mre29

23 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

I'd be careful of a laundry service or laundromat with that name

"FAKE SUDS!"

5 hours ago, NowBergen said:

Evidently it is the name of a power company in Maine that is disliked by customers.  Didn't they do a trademark and use search?

I look forward to the power company changing its name to....SpinCo.

1 hour ago, nathannah said:

Byron has renewed all nine of his celebrity court shows (I remind you that none of the shows are litigating real cases, but CA court transcripts with actors), which is probably going over well in the AMG station Slack or Teams .

Nine?!?

There are basic cable networks with less original programming than that.

Heck, how do they even decide which show gets a particular case?

1 hour ago, jrogo said:

MSNBC has announced its new schedule and program names: 

The Weeknight with Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez starts on May 5 at 7 p.m., airing from 7-9 p.m. on Mondays and 7-8 p.m. on Tuesdays - Fridays.

This one being two hours on Mondays makes me think MSNBC should do something similar for Maddow's show when she returns to Monday-only and let her have two hours as well. Lawrence O'Donnell is undoubtedly eying retirement, so he might be happy to cut back to four nights.

13 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

It looks like WROC-TV Rochester is finally going to be adding some weekend morning news as they're currently looking for a Meteorologist for that position.

 

However, the pay... is why this company is shitty.

Yeesh. I made more than the high end of that at my last job, and I didn't have to appear on-camera.

11 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Oh yeah, I forgot. They should rebrand it, though, and expand upon it.

"Dad, what's a gray sport?"

9 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

To me, Gray and local sports are a thing. I'm surprised there hasn't been a Gray Sports division by now.

Doesn't Gray have Raycom Sports, though?

10 hours ago, Rusty Muck said:

Good luck with that. None of the suspected companies (Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, Scripps, etc, &c.) want radio stations and with Apollo wanting to sell the company as a complete unit, there are no available buyers, cap or no cap.

The smartest thing Apollo could do right now is split the TV and radio stations into two separate companies. They'd have a better chance of selling both if they did that.

12 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:

Couple problems: 1) the article is from last year and 2) it says nothing about the CW moving from KFMB-DT2 to KUSI in the timeframe mentioned in the thread title.

 

In another thread (which I believe linked to said article), another user stated that KFMB’s CW contract didn’t lapse until 2026, so unless Nexstar confirms the affiliation will move to KUSI on September 1 (terminating the KFMB contract early), this thread was created prematurely.

I recommend that this thread be re-titled, moved to the Speculatron, or merged into the Nexstar thread.

(Also, I noticed that the original poster is brand-new, so maybe one of the moderators should send them a private message explaining what happened to their post and why.)

22 hours ago, nathannah said:

Which would be suicidal and I'm sure the local folks will try to talk New York out of it, but we're talking about a company that utterly refuses to kill a cable channel even as nobody is watching them and subscribers plead with providers to force them to die to get even $4 of relief on their bills.

Oh, now I'm curious. Which channel?

I just downloaded the app to my iPad to check it, but WRAZ isn't listed as an option. Maybe it was added by mistake?

4 minutes ago, HanSolo said:

NCIS: Albuquerque and FBI: Office Cleaning Crew look to have potential. 

I would see it as an opportunity to do a show about NCIS's Army or Air Force counterpart. Why should the Navy CIS get all the shows?

Personally, though, I've been waiting for CSI: Podunk. "Solving crimes...in the middle of nowhere!"

7 hours ago, Big Rollo Smokes said:

I've often wondered about that also. I figured that once World News Now disappeared from the O&Os, the ticks on the clock would ring louder...but the newswatch continues. It is a relic of a bygone era, a time when the Big Three embraced the emerging 24-hour news cycle after the Gulf War and during the '92 U.S. election cycle. But NBC ended Nightside in 1998. CBS's Up to the Minute lasted a little longer, making it into the 2010s before morphing into its current incarnation.

 

My guess is that while WNN can't be making that much money for ABC News' bottom line, that show must be really cheap to produce.

What does ABC News Live run during the hours that WNN is available?

17 hours ago, Jase said:

If they were to drop Colbert, they could bring back a new version of ‘Crimetime After Primetime’. I think there could be an audience for that.

Because what CBS needs is more cop shows.

4 hours ago, Hometown News said:

European countries were always much better at making TV feel like an event consistently. Just look at all the extra effort they've always put into presentation - the idents, live announcers introducing the shows, etc.

Oh, how I wish channels here would do that. I could watch British idents for hours.

4 hours ago, Hometown News said:

Linear TV in America and in countries with a more Americanized style of television seem much more vulnerable to streaming because there's so little to differentiate it besides the negative aspects: more ads and less choice.

Bingo.

56 minutes ago, bmasters1 said:

Probably for the same reason that USA made the same practically their bread and butter (to the detriment of all the game shows that were there before, like Press Your Luck, Pyramid and Scrabble).

Because crime sells. (See also:  "If it bleeds, it leads.")

13 hours ago, SDHIll1980 said:

If you're of a certain age, you can remember the glut of first-run syndicated dramas, sitcoms, and musical/talent shows that were around during the 1980s and '90s...a lot of that had to do with more TV stations signing on the air during that aforementioned time (thus needing the programming, besides old off-network reruns and whatever live sports they could cobble up), and already-established stations having more control over their programming inventory. 

