table entirely, unless there is nowhere else to put them (and I'd rather they go on the Archive instead). Soaps too, most go to Archive except for the Sony/Bell soaps, which sit in my personal hard drive for anyone to enjoy...they can't be enjoyed online for a general audience. With all the Roku channels, why hasn't Sony launched Classic Y&R, Classic Days of Our Lives, Classic B&B, Classic Wheel, and Classic Jeopardy! channels yet for streaming? I mean...you can watch Family Feud all day long, same w/ Supermarket Sweep. Maybe instead of hiding them from the general public and taking down any uploads from those who are trying to preserve these episodes for nostalgic purposes, launch a bunch of streaming channels or even work with a subscription service (like Paramount+) to release classic soaps to long-time fans. My mother would LOVE classic Y&R episodes available at any time. P&G has left ATWT/GL alone, for the most part, on the other hand.

Speaking of these two... FOX Weather recently aired a special last week, hosted by these two, focused on streaming weather content from digital influencers and longtime broadcast mets. Ryan Hall (Ryan Hall, Y'all), James Spann (no introduction needed), David Reimer (Texas Storm Chasers), and Ben Luna (Tennessee Valley Weather) were all featured on this hour-long special.

Off topic, but that was a bad time in WTVJ's history, yet still good enough to pull third in the ratings at the time (and beat WFOR).

Diana and Sade were a team for almost 15 years that’s non sense. Either Toni doesn’t want it or they keep passing her over.

Friday's episode

And then came the new NBC5 studio.

ET and Inside Edition are still on at 7 and 7:30pm, respectively. Not only that, Ginger and Matt also do the traditional 10pm online. I mean, WTH WKMG? You know you got Lisa Bell, right? And she's only on at 5pm? Don't get me wrong, Ginger and Matt have fantastic chemistry, but come on, they can't do them all. You gotta put Lisa Bell in there too in the mix, right?! As of this month, I believe, Martha and Greg now do all WFTV/WRDQ evening newscasts from 4-6:30 and 10-11:35pm. You're right on WOFL, and it seems like WESH has the deepest of benches, which makes it work to mix in their newscasts, same with their morning crew.

This kinda feels like winning the FIFA Peace Prize.

Because they know they'll get exactly what they want with this administration

That's why they're all incels too.

What is it with the right leaning companies refusing to take no for an answer? First Paramount, now them.

What, the Australian version?

Do we possibly think Toni doesn’t want it? I mean yeah helping out when needed, but maybe doesn’t want to work weekends? I wouldn’t blame her. She def deserves it tho!

Yeah they should've put either Toni or Chantee there in my opinion. I just think they want a fresh face. Toni Yates has been with WABC since 2006 and she's been filling in on the weekends for I want to say at least 10 years now so she has the tenure. Which leads me to think that they just want someone else for the role.

Meh. I was really enjoying the Chantee/Toni rotation on Saturdays and Sundays.

I wish that they gave it to Toni Yates because she has always been a steady fill-in presence for years and is loved by many viewers but Perry Russom is more youthful and has a higher profile with him also being a national correspondent, so it makes sense. Russom has a stiff and serious personality at times, and being a network correspondent requires some toughness but he has been able to lighten up a bit when he filled in a few times on Eyewitness News This Morning, so he is still not a bad choice.

The Nationals are joining the MLB Local Media slate. https://x.com/Nationals/status/2011460902311133534

This doesn’t feel like a ratings play for them. They’re trying to position themselves in the current administration’s good graces for their corporate interests. And assuming you’re one of those, I can only hope you’re the next victim of this administration’s absurdity. Good luck.

Hopefully, CBS will stand their ground and not give in to pressure from the commie-left who hate law enforcement and the orange man. The left forgets that people DID vote for this, so demonizing half of America-- yeah, gotcha.

To the moderators... if you wanna find the WINK-TV and Matt Devitt posts and put it in a new thread, that would be great. I have more to showcase. Is anyone shocked that the McBride family (WINK) donated to Jim Schwartzel (WXCW and Sun)'s campaign for Congress? I know I'm not. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1483850663740884&id=100063478933238 And boy is he dumb, stupid, and dishonest. Of course he has no role in FMBC but still has a role inside WINK operations because its a sidecar company for FMBC! Boy does he think we're dumb but we can see right through it. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1483537757105508&id=100063478933238 The scandal continues and I'm all in on these latest developments.

