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Fascism isn’t coming. It’s here. Never mind the irony that the person being mourned as a victim of an absolutely heinous crime is memorialized as being a champion of free speech. Kimmel’s comments apparently don’t count.

Watching the monologue on his first show back, and I have to say Nexstar and Sinclair look real dumb right now.

Kimmel is back.

It's just insane what has happened to America's media companies. They are all a disgrace. I used to worry about the decline and cutbacks at traditional media because there is so much fake news online, but CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Nexstar, etc. have all decided they want to appease the far right and the far right only. They are all terrified of the far right dictator in the white house and the FCC and worried about him harming their other assets. Our media companies are as credible as the media companies in China and Russia. Jimmy Kimmel doesn't need his ABC show. He talks about leaving all the time.

It's so cute that everyone is just casually assuming that Nexstar would be obligated to sell anything when this merger is announced. The cold hard fact is Brendan Carr—a total right-wing hack of the worst sort—along with his lackey Olivia Trusty, will do all they can to get this cleared and approved as quickly as possible and will ignore any protests to the contrary. Why? Because Nexstar is the quintessential Republican company led by a typical Republican (Perry) whose lone purpose is to buy shit up. It's a company Brendan Carr loves and adores. We've seen in full display what he'll do with companies he doesn't like. Who cares if the current legislation doesn't allow it? No one else in this regime gives two shits about laws on the books they don't like, let alone one shit. Congress, who already just destroyed public broadcasting with a glint in their eye, wouldn't care if Carr superceded them (beyond the meaningless whining from the likes of Susan Collins or the tone-deaf tweets of an enriched, oblivious Charles Schumer) and you know it.

EDIT: Can we all take a collective pause and assess the culture of this website. This is one of the only online discussion boards I've been on where several members regularly feel the need to be sarcastic, condescending and nasty in expressing disagreement and offering corrections. There has to be a way to articulate disagreement or correct others respectfully. Our super interest in news is esoteric enough, so this should be a forum to connect with people of similar interests. This shouldn't be a place the one-up each other with industry knowledge or belittle others.

Good for Scott Pelley

This is not a “both sides” issue. The government using its full power—even threatening to—over a joke (and can we dispense with the subterfuge about it being over DEI?) is wholly and completely unacceptable. Random people on social media spouting off about their hatred for this president is not remotely the same as they do not possess the power to force a business to capitulate on a whim. Either we believe in the protections of the first amendment or we do not. And the very idea of the government threading a license over content is de facto state-run media. There has already been a concerted effort to stifle criticism, and now it’s being ratcheted up.

The only thing worse than Kimmel getting yanked off the air is the all-too-soon reality that the no-talent ass clown Jimmy Fallon will be the last late show standing. At least back in 1993 the USA was in a FAR better place even in the infancy of the Bill Clinton days... Before I end my rant..... (Dirty language ahead) FUCK Perry Sook... FUCK Nexstar. AND FUCK Donald Trump!

Not sure why we're collectively shitting on the World News broadcast... It's pretty impressive for a local station. I'm usually quick to denounce the "more news" mindset that has infected local television, but I understand what the goal is here. Yes, it's "more news", but it's replacing a network newscast and going up against network news. They're trying something that's not just the same local stories from 30 minutes ago run on a loop. It's different, and we should be celebrating that.

It's not the 90s... on-demand news is everywhere. Giving that time back to affiliates would actually be a burden. Stations don't have the budget for syndie programming, and producing live news at that hour has terrible ROI for advertisers. News foamers also overlook the staffing reality: asking anchors, producers, reporters, directors to add on more shows for no extra pay is ridiculous (but the norm). The Byron Allen shows are trash, but forcing cash-strapped affiliates to bleed money on an unprofitable late night local newscast isn't the answer. It’s wild to me that people here claim to love local news, yet have zero regard for the actual crews being asked to do more with less while linear viewership keeps dropping.

Wow. Not everyone has the same circumstances. No one is owed an explanation or specific timeline for something that is between her and her employer.

I get the business intent of doing a straight knockoff of ABC WNT - it's what viewers expect on that channel at that hour and they only had a few months to pull it together with little to no capital investment - but I think I'm still a little shocked that it is really that much of a knockoff. I gave up trying to believe TV news is driven by an actual strategy when I left the business almost a decade ago, but one would think this program slowly develops its own identity which makes watching worthwhile. Not all knockoffs are equal. Will this be Kirkland Signature World News or Great Value?

If anyone thinks this has nothing to do with Paramount/Skydance capitulating to 47, then I have some proverbial oceanfront property in Montana for you all to buy. The timing is all too coincidental. Don't be surprised if The Daily Show folds next.

