CircleSeven

On 10/14/2020 at 6:45 AM, CircleSeven said:

There's TWO Notice of Proposed Rulemakings (NPRM) involving two Tegna stations. They both want to get out of the VHF dial for a UHF allotment.

 

One, Portland, OR's KGW wants to leave VHF 8 for UHF 26. While the other, Phoenix's KPNX wants to vacate VHF 12 for UHF 18.

Follow up. Over the summer, Tegna filed a petition (PRM) to move Twin Cities' KARE 11 from VHF 11 to UHF 31. 

Northpine first posted this back in late July. 

Update: KARE's petition is now a NPRM.

Nexstar has dropped another MeTV affiliate.

Syracuse's WSYR is replacing MeTV for its own classic diginet Antenna TV on channel 9.2.

The change goes in effect tomorrow (9/15).

Well color me surprised...... This is 2009-2010 all over again.....

There's TWO Notice of Proposed Rulemakings (NPRM) involving two Tegna stations. They both want to get out of the VHF dial for a UHF allotment.

One, Portland, OR's KGW wants to leave VHF 8 for UHF 26. While the other, Phoenix's KPNX wants to vacate VHF 12 for UHF 18.

And I don't think they just want to get out of VHF because of viewer signal issues. On a footnote on KGW's NPRM (p.2), it stated based on the petition (PRM) they wrote that “moving to UHF would improve the station’s future ability to offer robust ATSC 3.0 service over the air.”

19 minutes ago, Yankees4life said:

ATSC 3.0 repeater for WOIO/WUAB maybe?

Gray hasn't been all that vocal on ATSC 3. At least not like the other big groups (Sinclair, Nexstar, etc.)

I'm thinking moreso of a UHF translator. WOIO/WUAB is on VHF 10. 

Not sure if that's the reason they're buying the signal. But if it is, the question would then be will the signal stay in Mansfield? Or will the signal be moved closer to Cleveland? 

If you remember they recently bought TCT (Radiant Life Ministries)-owned station WLNM-LD, and made that a Lansing UHF translator of WILX.

And earlier this summer, Gray applied for WMC to have an in-city UHF translator on RF 14.

Looks like Gray is "LP-picking" again.....

They're acquiring Mansfield, Ohio Class A LP, WOHZ-CD from Mid-State Television for $450K.

WOHZ is the sister station of full-power independent, WMFD-TV.

Not sure what Gray is going to do with this LP. 

3 hours ago, Casey Buck said:

I'd argue that the 4 note signature from their early-mid 90's ID counts as a jingle.

it's really a three-note logo (not the first note before the "This is CBS" VO). There have been several other bumpers with that three note logo (including the "Welcome Home" days).

Vid courtesy of "eyeontv" from YT.

You should've done a grab on that L3. The font they use is hideous......

2 hours ago, Yankees4life said:

Make that 12 but I doubt Gray will touch the Hawaii stations...

Why do you think Gray won't give Hawaii new graphics?

_________________________________

Anywho, KTUU/KYES has changed its L3 gfx to the one WVLT uses.......

13 minutes ago, Yankees4life said:

That leaves only 9 stations with the old Raycom bricks package (WVUE, WFIE, KCBD, WECT, KSLA, KYOU, WTVM, KAUZ/KSWO)

You're missing KAIT, WAFF & KGMB/KHNL.

New station: KFVS is using the WVLT package.

Here's their "Breakfast Show" open from this morning.

Vid courtesy of "DADOSUPERMARIO 2" from YT.

Here's the 5pm open.

Vid courtesy of "DADOSUPERMARIO 2" from YT.

A former KTVA weather anchor has apparently jumped ship.

Former KTVA weekend meteorologist Aaron Morrison has taken a part time position as a fill-in meteorologist at KTUU/KYES.

New station: WIBW is using the WMC package. They've also switched the music to CBS Enforcer V.2.

On 10/1/2020 at 12:59 AM, CircleSeven said:

Three small M&A closings tonight.

• Religious broadcaster TCT has completed its acquisition of Fresno station KAIL from Aperio Communications. No word on if the MyNetwork affiliation or syndication programming on 7.1 or the subchannels will be kept, post-closing.

