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Nexstar is desperately trying to stay under the 39% ownership limit* with the Tribune deal. With the planned divestitures (complicated by the failed resale of several other stations to Fox, including WJW) they're barely at the limit. At the rate this is going, I wouldn't be surprised to see WBNX taken over by the creditors. From there, they could 1) sell the station to another entity, or 2) sell the license to one party and the IP to another. Either way, it's out of Ernest's control. *which is an absolute farce because of the so-called UHF Discount Actually, MyNet is on WOIO 19.2 between 1am and 3am in an obvious contract burning, sandwiched within the rest of the MeTV lineup. MyNet has no tangible value beyond being a white-label rerun block in prime-time. For all intents and purposes, WBNX is better off remaining an indie with spillover program inventory from whatever duopoly partner they wind up with, if they wind up with one.

KCRA 1985 promo With a cut of a 'Where the news comes first' theme bumper

In memory of Tom Ellis, here is the first-ever newscast on WNEV (preceded by two promos):

Say hello to Chet Curtis, Tony Pepper, Gary LaPierre, Don Kent, John Henning, Dick Albert and plenty more up there for me.

Some of them are pretty amazing. One had two hops over various mountains before reaching the town which then had a main translator and two rebroadcasters from that. I’d be curious about the latency and the additional compression as some districts squeeze two or more stations + their sub channels on the translator.

A couple of news-related uploads from the archive I'm working on rebuilding... A fairly short-lived news capsule offered by KTXH at the end of their evening movie, circa 1985 A news update and part of a sports update from KHTV from November 1988 - just after the music & graphics Gaylord had launched across it's stations was put in place. Can't say I'd heard the brief sports cut before, but it's definitely from that same package.

A post on the broadcasting subreddit says that KUSA's master control is soon going to be hubbed from TEGNA's centralcasting hub in Jacksonville. I did not realize KUSA still had in-house master? Wonder how that will work with all their translators.

In 2007, WMAQ would once again experiment with an unconventional morning format: Barely Today at 4:30 a.m., anchored by former WFLD sportscaster Bruce Wolf. This is what the first broadcast looked like: After a few months, the show was scrapped and the 5 a.m. news was expanded to start 30 minutes earlier. Interestingly, Barely Today used Newswire for its close, about a decade after WMAQ stopped using the legendary theme.

WPGA looks like HC2 bait to me. How would Marquee make the station profitable without a major network affiliation? This was the Registers' mistake for dropping ABC over morality issues. TV is business. If you don't like what's being broadcast, sell the station.

Meanwhile, in this weird, alternate universe, WGN Morning News was a calm, sophisticated hour of serious news. And still, no one watched WBBM.

Guess Washington's Channel 9 is celebrating 70. Happy Anniversary WUSA