I’m not mad at Terry for keeping it real.

Kudos to Scott Pelley, a wonderful news reporter with impeccable integrity. Getting fired from the festering, anti-journalist and pro-fascism cesspool that CBS has become — and going down in such a blaze of glory — is a badge of honor. Onward and upward.

Basically we're under a dictatorship right now. No one will call it that but that's basically what it is. It is all to appease dear leader and his whims. So therefore, anything he says is bullshit. He lies and breaks the law in virtually everything he does so nothing that comes out of our government is legitimate anymore. And even if it is, It's a lone act hidden under hundreds and even thousands of illegal actions. As soon as he is out of power, a whole bunch of people are going to prison. Hopefully him if he's still alive when it all ends.

Scripps has denied Sinclair’s proposal to buy them.

Did whoever wrote this just crawl out from under a rock? Seriously. Some of this is already happening ("Community roundtables and town halls") and it's usually a snoozefest that doesn't attract any more eyeballs than normal. Nobody is going to run "Neighborhood lifestyle shows, spotlighting local eateries, artisans, cultural scenes, and hidden gems." without there being some kind of time buy for the privilege. Broadcasting high school sports would have been a big deal 15 years ago... when a lot of schools started streaming themselves. A lot of stations with union representation would find the costs to do this in-house enormous and not worth the effort. This reads like broadcast stations should turn into public access outlets, which already exist.

I'm trying to make sense of your ramblings best I can, bear with me. I remember the Watercooler too... but let's ignore the fact that you're citing all of your knowledge from conversations in a toxic cesspool 15+ years ago... there's a reason why that message board isn't around anymore (and why this website was created). Public media has absolutely had layoffs, even during 2008. That said, when a beloved 50+ year old institution gets attacked and defunded, of course it's going to make the headlines. If you think public media doesn't report on the local media industry, you're wrong. Just because you didn't see it, and let's be real... you probably aren't a viewer/listener, doesn't mean it didn't happen. CPB's looming shutdown this fall is akin to Scripps closing up shop overnight and leaving all of their stations out in the cold scrambling to survive without any infrastructure support. If that actually happened, public media newsrooms would absolutely report on it. But that hasn't happened. Scripps, Allen, TEGNA... they're all still alive. Commercial media has been slowly bleeding out these past 15+ years like numerous other industries that public media newsrooms are also reporting on. The media industry across the board, public and commercial, is in a tailspin. Public media isn't immune to the changing landscape and has been doing what it can to reinvent itself, just like local news has been trying and both have been doing this as financial resources and viewership numbers drop. With PBS moving into streaming via Passport and NPR getting into the podcast game, their viewer/listener/donor base's average age is trending downward. If you think there aren't public media stations that have staffers doing the work of 2-3 people or that positions haven't been reduced for consolidated/centralization efforts like in commercial media, well, I really don't know what to tell you. Has your local NBC affiliate been reporting on that during the last 15+ years prior to the federal funding fight? Saying that no one is interested in public media and that people are flocking to local television news in droves is the most nonsensical thing you've included in your diatribe. One of the great things about public media is that it is for everyone. If you think an independent press and educational programming aren't worth fighting for or funding, I totally understand that. Not everyone values facts, nuance, or public service. Some people just want noise that confirms their biases. Please, just don't confuse your personal disinterest with the facts. Some of us still care about democracy and the truth. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/26/americans-more-likely-to-support-than-oppose-continuing-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs/ https://current.org/2017/02/farewell-tote-bags-pbs-passport-draws-younger-donors-as-membership-reward/ https://current.org/2021/06/how-to-build-the-next-generation-of-public-radio-listeners/ https://www.npr.org/2008/12/10/98098442/npr-cuts-jobs-cancels-programs https://current.org/2009/06/fiscal-year-end-layoffs-include-10-of-pbs-staff/ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gannett-journalists-across-the-nation-walk-out-over-pay-management-issues https://www.pbs.org/video/how-sinclair-broadcasting-puts-a-partisan-tilt-on-local-news-1507678399/

Today is May 12th, 2026. Tonight is the 40th anniversary of the current NBC peacock logo. One of the most famous broadcasting logos that has ever existed all got started on NBC's 60th Anniversary Special. It has served television greatly since and has become NBC's most famous logo, as it still has staying power after 40 years as of today. For those who don't know, the six feathers represent (at the time of launch) different divisions NBC had. Yellow = NBC News Orange = NBC Sports Red = NBC Entertainment Violet = NBC Stations Blue = NBC Network Green = NBC Productions IMHO, its become my favorite logo in all of U.S. broadcasting, and I love, still to this day, how colorful and vivid the logo looks. Yes, it's had a few moderations and updates over the years, but to me, nothing beats the original. Happy 40th Anniversary to the current NBC peacock logo.