Okay follow up regarding KAIL. On the station's website, it stated the following statement on its main page:

Quote

Valued viewers, advertisers, and vendors: Effective 10/01/20, Aperio Communications, LLC has sold KAIL-TV to Radiant Life Ministries, Inc., owners of TCT programming. TCT Programming will take over My Network Programming as of 09/28/20. 

 

Please be sure to rescan to catch all of the great programming that TCT offers. Remember to rescan often as new channels will be added.

No word on where all the displaced diginets or MyNet will go. But on the station's Facebook page, it appears that some viewers are not pleased with the changes.

On 9/28/2020 at 10:15 AM, SFTV said:

KGO’s Eric Thomas retires after 26 years.

 

https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2020/9/28/signing-off-in-san-francisco

The station posted a tribute video to him last night.

Three small M&A closings tonight.

• Gray has completed its Odessa acquisition of MeTV station KWWT & Cozi TV outlet KMDF-LD. More on that in the Gray thread.
• Religious broadcaster TCT has completed its acquisition of Fresno station KAIL from Aperio Communications. No word on if the MyNetwork affiliation or syndication programming on 7.1 or the subchannels will be kept, post-closing.
• Weigel has completed its acquisition of WHCT-LD from Venture Technologies Group. This is the first time MeTV is carried in the majority of the state of Connecticut. WZME was the last MeTV affiliate in the state prior to 2015. But it only served parts of it (primarily Fairfield County). MeTV & the sister diginets were launched on WHCT on Wednesday (9/30).

Gray has completed its Midland "expansion" with MeTV station KWWT & Cozi TV outlet KMDF-LD. 

They've even announced that they're going add more "networks" in the near future. What more they can add? They basically have every diginet possible and that's alot for a small market like MIdland (Antenna, Cozi, H&I, Movies!, Decades, along with the big ones MeTV & Ion). And let's not forget their big nets (CBS [KOSA], The CW [KCWO], MyNet & Telemundo [KTLE-LD]). That's ELEVEN streams on five channels (although some networks are streamed on more then one stick).

Since Gray is heavy on Weigel diginets in their footprint, they'll "probably" add Start TV and Gray-owned diginet Circle. But I don't think they'll add anything else. 

On 9/28/2020 at 3:40 PM, ref1997 said:

It seems they haven't found a replacement yet to anchor the 11AM news.

You must've missed this then....

On 9/10/2020 at 12:14 PM, CircleSeven said:

Adam Kuperstein will get David Ushery's former spots at 11am & 5pm.

1 hour ago, JCB4TV said:

From what I've observed, the primary reason that Tegna is buying KMPX is to get WFAA 8.1 onto a UHF stick as there have apparently been complaints of reception issues with WFAA's current VHF signal.

They didn't say they're going to use "8.1" on the UHF allotment. You cannot assume its going to be 8.1, because they haven't announce what virtual channel they're going to use. As long as they still own WFAA on RF 8, it's still going to be VC 8.1 on WFAA. It could be 8.4 or 8.8, etc., but it's too early to tell what VC they're going to use on the UHF once the KMPX deal is completed.

7 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

* Tegna is buying KMPX-TV/Decatur, TX from Estrella Media for $19 million. A very odd caveat included in the agreement is that Estrella was given an option to purchase WFAA, which would become KMPX's duopoly partner, an option I doubt would be exercised and doesn't make much sense to include.

Now Estrella's option agreement to get VHF 8 (and its just the VHF assets (antenna/transmitter, not WFAA's studio or programming), that transaction will come after the KMPX transaction is completed. And that option will last for five years after closing. And then once that option transaction get exercised and completed, you'll likely see a callsign and virtual channel swap.

Post-Option Closing:

• WFAA - VC 8.1 - RF 30 - Decatur - Tegna - ID 73701
• KMPX - VC 29.1 - RF 8 - Dallas - Estrella - ID 72054

So Tegna is paying Estrella to go on the UHF allotment, and the Option price for Estrella is $5M. So Estrella is essentially pocketing $14M to move to VHF (should they exercise on that option).

