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For those who don’t know the history of RTV6, I’ll give you a little background. The station went on the air as WFBM-TV on May 30th, 1949, as Indiana’s first TV station. The first program was “Crucible of Speed,” a documentary about this little race called The Indianapolis 500. After the program ended, a live broadcast of The 500 followed. They started as CBS, went to NBC in ‘56, and ABC in ‘79. After the station was sold to McGraw-Hill, the call letters changed to the famous WRTV, or “We are TV,” in 1972. The station had many other first: record programming on video tape, news gathering on mini-cams, microwave relay trucks, satellite truck, digital news cameras, video on demand, website, mobile website, cable news channel, producing a newscast for a different station (WRTV6 News on WTTV4) and until the mid-80s, the number one station in the Indianapolis TV market. I could go on, but we don’t have the time or place really. Yes, RTV6 is not what it once was, but they were always proud of the history they started in Indiana. And all of that was gone in a matter of minutes.

I can't believe nobody wants to save traditional broadcasting. This is sad.

In Yakima...Fox 41 is now Fox 29.3 (well, I believe it's still called "Fox 41"). KCYU dropped Fox this morning after over 35 years. First as K53CY, then K68EB, then KCYU. Channel 41 is now Roar. Meanwhile, Scott Stovall was on the newscast last night at 5 and 6. I hope the absence of John Kennedy O'Connor is temporary...but I have been predicting the demise of the KIMA television studios for years now. So who knows?

WBAL-TV sports director and radio voice of the Baltimore Ravens Gerry Sandusky has announced his retirement from both gigs: https://www.wbaltv.com/article/gerry-sandusky-retires-wbal-tv-sports-director-voice-of-the-ravens/70907285 His last newscast is April 17th. And yes, he's heard everything about who he shares a name with.

Don”t forget Griffin in Oklahoma.

If you can stand to watch, here you go.

My personal guess is that there was direct outreach between the parties involved in these sales and these stations were never on the open market. Whether Scripps approached purchasing companies first or vice versa is something we’ll likely never know. That’s strictly speculation, but based on the two operations and the single market owners Scripps sold to. In both cases, those operations only paths to better operating costs were buy a competitor or be sold to one. And if you look at Scripps debt load and stock price … cash is a good thing to get. (Even if they announced the Inyo and Lexington purchases which eats up a solid amount of the money made from these sales. But those are both purchases where the long term operating costs will be substantially lower than the properties they sold.)

What I want to know is why Scripps chose to sell to Circle City. Did no one else (Gray, Hearst, Sinclair, etc.) show any interest? Did any of them even know Scripps was looking to sell this one station?

I'm not even from the DMA, but man, that is brutal! This is a sad sign of the times in the traditional broadcast TV world. I feel so sorry for everyone who was let go on such short notice...

WRTV has a new logo (basically WISH's spinning logo, but with a blue 6)

Side note, is it just me or do all the segments I see from their street side studio have really poor audio quality? It’s so hollow and echoey, even in the scenes they showed in that segment from back in 2013.

I think it's pretty telling how many respectable journalists who were almost exclusively working for NBC News have made the move to MS NOW. Vaughn Hillyard, Ken Dilanian, and Jacob Soboroff were all primarily with NBC News. If Peter Alexander didn't want to anchor the Saturday Today show i'm sure they could have found him a weekday anchor slot on NBC News Now, it's very telling he is joining the others and leaving the trump donating Comcast owned NBC News to join the only television news outlet in America that is not afraid of upsetting the trump admin. For years NBC News looked down on MSNBC as a left wing opinion channel but clearly a lot of respected credible journalists think the only openly anti trump TV news outlet is a better place to do journalism than the garbage disgrace known as NBC News that has become trump's home for softball interviews (I'm pretty sure Kristen Welker talks to trump more than the demons at FOX & Friends) It's easy to say the issue was the Friday night travel to New York, but I think covering a disgraceful White House for a company that is terrified of upsetting the white house has a lot more to do with this.

Understood. I just wanted to be able to see the conflict markets separate from the others.

It's not just the conflicts, but the new market additions if the cap is an issue. The conflicts come in play if there is an antitrust issue.

I realized I was having trouble remembering all of the markets where there are likely conflicts, so I threw together a quick reference that I have to share as a screenshot because the forum doesn't accept PDFs.

If they had just done the divestitures in the first place, we wouldn't be talking about this. In any case, I agree with you.

And this is why:

1 day does not a trend make, but NXST crashed at opening today. ~$850,000,000 market-cap loss

Ratings usually parallel market share, so markets that seem to combine any of the top 4 with or without an existing -opoly are likely to be divested if the courts get their way. Now in a place like Dallas where WFAA/KFAA and KDAF are, they're likely safe because the latter two stations don't hold a candle to WFAA's reach and market share.

What the hell did I just watch?

WFAA reverted to their pre-Nexstar copyright this morning. Good Morning Texas also reverted to the pre-Nexstar legalese and TEGNA-era copyright.

No. KDKA is CBS Strongest station and a AFC market.

Money talks as loud as a punch in the face.

I swear they just fired everyone, from the GM to the Engineers and the entire IT team. The website hasn't been updated since the deal closed. It's not even redirecting to http://wishtv.com. WRTV is now just a holding channel and network assets.

UPDATE: Looks like lights out for Yakima's first television station. RIP KIMA, 1953-2026 https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/business/kima-newscasts-apparently-moved-from-yakima-to-tri-cities-amid-ownership-changes/article_9ee73618-04de-4129-a252-68e3be4b480a.html?utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social A Facebook comment on the YH-R from Steve Rocha (Morning guy on 100.9 Cherry FM) says John Kennedy O'Connor was seen at a brewery yesterday, close to news time. Casually dressed. I pray he ends up either in Pasco (with Scott) or in another amazing location. JKOC could be in Boise, Birmingham, or Binghamton and I'd still watch him. He was the best thing to happen to KIMA's news department in years.

It wasn’t meant to last forever. All the mergers and consolidations since 2013 from LIN and Media General to Belo and Garnett to McGraw Hill and Scripps they were all signs that the business was changing I saw this coming since. Local ownership won’t last long.

Dujuan McCoy is a special kind of awful. I know WRTV has been the red-headed stepchild of Indianapolis for a long time, but for it to go like this is brutal. The worst thing about it, this is what local owners are doing to TV stations. The same can be said in Fort Myers with the McBride Family. Now there are still good owners out there like the people who own WFMJ and Capital Broadcasting in Raleigh, but the entire industry is still doninated by companies like Nexstar who are spreading awful in an unprecedented way.

It seems like everyone at WRTV was fired.