The Onion outdid themselves today. I wouldn't put anything past AIPAC Bari though. https://theonion.com/bari-weiss-attempts-to-boost-ratings-by-kidnapping-tony-dokoupils-mom/

I just had to post the reaction of a local viewer about her post

I mean, The Onion ran this satirical "ad" in its print edition in December. https://www.facebook.com/TheOnion/posts/pfbid024saN4i8FSPSCTbrztDZTHqNQJuwN7pjUebkL8hmzAN6vpAfzHeszfJEsMu5f72V5l

Maybe if he actually pushed back on the blatant lies and misinformation. And it’s not remotely childish to point out the SecDef has zero qualifications for the role. That hardly makes him unique in this regime, to be sure. But someone who never was in a command position and has expertise you could fit in a thimble should be scrutinized, not treated like a buddy at a bar.

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.

And neither of those cancellations came from pressure from the government.

You need to look at yourself in the mirror and realize the things that you're saying isn't in line with what the vast majority of the people on this forum is thinking. And I will tell you this, by calling on staff to have an ignore button is very childish of you because you clearly cannot handle a healthy public discourse or anybody who has a much different opinion than you, that type of attitude was what nearly drove me out of the BP Discord server, you need to learn how to agree to disagree on things, you have your own opinons and I have my own opinions, EVERYBODY on this forum has their own opinions but to go out there and just say "Oh I need to ignore this person because his opinion is not in line with mine" that's childish. I recommend either taking time away from this and getting yourself mentally right or focus on the other aspects of TV News that you're passionate about and just stay in that lane because mentally I don't think you're a good fit for at least this portion of the forum (or even on the Discord server for that matter), you can react with all the angry's and the haha's you want to but that's just the truth. And oh by the way there's no such thing as being cheerleaders for this company or that company or a hater of this company or that company it's just that we're calling it the way we all in here collectively see it, whether it's a good opinion, bad opinion, etc, it doesn't matter so for you to label people as "Hearst lovers", "Tegna haters", "Scripps haters" I think is also childish and you need to take that out of your vocabulary too. That's all I got to say if people want to gang up and attack me be my guest but I'm not going to change my approach just because people try to convince that their opinion is better than mine or anyone else's I will gladly respect everyone else's opinions as long as you respect mine and we can all have a good healthy discourse about subjects related to broadcasting because at the end of the day we're all broadcast nerds and we're all here to have fun and have a good lively conversation about things, if that can't happen why would I or anyone else be here partaking on this forum or even on the Discord for that matter.

Oh no! A strongly-worded letter? That'll sway them.

You have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about.

Of course it's financial. Letterman's final Late Show episode got nearly 14 million viewers. A decade later, the Late Show has an audience of just over 2 million boomers who forgot to turn the TV off before falling asleep. It's not worth paying Colbert $15 million a year on top of the staff's salaries and the costs of maintaining that theater anymore, especially when its spot in the cultural milieu is now occupied by podcasts with postage-stamp budgets by comparison. Not to mention, this isn't new for CBS. This is the same network that was already too cheap to keep the SEC or the Grammys. They are cutting costs to the bone in any way they can. Not everything in life is hyper-politicized. Sometimes it actually is just about the money.

But we’re not in danger of authoritarianism, right? This. Is. Vile.

It's as if it has.... [puts on sunglasses] ...no merit.

Thankfully ABC doesn’t seem to be as feckless as you believe they should be. If Jimmy can’t make the joke about their age gap, then why did Trump make a similar remark about the age gap just yesterday? This ridiculous capitulation and self-censoring is frankly a very idiotic suggestion.

Whew! This post is everything! I work for a TV Station - and we are all producing more news and with the same pay. Asking us to stay beyond midnight would be even more stressful.

But...but....but....they said they wouldn't do this. They said they wanted to preserve voices.

I’m sorry, but this is wholly fucked. Nobody with a straight face can pretend this serves the viewer. What it does serve is debt structures, investor appetites, and the same consolidation treadmill that’s been shredding local news for decades. Every time one of these mega-deals goes through, newsrooms shrink, investigative coverage dies off, and more “local” stations start parroting the same pre-packaged garbage. Carr’s statement is pure, Grade A bullshit. The idea that this somehow helps local broadcasters “compete” with tech companies is laughable. Google and Facebook don’t produce journalism. They host distribution networks. Nexstar and Tegna are supposed to create the journalism those platforms amplify. But instead of reinvesting in actual reporting, they’ll gut staff and load up on syndicated filler while pretending it’s innovation. This isn’t modernization. It’s cannibalization, and we’re watching what’s left of local news get carved up for parts.

