CircleSeven

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.

A couple of small M&As tonight. In Philly, PMCM TV is selling its Philly VHF station, KJWP to Maranatha Broadcasting (owners of Allentown station WFMZ). Since it appears that these two parties could be participating in the auctions later this spring, the purchase price was not disclosed because of "sensitive bidding information". Also, it looks like they're almost done. The liquidated trust of the Pappas stations is selling its second Iowa station (KDMI) to Tri-Cities Christian Television, through its Dove Broadcasting subsidiary for $1M. It also states that the trust would get some of the proceeds, show the station gets sold during the auctions, exceeds $2M. It looks like they're could be some more moving parts among the smaller broadcasters, as the auction nears......

B&C stated this afternoon that WTAE 4 will add a half-hour 7pm newscast that will air on its This TV subchannel (4.2), which will be implemented on February 1st.

TVNewsCheck stated tonight that KCRA 3 is adding a new 4pm newscast, which will debut January 25.

So he gets fucked over for a second time @ Channel 2. That's a shame. I feel if you're still able to do the job (even if you're well into your 90s), then just do it. Look at Dick Goddard at Channel 8 in Cleveland, he's 84 and still doing the weather. If those folks were so worried about liability and wanted him out so bad, then why would you want to hire an 81 year old in the first place (And that of course is a rarity)? I think it would've been better if he would've left on his own terms than being forced out, and CBS was wrong for that. But then again, this is the same Channel 2, that have made stupid decisions in the past. I'm hoping he'll get through this, and hopefully (despite his age) he'll find some kind of work in some capacity (maybe not on TV but somewhere), because I don't think Harry is one of those folks who want to live out the rest of their days sitting in a "rocking chair". And I don't care how many inexperienced pretty faces they put on there to try to raise that ratings needle. Channel 2 will still be a status quo.

Follow-up. It's been passed by both houses this morning.

Crain's has announced that 32 will be adding a weekend morning show from 7-9am. This will be implemented early next year.

So what they recently did in Roanoke, they're going to do it in Huntsville. B&C just posted today that Nexstar is going to start in-house news ops for WZDX with an expansion of its 9pm news to a full hour. It will spend over $3M to update its facilities, reporting capabilities & hire 20 positions for this news expansion. The new in-house newscast on WZDX will debut on April 4, 2016.

Well remember that JSA Attribution Rule that the FCC passed last year, and stations were giving two years to come into compliance? Well the B&C stated this morning, that there's a rider in the new budget bill that would grandfather existing JSAs. Should this deal pass, stations who had JSAs from March 31st of last year wouldn't have to unwind their JSAs for the next TEN YEARS!!!!

And the Sander transfers to Tegna has been completed. KGW is reunited with the other "Kings". Sander.

Follow-up time. As of yesterday (12/1), the KHSL/KNVN sale to Heartland has been closed.

New M&A This Morning, and it appears they've won the big Pappas prize. As Sinclair released it's Q3 earnings this AM, it announced that it'll acquire KFXL & the NTV stations from the trust for $31.25M.

And it's looks like IWCC is one step closer to closing it's books for good, because the sale of KVMY to HSH was closed on Friday. Only the properties in Northern NV remains for now (KRNV/KENV).

So after almost a year since Gray took ownership of KTVH (11/3/14), the sale of that station to Cordillera was completed on Friday. And it appears the website is down for maintenance, assuming that they're switching away from the Gray layout.

......and that sale is now closed.

The FCC has yet to greenlight the transfer. But earlier this month, they'd made an amendment asking the FCC to keep the JSA between KMSB & KTTU going for 9 months after closing (similar to the one Quincy asked the FCC in the Granite deal).

Yes I did.....

The FCC greenlighted the WLYH deal to HSH yesterday, after an amendment was made that it'll end its 20 year LMA with WHP at the end of the year. The KVMY deal however, is still waiting for the greenlight.

And guess who's buying KUQI (and it's LPs) from High Maintenance for $9.25M??!

Well just like Gray, Media General has now opened a new Washington bureau, just in time for the Pope's arrival to DC today.

Lone Star Broadcasting or LSB Broadcasting, Inc. is the licensee name of the former London Broadcasting stations.

The Fox NFL Preshows starts airing at 11am. So that'll be unaffected. WSVN doesn't air Fox News Sunday until 4am Monday morning. It airs E/I content & infomercial during those early hours.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel stated today that WSVN will start its new Sunday Morning newscast on the weekend of Sept. 12. Their newscast will air from 8-11am. The station already have its Saturday morning broadcast from 7-10am.