Weeters

January is pretty optimistic if the building currently looks like the photos above. Maybe they start the process of moving in January, but I really don't think this will be ready to broadcast from in 6 months. The HVAC isn't even up yet. My guess is they start the process in January and broadcasts move over in May (at the earliest) for Sweeps. EDIT: For example, the new WMAQ/WSNS newsroom/studios looked like this in late June of last year and didn't show up on-air until mid-January, and that was only moving the newsroom within an existing building. The idea that the WSVN facility will advance from a concrete shell, to something close to what we saw from WMAQ last June, in the next month is unlikely.

Locking this thread as it is essentially becoming a list/database thread.

NBC NewsChannel vacated that facility in early December 2023. NewsChannel is largely a remote/work from home operation now (though still "based" in Charlotte,) from what I have heard. NBC's Mark Barger posted photos of the empty newsroom at the time. If you look at that building on Google Earth, the last time the parking lot had any significant number of cars in it was 2019, with some improvement in 2023. StreetView shows it empty in 2025 after the June 2022 pass. They probably went WFH for the Covid pandemic and never looked back. There was some rumors circulating that they re-purposed the building for the Tegna Stream Center, but I find it unlikely that they replaced the existing facility that opened in 2021 already. Perhaps a combined Nexstar/Tegna would use it for some kind of mega-hub.

This whole ordeal has taken another wild turn. On April 4th, the old WMNN-LD/WXII-LD/NewsNet studio building was sold to a "Greenwad, LLC". This appears to be a holding company registered to a lawyer. There is not any information about what "Greenwad" is. This part of the transaction is not particularly interesting itself, but read on... On April 27th, with the sale of WXII-LD and WMNN-LD to Lowcountry 34 Media still pending, the FCC ordered Bridge News to file license renewal applications for all of their stations, alleging this is part of an investigation "for possible violations of the FCC’s prohibition on unauthorized transfers of control of the station licenses." The weird thing about these two transactions? The studio building was not sold by Bridge News. It was sold by Lowcountry, who apparently took ownership of the property from Bridge News on October 1st 2025, nearly four months before the paperwork to transfer control of the stations was filed. It will be interesting to see what the FCC thinks is going on here.

I wouldn't get my hopes up that the divestures will go anywhere other than Mission. There is a two-year timer on them that started when the deal closed, that gives Mission plenty of time to come up with the cash needed.

That is basically the whole point of the deal, I'd imagine. WISH can now get network prices on advertising on news they were already producing. It's the reverse of a network affiliate buying a My/CW/Indy station.

There are some discrepancies between all of the documents in there. The structural plans show a second studio and control room (and one of the Structural Narrative documents dated 9/05/2025 states "Footings have been updated at the new Studio B addition.") while the G and AI sheets show the second studio area as offices for Deco Drive and Sports, and the second control room as edit bays for those two teams. There is an audio console mysteriously sitting in the walls of one of those edit bays, which lines up with the second control room's audio booths in other drawings. The G and AI sheets do show the second floor space of Studio B as "void space", and the landscaping plans also show Studio B (slightly larger than the structural plans!) and second control room, but are dated 10/7/24. It looks to me like the original plan was two, then they scaled back to one with provisions to build the second in the future, then went back to two. One page of the G sheets show what appears to be a couch and coffee table in the "Team/Safe" room... so I'd imagine it's exactly the type of "safe" room you think it is. At least everyone who works there can sleep soundly knowing that the CEO and GM will survive comfortably in case the worst happens.

This. When you stop to read how Congress went about "setting" the cap, it becomes as clear as mud. This will end up in front of SCOTUS, and they'll go "we have to assume that 'national audience reach' assumed everyone watched broadcast television, but now less than 25% of the population watches broadcast television. There's no way for any owner to reach 39% of the population, because that many people don't watch." It won't matter if people are watching on streaming services or cable, because those aren't regulated by the FCC.

They'll try to demand more. That more will become less as cord cutting continues. The cycle continues, getting a little faster each time.

Nexstar basically states they are expecting the cap to be gone before they have to divest the handful of stations they committed to.

NBC News Daily replaced Days, because Days was doing very well on streaming, to the point that since the move, the last couple seasons have charted viewing minutes in the billions and often one of Peacock's top shows. Streaming is the natural home of soap operas, considering how frequently they used to be recorded on VHS/DVR for later viewing. It made sense to move it streaming-only and free up the linear time for even lower-cost programming. Basically, Days is a draw for Peacock, so I doubt they will be reversing that anytime soon. I could see NBC just expanding NBC News Now programming and making that available to local stations. MSNBC's departure from 30 Rock has left them with several studios and control rooms sitting idle, so the resources are there to just come up with some podcast-format show that they can produce for cheap.