Surely this generic white guy will be the ideal configuration of deck chairs on the Titanic!

He is not a journalist. He stated an opinion as is his prerogative. And there is a great deal we do not know about this highly suspect case. But that is neither here nor there. The FCC making threats over content is the issue.

So you decide to criticize her looks? Really?! How derogatory. I say, she has the experience. If she wants to go to Boston, she should. I don't want her career to end because of what's happening with this mess. Kelly is one of the most popular meteorologists in Rhode Island, and I have loved her forecasts over the many years I've gone to Southern New England on vacation. She is absolutely fantastic. I never saw her for her looks. I saw her for her forecasts, her accurate information, and the experience she has to provide complex information in an easy-to-understand way. She should be hired based on her experience, not on her looks. I'm sorry I had to rant but this comment is terrible.

Who knows... Maybe our FCC will actually show a backbone like Ajit Pai did by forcing the Sinclair-Tribune merger into an administrative law judge review. Whoever saw that coming? If there's any hope, maybe Chris Ruddy will convince Brendan Carr that all this consolidation is bad and sentence all of this forthcoming consolidation to the same fate... We can only hope...

I think it's a crazy take, there's no way the McBride's is going to bully Hearst out of the Fort Myers market despite the internal issues that typically comes up in the Fort Myers market. If they have to settle for playing 2nd fiddle to the McBride's so be it, they're used to being in that role in other markets they're in anyway.

Her personal business is not our business. She deserves her privacy. That's between her and her employer. I'm assuming you have never lost a close relative like a spouse, sibling or parent. The time to heal varies person by person and the relationship with the deceased. With small kids, I can imagine it's even more complicated. I hope she is getting the compassion and support she needs from family, friends and colleagues. It's not any of our business. I hope when you need it, you have an employer that is patient and supportive as you go through all the different stages of grieving.

https://latenighter.com/features/analyst-network-late-night-talk-shows-became-unprofitable-in-2023/ And it was happening under Letterman too. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-letterman-s-late-show-by-the-numbers-214329990.html Read both of those articles closely. In 2009, The Late Show was pulling in the same ad revenue as all of late-night television in 2024. TV is a dying medium, it doesn't need conspiracy theories to explain why things are getting cut. EDIT: As a bonus, days before the Colbert cancellation announcement dropped, Nielsen reported that broadcast television viewership had dropped below 20% for the first time. You tell me how the show is magically extremely profitable when there's barely more people watching than there was under Letterman 10 years ago.

If Trump was so upset about Colbert, he'd be gone already. The show would have gone on summer hiatus and never returned. They would have paid out the rest of his contract and that would have been that. It would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the purchase price. They, instead, gave him ~10 months to continue to make jokes at Trump's expense. Not sure if you've been watching the same Trump I have, but the one I've been watching would have wanted him gone immediately, not next year. The show was losing money, it's that simple. His contract was up next May, they chose not to renew. It was cheaper to continue the show as-is than pay out whatever is left on his contract plus penalties. This isn't some grand conspiracy, it's the realities of the industry. Late night is dead.

Why do folks make such subjectively inaccurate statements based on personal biases? Of course people still watch local news–perhaps not in the same numbers they once did, but the viewers are there. And if you're not one of them, then don't assume everyone else is.

It's weird that they're still keeping "MS" in the name even though Microsoft sold its share of the network 20 years ago. I know they're trying to make it a backronym for "My Source," but it's just very clunky. I'm not sure why they weren't willing to make an 100% clean break from the MSNBC brand. They've always been the third-place also-ran in cable news, there's nothing there worth clinging on to. The logo is also bad. It looks like the logo of a third-rate presidential candidate who gets 3% of the vote in the Iowa caucus and drops out before New Hampshire.

No! This is not what needs to happen, at all. This is how we're going to end up with more "Shovelcasts" (this is a new term I just invented, you're welcome) like Scrippscast being shoved into the schedule. Nobody is asking for more news, period, and any 11:30 newscasts that get created in summer 2026 are going to be canceled by November 4th of that year. Folks, we're talking about a genre that used to have 15 million sets of eyeballs a night. Colbert's "most watched" status is 16% of Carson's audience. Any profit the show makes is likely sliding every year, and it would not surprise me at all if the bean counters determined it would slide into "unprofitable" territory during his next contract. The Internet is the one holding the smoking gun here.

Nexstar's WETM has made history by having the first all female, all black weather team -- Don't know what the demographic is for the Elmira, NY area, but you'd think this would've happened in a larger market.. Nonetheless, a great feat indeed!