I grew up during that era, so I watched a number of syndicated shows (mostly sci-fi and fantasy), though little of it regularly as there usually wasn't a TV available in the house when I wanted one. The thing that always annoyed about syndicated programming was that it'd end up in weird time slots such as late at night or weekend afternoons. Even the most of indie stations would do that, saving the 8-11pm hours for movies. I remember being down in Florida one summer and discovering that one station was showing either Hercules or Xena during primetime hours on a Tuesday night. 

3 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Given the garbage that passes off as network television these days, I'd prefer a hyper-local station that doesn't have to pre-empt things for whatever crap sports or garbage programming is being sent to the affiliates to run.

Instead, they'll live off of syndicated crap game shows or garbage programming.

3 hours ago, nathannah said:

And unless you're a Harvey-era Feud superfan who must watch all 12 episodes offered daily, why does the CW need stations in the first place outside of propping Perry's ego?

Hey, someone has to push the trash talkers and court shows on the unwashed masses.   (Also, are there actually twelve episodes of Family Feud every day?)

3 hours ago, nathannah said:

I can get NBC through Peacock and CBS through Paramount+ and if Spectrum gets tired of paying Scripps more money for "YouTube playlist" news and advertorials, I'd be fine if those stations go away. TV stations really just need to get into a 50s radio mindset and begin to adjust to a world where scripted programming is in the past and the networks will only offer reality, news and sports content from hereon out. That seems to be WPLG's mindset now, where there's little upside when ABC seems to be spending less on affiliates and more on being a barker channel for Disney+ and Hulu.

Scripted programming is not in the past; it just often ends up on streaming services because the broadcast networks generally only want shows that have the broadest appeal. Sports and reality shows succeed at that, partly because they're focused on physical ability (sports), competition (most reality shows on the networks), or relationship drama (the farmer wants a wife? Good for him, but absolutely none of my business). On the scripted side, these means a lot of procedurals, both police/crime-solving (CSI, NCIS, the entire Dick Wolf multiverse) and medical (The Pitt, Doc, House, etc.). The more intellectually-stimulating scripted shows wouldn't have a chance of being picked up by the broadcast networks, and cable channels are not grabbing as many of them as they used to as they themselves are dumbing their content down to widen their appeal. (Why do you think BBC America shows Law & Order repeats?)

2 hours ago, atlnews2 said:

Keep in mind Apollo wants someone to buy the entire thing, not a piecemeal sale…that means the buyer will need to be willing to take the radio stations as well 

But they don't have to keep the radio stations, right?

19 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Apollo is looking to sell Cox Media Group. Nexstar and Gray are interested buyers, says Bloomberg.

 

However, there will be conflicts in certain markets if it goes through (for example, Atlanta: WSB-Cox and WANF/WPCH/WKTB-Gray).

 

https://thedesk.net/2025/03/apollo-considers-selling-cox-media-group/

On the bright side, it's only 13 stations in 9 markets thanks to the sheer number of stations that Coxapollo offloaded to Imagicomm.

32 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

Yes the business is changing... but as people have said before, I don't see ABC being content on a sub channel long-term in a top 20 market. If this were a smaller market, the CW or My Network TV perhaps. 

 

We may be looking at another shake up in the next few years.

Yeah, this feels like a stopgap measure. A bandage, even.

 Well, this is certainly a surprise! It'll be interesting to see how WPLG does as an independent (something tells me station management will be chatting with their counterparts at WJXT for advice), how ABC does on 7.2... and whether or not Sunbeam takes the opportunity to go shopping for a duopoly partner for WSVN (with ABC moving to said partner).

6 hours ago, Recovering Producer said:

I’m old enough to remember when NBC tried to sell WTVJ to what was The Washington Post company at the time to form a duopoly with WPLG in 2008, which would have been the first top 20 with two of the big 4 English language networks under common ownership. That felt wild and ominous for the future of the business then. 

Didn't that attempted sale also include WVIT?

2 hours ago, MediaZone4K said:

Where does ABC go if it wants a full channel? WSFL, a less popular station with a high dial number?

It's on (virtual) channel 25 in one neighboring DMA (WPB) and 26 in the other (Fort Myers), so I don't think being on channel 39 would be that big a deal.

3 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Another thought....WJCW?  (exists as an AM station in Johnson City, TN owned by iHeart Media)

Yeah, WCLE (AM) and WCLE-FM are both also down in Tennessee -- Cleveland, TN, to be exact.

WJJW might be available, though. The calls are on an FM station at a small college in northwestern Massachusetts; Nexstar could probably work out a deal that would allow them to use WJJW-DT in exchange for a "modest" donation.

Too bad the WCLE call letters aren't available.

6 hours ago, nathannah said:

We're talking about an audience that probably still wants Lockup to somehow return...

If the majority of MSNBC's audience actually wants Lockup to return, the channel is in more trouble than we thought.

On 3/7/2025 at 4:30 AM, TheRolyPoly said:

ABC and FOX are now gone in Guam. Sorensen Media Group has filed with the FCC to cancel the licenses of both KTGM and KEQI-LD. All that Guam has left is NBC (KUAM), CBS (KUAM.2), PBS (KGTF), and, oddly enough, The CW (KTKB).

KTGM: https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076ff394e080a001951a1c648e4791&id=25076ff394e080a001951a1c648e4791&goBack=N

 

KEQI-LD: https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/dataentry/public/tv/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&appKey=25076ff394e080a001951a8a48a44902&id=25076ff394e080a001951a8a48a44902&goBack=N

Is there a story behind that?