tyrannical bastard

TBN also did themselves no favors by cashing out many of their stations in the spectrum auction, and subsequently selling the licenses to other parties, much like WDLI in Canton living on as a re-packed station on Ion's (Inyo's) WVPX. These TBN stations (and other full-power god-casters) exploited the must-carry obligation to get them on cable while the others opted for retransmission consent. Donations went down over time and the spectrum was a way to make some quick cash.

I think Mississippi TV will stay separate markets, but Greenville/Greenwood under one owner and WTOK in Meridian and WHLT in Hattiesburg ceding to their Jackson counterparts is beginning to weaken the markets a little. Moreso in Meridian since WTOK is the undisputed leader in the market while WHLT has always played second fiddle to WDAM who has kept their operation local to the market. If either Columbus/Tupelo or Greenwood/Greenville had Gray stations, they would probably have pulled the same moves Meridian did. At least WTVA is the only Allen Media station in Mississippi and WXXV and WCBI remain separate operations, likely due to distance.

Does the TV version of EWTN still air Mother Angelica's reruns? EWTN was her mission as a nun and was an extension of her creating a monastery in the South after experiencing a miracle of her own healing from a devastating injury. Her original TV efforts were through WBMG (now WIAT) but she decided to start forming EWTN after she objected to CBS's content at the time. As tormented as the Catholic Church has been throughout its history, this is probably the only religious TV channel purely devoted to faith.

I'll bet you that this and the ABC fines will be overturned on appeal after Trump is deposed (it may come to that when his term is up and he doesn't leave) because this is blackmail plain and simple.

I can only imagine what Oprah thinks of all of this. Bonus points if Gayle King told her to come to her senses before he went (further) off the deep end...

For this to be happening in Mississippi State's backyard, Frank Spain must be rolling over in his grave. At least his heirs knew better when they ended up selling to Heartland Media not knowing that Byron Allen would be the next one to get the keys.

BIG, and sadly some likely expected news coming out of Northeast Mississippi. Matt Laubhan is leaving WTVA. https://www.djournal.com/news/local/matt-laubhan-leaves-wtva-launches-own-site/article_54ed7004-77b1-44d6-9659-d38cb5aa6a5c.html I figured it was going to happen sooner or later with the way things are going at Allen Media, but luckily it looks like he's able to do it on his own terms. And is evidenced by other meteorologists beginning to do their own thing, local TV weather may be starting an irreversible decline as the most seasoned are starting to head for the exits and are being replaced by younger, and sometimes distant colleagues doing forecasts from virtually anywhere.

Just imagine if Karen gets a bad cup of coffee and wants to "speak with the manager" Not to mention all of the other crackpots who want to worm their way onto TV....

WJZ's building on TV Hill in Baltimore suffered an electrical fire this afternoon. The fire was out by the time firefighters arrived at the station. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/baltimore/news/maryland-baltimore-fire-wjz-building-newsroom/

WFAA's 7-9 morning newscast on WFAA+ launched this morning. It doesn't appear to be on KFAA at this time, but that may change. For a station like WWL, it would almost be like a second coming of the newscast CBS took away from them to put on WUPL. Too bad the damage has already been done there as WVUE rules the market.

Regarding the Greenwood-Greenville market and Deltavision.... This is just one of those places where when one company swallows up all of the assets through failed station waivers and acquisition, the only logical taker would be a local firm who is acquiring the exclusive rights for ALL of the local stations. The only thing that comes close is Block's monopoly in Lima, Ohio and Morgan Murphy's in Victoria, TX. Depending on what happens with Glendive and KXGN, We could start seeing entire markets going under if there are willing parties to make the stations repeaters of another.

Interesting concept. Seems like it's an idea they should have tried decades ago as lifestyle programming ...cough cough "pay for play" and online interactivity was beginning to take off.

Broadcast networks are going to likely show their restraint during the daytime. If it's live, then the president should know better and no station should be penalized for a fleeting remark of his. Cable news is free to broadcast it as they please since they're not subject to FCC guidelines. They just show restraint with the "7 deadly words" but can air them. Even some of the movie networks like IFC are starting to air uncut movies with the profanity intact.

KWGN's slogan should have been "2 the Deuce. You can't polish a turd." Back to WFNA.... It was one of the few non-Tribune stations at the time to de-brand their CW affiliation with their newly minted (at the time) call letters. On paper, they were W F(lorida) aNd A(labama). The logo was a big "W" with the "FNA" inside. The slogan.... FNA baby! (Like the term f-in A) This was done under LIN when it was co-managed with WALA. Thankfully, They pulled the plug in 2012 and it reverted to CW branding as CW55. At some point either late in Media General's tenure of the station or early Nexstar, they went back to "Gulf Coast CW" , their original brand pre "WFNA". It definitely serves the market better as a WKRG sister station as opposed to a WALA one, because it gives WKRG a duopoly partner. Media General "kept" WFNA in the LIN merger and had to "divest" WALA to Meredith, even though the opposite happened operationally by WFNA being shifted from WALA to WKRG.

Interesting. So he left (or they got rid of him) and he came back?

