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I'm going to provide an update on that... TEGNA is almost the first company to provide live 24/7 weather streams across all its stations. I've checked and done the research, and every station EXCEPT for KWES-TV Odessa/Midland (due to technical difficulties) has launched its weather streams. Unfortunately, since these stations took down their other streams except for the main 24/7 stream online, the only way I was able to verify was to download every single TEGNA station's streaming TV app on my Roku (later deleted afterward except for WTSP's and WTLV/WJXX's since I'm in Florida), which is available under either Live Radar 24/7 or Weather Impact 24/7.

Respectfully, if you think ABC (News) has become the equivalent of state-run media, then you're not quite familiar with true, legitimate, state-run media.

Yes sometimes someone like George Stephanopoulos will point out a lie or ask a tough question, and yes ABC News hasn't fired him for doing so, but they did fire Terry Moran. if ABC News was your only source of media, or even worse if you only watched ABC World News Tonight as your source of news, you would be totally unaware of most horrible evil things this administration is doing. The ICE raids for example get almost no coverage. On September 30 when ICE agents in Chicago zip-tied children with no clothes, it was not even mentioned on ABC World News Tonight even though this would normally be the type of story ABC News would be all over (the local ABC Chicago station did cover it). The kids being tortured in ICE "detention" get almost no coverage. Yes they cover things like ICE agents shooting Americans in public but just like state TV in other authoritarian countries most of the terrorizing by the Government goes unreported or downplayed. That's what makes them appear like state TV in my opinion, there are 2 types of state TV, ones like RT that justifies and defends whatever the Government is doing, and ones like CGTN that ignores and downplays what the Government is doing and focuses on other news, and that's what ABC News looks like to me. The trump admin still does interviews with ABC News, and ABC News is rarely criticized by trump, the fact that the FCC is trying to take ABC off the air because of Jimmy Kimmel and not ABC News coverage kind of speaks for itself. Disney has ensured that ABC News is no threat to trump, but he's coming after them anyway because of Kimmel.

One very interesting aspect of this to me is how deeply unpopular the administration has become relative to last September when ABC suspended Kimmel over the Kirk thing. They were also spooked by the public’s reaction then. I really hope Disney can be a trigger for corporations and institutions all over to stand up to this excessive bullsh*t. Also this was the Brian Stelter reporting I referenced earlier:

I watch a lot of ABC and definitely haven’t gotten the impression of state run media. Kind of absurd to claim that of the network employing Mary Bruce, Rachel Smith and George Stephanopoulos who are fearless in their pursuits of truth through all of this administration’s lies. On top of that, Disney has pretty immediately signaled they won’t be rolling over. Brian Stelter even reported this afternoon that Disney has signaled to station groups that contractual obligations to carry network programming will be enforced.

What's so crazy to me is this is happening not because ABC News is doing good journalism and covering trump accurately, ABC News sanewashes, justifies, and downplays everything trump does just like the rest of U.S. television news media, it's because of an entertainment late night talk show. Disney has destroyed the credibility of ABC News and made it look no different than state TV in other authoritarian countries yet they are still a target because they didn't cancel their late night talk show like CBS did. The FCC is signaling that you can turn your entire news organization into pro U.S. government propaganda and still be a target if you air any entertainment programming that is critical of the evil fascist U.S. government. For the U.S. news media, it's fine for trump to order the killing of innocent people, fine for him to order the U.S. "law enforcement" to grab innocent people off the street and send them to torture camps with no due process, fine to put thousands of innocent children who have committed no crime themselves in awful prisons because their parents brought them to the country illegally. Fine for him to threaten to kill a "whole civilisation" , But his life is so precious that any joke about his life ending is just so awful and when someone tries to take his life it's not okay for the news media to be "neutral" like it pretends to be for everything else, When Jeffrey Epstein died the U.S. news media was not saying his death was tragic, but any attempt to take trumps life is beyond horrible and when he finally dies the U.S. news media will act like his death is a devastating somber event. If nobody deserves to be shot and killed no matter what, where was the outrage when secret service shot and killed the first person who tried to shoot trump? The U.S. government shoots and kills people all the time when there are non-lethal alternatives and it's no big deal. Death is only tragic to the U.S. news media when it's evil far right wing Americans. Just making a joke about the death of a right wing president who has ordered the murder of thousands of people is enough for massive outrage and the FCC coming after you.

Three, if you count KLAA 830 out of Anaheim, broadcast home of the Angels, although most of the sports talk stuff is syndicated.

We got a big retirement coming up in WPB. Liz Quirantes has been the face of several generations across her 35 years at WPEC, including being a part of the station's version of their dream team from the late 90s to mid 2000s, which included Curt Fonger, John Matthews, and Pat Murphy. Today, she has announced her retirement after an amazing, wonderful run.

This is like a Sears and Kmart merger. Bonus points if Eddie Lampert comes aboard to run it all (into the ground). Iheart is a joke and SiriusXM's saving grace is all of their receivers in new cars and trying to sucker in subscribers with a low introductory rate and making it next to impossible to cancel when it goes up to full price.

awshitherewegoagain.gif UPDATE: It just got real.

Janai Norman is out at GMA Weekend and ABC News.