This was similar to the KNSO/KGMC facility swap that happened earlier this year when Telemundo swap sticks with Cocola, getting Telemundo off VHF 11 to UHF 27.

Just to clarify, the Cox stations that were under full Cox ownership before Apollo took over, those stations are already blacked out by Dish.

The stations that are about to get blacked out are the former Brian Brady/Northwest Broadcasting stations.

1 hour ago, MidwestTV said:

Finally. Is that everyone now? I always thought they poorly implemented the V2 look.

KERO is the last station that's using the 2012 Renderon pack. The rest are the Cordillera outlets have yet to switch to the new pack (KSBY, KOAA, KRIS, KATC, WLEX).

11 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

 

If you look closely at the logo at the end of the open, you can see a copyright symbol on it.

You mean the registered trademark right next to the bottom of the "I". That's tacky as hell.

4 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

I thought WLBT was on Channel 30. 

Down in Hattiesburg, WDAM originally had channel 28, but they were able to move to channel 7 once WLBT vacated it. 

Yeah, you're right. WLBT Is on 30. 28 was WDAM's former allotment. WLBT's former RF 7 antenna moved to Hattiesburg for WDAM to use.

This a followup regarding KGNS.

Remember when I mention that the station has switched music packages. I stated KGNS used U-Phonix for the opens and Third Coast for the bumpers and the closes.

BTW, here's their open with the WMC gfx pack.

Vid courtesy of Daniel Garcia's YT page.

So a user on YT uploaded this news open from KGNS's Telemundo subchannel (KXNU-LD/KGNS-DT3). And BTW, this is the WLOX gfx pack they're using for Telemundo show. 

The opening music here is Third Coast, but listen to the tease music after the open.....

Vid courtesy of Daniel Garcia's YT page.

I'm hoping they can get the music cues corrected.......

Anywho. Unreleated to that, Bangor's WABI has switched to the WMC graphic package. I wished they tweaked with the color of the graphic to match the color of the logo.

Vid courtesy of "KLMO"'s YT page.

On 9/23/2020 at 9:41 PM, CubsFan79 said:

This marks the first  year since the FCC okayed the KDLT/KSFY TV merger for GRAY TV.  

And that came a day after the Third Circuit court vacated Pai's 2017 dereg rule. And he approved this merger by a simple waiver.

___________________________

Earlier this week, I discovered that back in June, Memphis' NBC station WMC 5 filed an application for a digital replacement translator (DRT) for UHF channel 14.

The fill-in translator would primarily serve all of Shelby County. Here's the contour of the VHF 5 full-power signal and the proposed UHF 14 translator.

But here's what I don't understand. What happened to petition of rulemaking (PRM) they had to change their RF signal from VHF 5 & UHF 17?

When I read the app further, I found out a few tidbits:

• WMC filed that channel substitution PRM on May 26, 2011, five days before the FCC place a freeze on new channel substitutions. They placed the freeze because of that forthcoming spectrum auction, which didn't happen until five years later.  
• In 2014, they also place a freeze on future DRTs. And the following year, they made that freeze permanent.
• Throughout those eight years, that petition was still pending until the FCC sent a letter to the station on June 29, 2019, dismissing its petition because it would "cause impermissible interference" with the other channels that were reassigned in the spectrum repack.

So, because of the permanent freeze on future DRTs, WMC is requesting a waiver to get the greenlght. I'm hoping they approve the waiver. But its extremely pitiful that it had to come to this.

Although, I wished the FCC would've acted on their petition to get them off that VHF-low signal, I do put some blame on Raycom for not filing earlier, as a plethora of stations across the country filed to get off their problematic VHF signals, post-DTV transition. I remember vividly when Raycom filed a PRM for sister station WLBT to get off VHF 7 and move to UHF 28, once viewers in Jackson couldn't get their signal. If Raycom would've filed a petition for WMC at the same time they filed for WLBT, we wouldn't have this discussion today. Hell, Nashville's WTVF was on VHF 5 and they filed to get off that signal and went UHF.

40 minutes ago, newsbot said:

WPXT has launched WMTW News 8 @ 6pm on Maine's CW for conflicts with college football. 

Last year, that newscast was on at 7pm on WPXT during CFB season.