It's probably coming at some point. I've seen it on holiday weekends where they'll just put the WKBN newscast on WYTV. WKBN is merely a license formality since they sold their overkill spectrum in the auction and is hosted on the more market-friendly WYTV. In this case the brand is worth more than gold since WYTV has always lagged and got subsumed by WKBN in 2007. I guess some parting gifts are worse than others. Seems like some stations benefited from it, especially WJW. (Their current set and graphics) They were long overdue for a change with their "parting gift" from Fox getting really stale by the end of the Tribune era...being the O&O set and a heavily mutated graphics package based on the original.

It probably leads back to Randy Michaels when he was driving Tribune into the ground in the late 2000s. That KWGN package was a special kind of awful. I thought the old WTKR ping-robot arm look was bad, but this was even worse.

I don't ever advocate for a religious network to expand their activities of "praising the lord" via the airwaves...(except for maybe EWTN since it's tied to the Catholic Church itself) But in this case, it would be an improvement over the crap-fest that MeritTV is. Why would TBN ever sell their soul in such a way? Oh yeah, it's TBN. Such an odd mix of Dr. Phil, Nancy Grace, and whatever MMA fight is airing in between. And what does any of this have to do with Christianity? Shouldn't Oprah have put a stop to this decades ago? The next best thing is the CTN stations putting Newsmax2 on their subchannel feeds. I"ll stop here before I go ranting any more.

Orange could be pulled off if it was well-executed. The best example IMHO was WKYC's second HD package they had until they picked up the Gannett package in 2008. Same with purple. The TVbD masterpieces of the 1980s are the prime example.

Nexstar is long overdue for some new packages. While all of their stations up to Media General (sans WAVY) have switched to their packages, there's still a few former Tribune stations with their packages floating around. The only recent package that's halfway decent is the one WXIN has. The others are getting stale. When WFNA launched their 9pm news in 2016, they used the "Triangle" Media General package that was introduced on WNCN for their relaunch pre-CBS. It lasted until WKRG picked up the current CBS package in 2018 and unified all newscasts under the WKRG brand. I wish they would do some more in Youngstown with WYFX's newscasts. They've been unified under the WKBN branding since their Nexstar launch as well.

Here's an interesting tidbit from Wikipedia.... KYUS once had a formal agreement to relay KULR but it expired many years ago. Stephen Marks basically had a handshake agreement to continue relaying their signal solely as a public service with no expectation of payment. I wonder in this day and age how NBC feels about this? For Miles City, it's part of KULR's market area but is still 150 miles away, making it as a repeater with virtually no contour overlap. As long as his heirs keep the station running, there's no telling how much longer this could go.

Miles City is 75 miles away from Glendive, but still almost 150 miles from Billings. It's also twice the size of Glendive. It seems like KYUS should be rolled into the existing Glendive market and made the focal point of it. Whatever becomes of KYUS would then feed KXGN. It's currently a brokered feed of Cowles' KULR, and other broadcasters could broker the subchannels to feed this area. But given the remoteness of the area, it should have happened years ago and current conditions wouldn't warrant undergoing such a transformation. Regarding the satellite services, Glendive appears to be the ONLY DMA to have never started local feeds on DirecTV. Does DirecTV still offer the NY/LA stations for remote areas of the country like this?

I would have added this to the original KOIN thread, but it's been locked. So here we are in 2025 and WKRG has once again separated the branding of their CW newscast as "Gulf Coast CW News" Being a Nexstar CW O&O, I personally think the color palette is hideous. They should have never dumped the green for the orange. But that's all Nexstar's doing for their attempts to make CW "America's most watched network with programming for everyone" I wonder if this is going to be a trend for any of Nexstar's CW stations that are on and operated with other affiliates.... On the bright side, I don't think we'll ever be seeing this on stations like WPIX, KTLA or WGN...

NBC going away at the end of 2024 was probably the end of their affiliation agreement, and due to the pending wind down of the station operations, dumping NBC was a way to cut costs because of the reverse compensation agreements most network affiliates have. This does beg the question to what the television situation is outside of KXGN. Glendive technically doesn't have an NBC affiliate anymore or even a de facto affiliate as well. Glendive doesn't even appear have a cable company, and DirecTV doesn't even provide local stations for its viewers. Dish supplements KXGN with KOTA (ABC), KEVN (FOX) and no NBC affiliate since KXGN pulled the plug. YouTube TV fills in the gaps with WMAQ out of Chicago, KHMT out of Billings for FOX and a straight ABC feed in Pacific time with ABC News live filling in the gaps. There's still KYUS in Miles City, basically a repeater of Cowles' KULR. It's in the Billings market so adapting it to serve the Glendive audience is still a challenge. I wonder if that would be part of the sale of KXGN since these are the only remaining parts of Stephen Marks' TV station group.

North Platte is the smallest market that still puts out newscasts of their own. Even Alpena has largely ceded their news to Traverse City and Sinclair, with just a short local blip in the "B" block of their 10pm show. What's the smallest market with an all-local operation these days? May be Victoria, TX since Presque Isle's WAGM now simulcasts WABI's morning show from Bangor. The buyer of KXGN would likely turn them into an affiliate of all 4 networks, much like WBKB in Alpena. Surprised Morgan Murphy hasn't taken the plunge..yet.