CircleSeven

And look at here. Another Hearst station adding a 9pm show on its Me-TV sub. This time, it's KOCO. KOCO is also adding a hourly 9am show on its main channel. These shows go in effect next Monday.

A somewhat of a rarity regarding programming on 7 tonight. Tonight is the airing of The Ten Commandments on ABC, which the network will air at 7pm/ET. That's no rarity. But the rarity is that WABC is pushing the movie one hour later to 8pm, because it's schedule to air an hour-long Auto Show special at 7pm. That means (because of the length of the movie (with ads)) the late news will be aired at 12:44am!!! I don't think I've remembered the station airing news this late, and it didn't involve a sporting event.

So a big follow-up. Since the Feds were recently granted the its request to block the sale, Freedom changed course and accepted a $52M bid from runner-up bidder Digital First Media. The bankrupt court approved that sale on Monday.

Well look who's going participating in the "forward" auction? Almost three years ago, Sinclair expressed interest in buying back spectrum that's was getting sold off from the reverse auction. On Friday, the FCC released the list of applicants who will participate in the Forward auction and one applicant "STG Wireless" B&C states that its the same owners who control Sinclair. The FCC is withholding the applicants who'll participate in the reverse auction, until the forward auction is completed.

The Department of Justice has filed suit to block Tribune Publishing for acquiring the newspapers owned by Freedom Communications. Tribune Publishing owns the LA Times while Freedom owns Orange County Register & Riverside County Press-Enterprise. Tribune recently won (at a bankruptcy auction) to acquire the remaining assets of Freedom early Thursday Morning, when the DOJ filed suit hours later. The DOJ fear that should the deal go through, Tribune would have a monopoly in print media in the OC & in Riverside. Tribune stated that it will defend the legality of the sale. Freedom previously own several television stations prior to the end of 2011, when it sold its broadcasting arm to Sinclair.

I doubt it'll name any of the MG ones until that deal is completed.

Okay. Here's another Follow-up. Yesterday, Wheeler spoke to House panel defending his actions about the unwinding of the JSAs. He stated that the JSA rider that was put into place back in December was only for JSAs that were in effect in March 2014, but it didn't include when a station changes hands. I'm not sure what Nexstar is going to do, as they'd asked the FCC to grandfather existing JSAs in their acquisition of MG. And this was before the FCC greenlighted the Gray/Schurz deal, which didn't honor that grandfathered JSA for KDCU (it was conditioned to unwind the JSA within one year). _____________________________ And here's an interesting read from the Indianapolis Business Journal (posted Saturday) about the M&A Craze, and how one station group isn't following the certain trend like the other groups. I'm surprised they didn't mention the Scripps/Journal merger (which ended last year, but did mention the current portfolio count), even though it they did mention about the Tribune/Local TV deal (which ended over two year ago).

At last!! Nearly fifteen months after it was greenlighted by the FCC, the Nexstar acquisition of KCWI is finally DONE!!! It was consummated on Monday.

And guess who's at their Good Day set......TONIGHT????!!! [MEDIA=twitter]709905482878754817[/MEDIA] With a new set in the works upstairs, it shouldn't be far behind for a close sister station to the north to get one as well.

So a small follow-up to this B&C stated today that a group of U.S. Senators among both parties were not happy about Wheeler requiring station groups to unwind its JSAs just to get deals to go through.

Looks like the Pappas trust could be winding down soon. The FCC greenlighted the WLGA deal to CNZ (Caballero) today. They also greenlighted the KDMI deal to TCT on Feb. 24. Now KCWI's deal was approved on 12/19/14, but that hasn't been finalized as of yet. And the KFXL/NTV deal with Sinclair is still waiting for the greenlight.

TVNewsCheck posted this morning that WANE will expand it's Saturday morning show to two hours, from 7-9am. The change will go into effect March 26.

Hate to correct you, but did you mean the Sarah Wallace situation??

Small change regarding one HSH station. Yesterday, its Vegas station KVMY changed its calls to KHSV.

According to FTVLive, Those voluntary buyouts are companywide.

Following the trend like the other Hearst stations, KCCI will add a new 9pm newscast on its Me-TV subchannel, beginning March 21.

It's been heavily-speculated here, but now it's official. TVNewsCheck posted minutes ago that WDCW will have a new 10pm newscast beginning April 18th. The new 10pm newscast will be produced out of Richmond's WTVR, with reporters & multimedia journalists being based out of DC. The anchor will be WTVR's 6 & 11pm anchor Candace Burns.

Now that's just plain pitiful. So going to a speaking engagement in Jackson after visiting your ailing parents in TN means you're a liar? I mean, why in the hell would she lie about that? Hell, she even showed pictures of her very sick father at the press conference on Sunday, but was never given an opportunity to show proof to her bosses. They obviously didn't care about seeing her side of things. They only cared about trying to find a slick way to push this veteran & well-liked personality out the door. And that's just sad. I wished she would file a wrongful termination lawsuit against these two assholes for firing her.

A new M&A regarding Sinclair tonight. It wants to acquire WDKA outright for $1.9M. It already owns Fox station KBSI.

Was it a graphic that said "Storm Mode" and had a callsign with that graphic slate. Or was it displayed on the bottom of the screen while Spann was doing the weather? Either way, it wouldn't be Spann's fault for that error. That error would belong to someone from the master controls.

Here's a follow-up from this thread. The Daily Variety posted last night that former host of long time Saturday night program Sabado Gigante, Don Francisco, has landed a new job as senior national correspondent at Telemundo. He will also be involved in a new joint production venture with the network.

This ain't nothing new. Katie Fehlinger have filled-in at Channel 2 before.

A new retrans fight. This time is NPG & Dish Network. The stations operated by News-Press & Gazette will be pulled from the Dish Network systems at 6pm/ET tonight if there's no retrans deal.

Another day, another partnership. This time it's Scripps & Raycom forming a partnership to develop new programming for its stations. These two groups (plus Cox) already developed syndicated program RightThisMinute.

The FCC greenlighted the WABG/WXVT transactions today. They also approved KZUP-CD transaction from White Knight to Nexstar proper.