I mean hell, Gray would've been perfect for WLNE as well (considering that they also have a presence in New England).

Pardon my French, but this is the kind of stuff only scumbags and Scrooges would do. Mr. Devitt has every right to sue at this point.

And while hoping for a better owner for the Cleveland Browns than Jimmy and Dee Haslam, reminds me what dirtbags the McBride family appears to be. (Mickey McBride was the original owner of the Cleveland Browns and his family owns WINK-TV)

WBBH/WZVN has beaten WINK in the ratings for a number of years now and it looks like that will continue. I see their ratings tripling over WINK with this news.

And may WBBH/WZVN wipe the floor with WINK in the ratings.

Based on that reel alone, though the abc transfer happened last december, that put the final nail in the coffin of an already rotten corpse. In other words, RIP to 'WLNE' as we knew it. It never stood a chance to succeed. (probably been a minute since that clip was used for any farewell in this thread)

WINK: Where your family comes last and we come first, disobey and get fired.

It's management like this that makes the upcoming WFTX merger that much worse. And one of the very few cases where a national owner would be an improvement.

Pregame and some in-game graphics were the same, but the scoreboard & nearly all lower thirds were changed. It's definitely an evolution of the outgoing look, a heavy refresh.

It's a green screen. WLS did something similar back in the summer, when their set had some work done. It's low-frills and less dynamic, but it gets the job done. As always, the average viewer won't notice or care.

I didn't want to bump it in the graphics section... Do we have an approx. update as to which station is getting the new graphics next? It's been a hot minute since the last one

WFTV morning anchor Kristin Delgao outlined her reasons for leaving the news industry on Linkedin. Like so many in news, that dreaded 2 AM alarm was a major factor.

Welcome to budget cuts where "service-able" is how things get accomplished.

I get it. Its not his fault WLNE's news were unwatchable. But in all honestly, he was the last recognizable face of the station. All credibility for that station has been gone already, but whatever was left... Just left the building today. And I'm sorry, but I had to say it that way. I've watched him for years. He was committed to the station, even if it was in last place. He is absolutely fantastic and this doesn't sound like it was his choice to leave... it sounds like Sinclair forced him out so they can get closer to consolidating the news on both stations. I really do hope WJAR (main channel) or WPRI brings him along, unless he has decided to retire as a result.

Flashback! WPVI's coverage of the Blizzard of '96 from 30 years ago this week. Rob Jennings and Cecily Tynan are featured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyAqUZCOX5Q

IMO, she will win that lawsuit and will be much happier at WSMV.

ABC-Disney usually sticks to only Kelly & Mark and Tamron along with the 20th leftovers in syndication, so they probably figure CBS can get proper rates and advertisers better than they can since that's right in their wheelhouse so they don't have to worry about that.

Did she make a mess or did she do precisely what she was hired to do? Perhaps she should have spiked the story earlier but regardless, she wasn’t hired for her skill set in shepherding the legacy of CBS News into the future. She was hired to be a hatchet person to that legacy. The degree to which we (the collective societal “we”) simply disregard and outright ignore what is happening around us as society falls is staggering to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. What has come out in the Epstein files alone would have brought down any other president. Now, it’s not even a blip. Setting aside the veracity of each individual claim, that preponderance of association and cloud of suspicion being utterly ignored by mainstream media is terrifying. Joe Biden slurred some words and the coverage was incessant. The current office holder rants incoherently, makes thinly veiled death threats against perceived enemies, wants to pull non-existent licenses from networks (and the president should actually know how thIs works, but I digress), is linked time and time again to perhaps the worst sexual predators in our lifetime — and the news outlets bring us the latest viral video, cute squirrel story, Taylor Swift gossip or what have you. Not a single one of the big three broadcast news operations is doing real journalism on a regular basis, and now the correspondent who did so has her story killed. Oh wait, I’m sorry, “postponed.” My time on this earth may not be all that much longer in the grand scheme of things. I look at the next generation in my extended family and fear for the world we’re leaving them.

Hughes may be better suited for mornings. Looking at his bio, he doesn't have a strong news background, so this new arrangement may work in his favor. He has this 'sports guy reading the news' sort of persona,if you will, that doesn't work well on a afternoon/evening newscast. He lacks an authoritative voice.

CBS Sports is celebrating 50 years since The NFL Today premiered... They really committed to the bit, from the open, well done virtual studio, and graphics. They didn't even use the ticker.