Sinclair (or anyone else for that matter) isn't going to cancel a show unless it's not turning a profit. It's not "cheap" to not want to flush money down the toilet on a broadcast that barely anybody is watching. Weekend morning newscasts aren't big draws, which is why the latest round of Nexstar cuts targeted them, too. Nexstar is trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, while Sinclair is being realistic. I suspect we're going to see this trend continue through the year, and probably come to a peak at the very end. Everyone will try to make it through election season before, I strongly suspect, weekend morning newscasts become increasingly rare.

Isn't GrayOne using Barlow (another open source font)? If you don't like it, you're definitely not going to like what the NBC O&O's are using... (It's a modified version of Barlow)

He retired at the start of the year. Good Day Sacramento did a fantastic farewell interview with him:

Broadcasting and Cable has a December 2021 article that states WABC has long claimed "#1", even though that sometimes has an asterisk on it. I know there was a Comcast press release from 2019 stating that WNJU was the #1 newscast (across key demos and time periods) "regardless of language" in the market at that time.

It sure sounds to me like they are trying to implement the Tegna model before the merger goes through... There's a controversial word used for Tegna stations "Tegnafiying"... and I think Nexstar caught it.

Artimo a Ross product, and was announced at NAB 2024. It's kind of like a new era of the CamBot that has been ubiquitous for the last 15 or so years. https://www.rossvideo.com/products/camera-motion-systems/artimo/

The main issue is that monitor wall is way too bright (not to mention they're just shoving a video into it that got all stretched out.) I assume they probably calibrated it to make their default background image look good, and that doesn't translate well to video.

For what it's worth, I was told the weather talent did not like the original desk, and that's why it was changed (notice the uplighting all over the new desk). The standalone circle 7 motif is all over that set, so I wouldn't read too much into that part of the design here.

You have to wonder if part of the CBS O&O "CBS News (city)"/callsign rebrands that happened under Wendy McMahon were driven by her time at ABC... Namely the ABC O&O stations collectively engaging in this strange branding self-sabotage, where they all seem to be trying to look like each other, to the point there's barely any distinction between them. Rebranding to "Eyewitness News" in 2026? Really? We know there was some discussion about changing logos during the development of the ABC O&O graphics (including new logos entirely), and for a brief period this exact unification of Circle 7s was considered. Ultimately, the package launched with a compromise, where most everyone kept their version of the Circle 7 with a unified color palette. Now, years later, they unify on a logo, but go a step further and just roll out Eyewitness News in a market where it's totally unnecessary. "ABC7 Eyewitness News" is not a unique brand. Not to mention that "Eyewitness News" remains an active trademark registered to CBS and "Action News" still belongs to Cox. It's quite strange for Disney of all companies to be stuck in this brand limbo, where they keep reinforcing the brands they don't own and not the ones that they do.

WMNN-LD and WXII-LD have been sold for $25k each to Lowcountry 34 Media.

Bet you that they partially obscure (if not flat out cover over) that newsroom within a few years of moving in. Pretty bold to be building something that massive in this day and age. There's a reason you see fewer and fewer newsrooms on camera, and that's because they're slowly becoming big rooms with lots of empty desks.

Scripps itself is trading near all-time lows, so I'm not sure if that would be a big deterrent to the family wanting to sell. We're talking about a company that was trading at ~$145 a share in 2004, and $4.42 today. Frankly, this concept that the family doesn't want to sell seems a bit absurd to me. I said this in the Discord, but I have to assume that Sinclair is aware of something that we're not, and I would presume that something is that some of the "Family Shareholders" want out. The family shares have been diluted between roughly 75 members as of 2021, and I think it is impossible they are all unanimous in agreement on not selling the company. The Family Shares are so diluted at this point, some numbers I've seen shows nobody walking away with more than $8.6 million (at the current stock price) and, in fact, most walk away with far less than that (7 members hold exactly one share, 28 hold less than 200 shares, and the ones with the most all seem to hold somewhere between 200k and 700k "family" shares, according to a document I have found). tl;dr I'm wondering if the internal process for family members to sell shares has already begun, and nobody in the family wants to sink their own money into buying more shares of a declining asset. At some point, those shares can be sold to whomever they want, and the Board can't stop them.

Another update: following the auction, it appears they have placed the old Cadillac studio up for sale. Listing photos show the inside mostly emptied out. The only stuff remaining is part of the old weather set, the old MI News 26 set, and a reception desk based on the style of the MI News 26 set.

This is a little confusing, as Bhargava is majority owner of The Arena Group already. In August 2023, there was an announcement that said he was merging Bridge News (NewsNet/Sports News Highlights) into The Arena Group, and that his IV Media LLC was acquiring ShopHQ. On December 1st of that year, a SEC filing shows he received 10,512,236 shares of The Arena Group. A year later, NewsNet was shut down, presumably by "Arena". Now, two years later, he moves ShopHQ to The Arena Group, and suddenly the NewsNet auction is finally posted. Interestingly, in some of the photos for the auction listings, you can see sticky notes that bear The Arena Group logo on the items.