tyrannical bastard

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.

Thought I would check in on KXGN-TV, the only station in the smallest Nielsen market in America, in Glendive, Montana. Since the passing of owner Stephen Marks and the sale of his other TV stations to Morgan Murphy, it looks like preparations are being made to eventually sell off KXGN to another owner. According to Wikipedia, they have ended their .2 affiliation with NBC as of the end of 2024 and no longer produce any local programming in Glendive. Since the departure of Emelie Boyles, they only have done a weekly public affairs program "Let's Talk About it" that aired on Sundays. It is basically a semi-satellite for KTVQ in Billings and most of their newscasts. And this past March, the station was readying a sale at their building in Glendive selling off decades of artifacts from KXGN's existence. https://www.rangerreview.com/news/kxgn-tv-to-sell-off-treasure-trove-of-broadcasting-artifacts-ahead-of-sale-of-station/article_a07b3a08-035c-11f0-9f85-7ff9936504f1.html?utm_campaign=blox&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwY2xjawK-m0xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFvb283dlpzaDNaNEF6dDNqAR65055XO7IRzYKwCZhx3Eg-dlCBSvzSnVNCMditQ5eGEfn8aV0qDcb_tbyy8Q_aem_yyBBO_KPIIT0VrJOtlHwsw (Based on the article, the sale was in the works and may have happened by now) We shall see what happens to KXGN. It's no longer a question of if, but WHEN... and WHO gets it? Interesting footnote. KXGN basically operates as a Central Time station, so everything (including prime time) is an hour earlier in Montana. They fill the hour at 9pm with syndication and run 10pm onward in Mountain Time until they join CBS News in progress overnight.

WJHG is down two meteorologists....Dan Nyman, and former Chief Chris Smith. They are starting a local weather website PCBWeather.com. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2025/6/12/fired-in-florida They figured their gooses were cooked after their GM was in the same Convention & Visitor's Bureau meeting, objecting to their plans announced there.

I"m surprised it took this long for a station group to embrace such a move. It puts ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates on the same level playing field so they can compete with the FOX/CW/independent stations running local news during this time. With sports pre-emptions happening more often (as TV is putting even more second-rate sports on at primetime), a station can stream at their normal time, and just playback the complete show when the event is over, or regroup if they have to do an abbreviated show on broadcast if they are filling the time for another live event. And with network affiliations becoming more of a gamble, it's an easy move to repurpose the shows should the network drop their station. Plus, not having to wait around for a live show would cut down on overtime. If it was important enough of a story, they would be live with breaking news, anyways.

SAM was good with their pre-2006 packages. It's not the packages themselves, it's just their flagrant overuse by certain groups like Nexstar. I swear if I hear Guardian one more time... Mostly it was the whole SESAC thing which caused many stations to drop them with the rise of licensing fees. In subsequent years, with the consolidation and group-branding of stations, sameness prevailed and a good SAM theme could get maligned by a station or group that ran with something, or even used a theme to the point or boring-ness....

Even though WISH was one of the original stations under Nexstar before they traded up to WTTV/WXIN, the package still somewhat exists at WISH under Dujuan McCoy. Sad to think that this was one if the inspirations for GrayOne, especially with the supers.

Since San Antonio is already set up for WXLV's newscasts, and if KTXS has transitioned to the anchorless model, it's basically some cut-ins that can be recorded and sent to wherever the newscast is being produced from. Does KTXS have their own master control or is it hubbed? The ACU setup is likely for their newsgathering crews to work out of while their building is either repaired or relocated to a new permanent facility.

The move from fully physical sets to video walls allows for more variation of looks and could be more cost-effective in the long run. And they give a sense of realism as opposed to a truly virtual setup with chroma keying.

It's not too often you see carpeting in a studio. Usually it was the news desk and stage pieces, but not the floor itself. That could be a maintenance headache unless they have a good cleaning crew. Usually the studio floor is concrete and either painted, tiled or veneered for easy cleanup and durability for movement of sets and equipment. But the sale of their "old" studio (only from 2018) is likely a cash infusion that can shelter the owners from the challenges of broadcasting, especially as an independent owner.