CircleSeven

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.

Competing with WCVB, Sunbeam's WHDH will launch a new 7pm newscast on March 7th.

That is basically their intention.

And the other two translators that'll serve north of that LP are K28MA-D Argusville & K30LR-D Grand Forks.

Sister-station WSOC also have a 12pm show on the weekends as well.

TVNewsCheck stated last night that Miami's ABC station WPLG will be adding a half-hour to it's weekend morning newscast. Beginning this Saturday, WPLG's weekend morning show will start airing at 5am, instead of 5:30am. Now the article doesn't state that the show ends at 8am for GMA, and comes back on at 9am.

Yes.

New M&A tonight. It looks like Brady will be acquiring Frontier's KPVI & KVIQ.

TVNewsCheck posted that WBAL will expand it's Sunday Night 11pm newscast to a full hour, starting this Sunday.

TVNewsCheck posted within the hour that WKBW will be adding weekend morning newscasts. The new shows will be aired both from 6-7am, and again from 8-9am on both days. GMA will be aired live at 7am. This will go in effect on February 27th.

TVNewsCheck reports this morning that Cox & Meredith have formed a "cooperative" agreement in between the two groups to share some resources, including buying syndicated programming & equipment. The co-op doesn't include their respective stations in Atlanta (Cox's WSB & Meredith's WGCL).

The Daily Variety reports this morning that Kelly & Michael was renewed on the ABC O&Os for four more seasons (through the '19-'20 season). They also renewed Millionaire for another season on some of its stations. Do any of you think Millionaire would return to its 2pm timeslot this coming Fall, should the Fab Life be "one-and-done"?

TVNewsCheck stated this morning that Tegna Media has renew its affiliation agreement with NBC for all of its 17 affils.

Shame.

Some consummations & a couple of new M&As tonight. The KFWD sale from HIC Broadcast, Inc. to NRJ TV (Titan), was consummated on Friday. Also closed on Friday was Sinclair's acquisition of Corpus Christi's Fox affiliate KUQI from High Maintenance Broadcasting. Nexstar is exercising it's option to buy White Knight Class A LP station KZUP in Baton Rouge. Nexstar could resell this station in the upcoming auctions in March. And finally, the final station in the Pappas Liquidating Trust is being sold. WLGA in Opelika, AL is being sold to Cabellero (CNZ Communications SE, LLC) for $500K. This is the same firm that bought Milwaukee station WIWN in the summer of 2014.

When the Saturday Morning show started at 6am, Baca would do her live reports at 10pm, the night before. And she would do that for six years (from 2007 until the show expanded more than two years ago). But nevertheless, this is a shock to me to see Judy on the marquee 10pm show tonight.

Unrelated to the NBC announcement today, NECN has announced three new hires this afternoon. Former WHDH Chief Meteorologist Pete Bouchard will be joining NECN's Early Warning Team. His position is effective on Monday. WFLD anchor/reporter Melody Mendez will anchor its morning newscasts. Her position will start at the end of March. And WFXT anchor/reporter Joy Lim Nakrin will anchor its afternoon newscasts, and will report for the evening shows. Her position will start in early May.