tyrannical bastard

Since it's more of a catch-all thing between the switch of the CW from WUAB to WBNX in Cleveland, I'll post here. YouTubeTV has dropped WUAB from it's carriage. I checked yesterday, and all of the WUAB programming was "not available online" on the service. Basically, the same error with the eye crossed out for anything that's not cleared to run "online". Today, the channel was completely gone from YTTV. Shame that they got dropped in Cleveland while WANF is still available as an independent in Atlanta (along with Peachtree Sports Network.) Maybe a deal with Rock Entertainment Sports and WUAB is forthcoming? Meanwhile over on WBNX, they are now carrying (a rebroadcast?) of New Day Cleveland at 3pm and "Local News" at 11pm? We'll have to see if WBNX is actually programming WJW news at 11pm which has been long vacant in Cleveland since the 1994 switch. They did air a rebroadcast of WJW's 10pm news in 1995 and 1996 at 11pm before FOX took over WJW when WBNX was an independent station.

Regardless of the free reign that the broadcasters think they'll have, I think as toothless as the FCC and DOJ seem to be, they'll still prevail. We're really living in a f-around and find out time...

You have to wonder if companies like Allen have been making these moves on purpose simply so the stations can be so far gone, that the acquirer can legally acquire them with a failed station waiver. It seems the only innovation left in broadcasting is the boardroom manipulation to squeeze out any penny on the working level before cashing out and letting someone else deal with the carcass...

Makes me wonder how much longer stations like WFMJ live on. They benefited from WKBN selling out to non-local interests and later subsuming WYTV. They even sacrificed "The Vindicator" in favor of forging ahead with WFMJ. Where else does a station exist that is still owned by it's founding family and NEVER changed their affiliation? The only major change in their history was moving from their founding Channel 73 to 21 in the 1950s. Then again WEWS is in a similar boat as Scripps founded the station in 1947 and still owns them. Their only major change was losing CBS to WJW after Storer bought them, and they've been ABC ever since. By comparison, Nexstar is an upstart from the 1990s that is now the largest broadcaster in America. If they were founded a decade before, they would be another junk-bonded blip in history like Gillett or Great American.

If there was some kind of regulatory hope to make this deal palatable, make it a condition that a station has to cover Akron and Canton. They've been the long suffering portions of this market that are about the size of a mid-sized or small market if they were ever separated. Akron has used their leverage in the past to condition past needs of WVPX (the old WAKC) to do their bidding. One of the wins was the short-lived PAX 23 news that WKYC produced for them. Even WBNX is licensed to Akron. But that focus waned after they were gifted the Fox Kids network in 1994 and later the WB network when WUAB couldn't handle them with UPN and many sports pre-emptions... But it's a pipe dream at this point since the dismantling of this once proud market is inevitable...thanks Nexstar and the spineless FCC...

The forthcoming tragedy in Cleveland is when WKYC is integrated into WJW. WJW has lived off the fumes of Tribune since 2019 with the set and graphics they were gifted at the last minute, and still exist today. Yes, they have all of the typical Nexstar garbage like "Remarkable Women" and "Your Local Election Headquarters" but they never got fully Nex-star-red. Other markets like Indianapolis have already shed their Tribune-ness, and even went through different generations of the Nexstar looks (WXIN) since the Nexstar merger. And it's still hard to believe WISH is still going with ANOTHER active Nexstar look! Hopefully it's not something boring like "Ozarks News First" which repurposes the ABC package on CBS, FOX AND their MyNetwork stations. Only difference is the station logo bug slapped on it.

Will WCCB still be carried on YTTV when they go independent? The irony in all of this was that YTTV DROPPED WMYT after Nexstar took it over, because they didn't carry MyNetworkTV affiliates at the time (since it was a prior FOX O&O). Bahakel happened to have carriage when carrying CW affiliates was not as prevalent as it is now. And it was Nexstar that later changed it's tune to carry stations like WMYT across the country. Acquiring the CW was what led many of their former CW affiliates-now CW O&Os getting on the service.

The existing set looks better than the ones that many of the Gray stations got in the ensuing years. Especially the ones that got stuck with the "gray-hound" bus station look.

Here's a list of the current contracts that Gray holds (including affiliation agreements and their expiration dates) https://publicfiles.fcc.gov/api/manager/download/f3b17ed2-ba72-2238-e3ea-5059313c19e9/95931e93-1049-436d-bd95-f3c7d73029b9.pdf It says WUAB is under agreement until 2027 with the CW. How was Nexstar able to swoop in and grab it back for themselves to put on WBNX?

In DC, Gannett did a number on WUSA long before Tegna was created. Sinclair destroying WJLA after Allbritton made something of them is what brought WUSA back up a few pegs.

One of the nuggets that I deduced from the Block-Gray paperwork is that WHAS is the 4th place station in Louisville, with WLKY leading, WDRB in second, and WAVE in third. I always thought WHAS was better (and one of the better Tegna stations) unless Tegna REALLY drove them into the ground. It's going to be interesting to see when the Nexstar paperwork comes out and they make their case on how they can acquire these stations with little regulatory opposition.

And now for something unrelated to the CW or the Tegna merger...but still Nexstar being Nexstar..... Antenna TV is replacing MeTV on WKRG 5.3 on September 25th... https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/antenna-tv-gulf-coast-to-air-classic-shows-details-schedule/

Remember when Gannett was a good company that ran quality stations? It may have been posted here before, but this is a piece that WTCN (now KARE) produced after taking over the station from Metromedia, and all of the investment they made in the people, product and making them a factor in the market during NBC's rise from the basement in the early 80s... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR79IZquMYo Fast forward to now, and all of the damage Tegna has done, and that was before Mike Steib took over. It's like they torched everything to make these stations easy targets to be subsumed by their competition. Failing station waiver material perhaps? Things like this SHOULD have factored into transactions so that companies don't torch their assets to make them qualify as "failing" or under the limits. But here we are now...

Sinclair used to have a Newsmax widget on their websites.

Besides KYTV/KSPR, are there any other stragglers out there that haven't converted to a Gray package of any kind? (There may be a Quincy station or two out there, and stations like WHNS that use the package that GrayOne is based off of under Meredith) KY3 looks the same as it did 2015, when they were still owned by Schurz... I'm trying to remember if this was a look-alike package, or the Giant Octopus one that WBNS had several years earlier?

In Mobile, that adds a third sports station to the area, after longtime local broadcaster 105.5 WNSP (which is regarded as the very first FM sports talk station in the nation) and iHeart's Sports Talk 99.5 (a translator from WRKH 96.1 HD2) with some local hosts and mostly syndication. On top of that, there's FM Talk 106.5 which runs Paul Finebaum's show daily. The radio market here leaves a lot to be desired since it's mostly iHeart and Cumulus competing against each other with the same crappy formats. The only unique operator is DotComPlus, who runs 92.1 WZEW and associated translators 96.5 the Crab (WZEW HD2) and 92.5 the Soul (WZEW HD3) along with WNSP. And I don't know if other iHeart markets are like this, but the personalities on the stations are leveraged to the point of being literally sold out to their clients. You know them more from their client's commercials from their actual radio gigs!

Considering the shrinking airspace, the idea of narrowcasting to the same audience is the anthesis of broadcasting itself....serving a wide audience. Niches are easily served online where the bandwidth is unlimited and regulations are non-existent for the most part.

ATSC 3.0 is a fever dream of the broadcasters who choose to push it on to the consumer....who have virtually no way of adopting it even though stations have been pushing it out for the last 5 or so years. All it is at the moment is the same channels available in upscaled HDTV, aside from a few worthless subchannels no one will go out of their way to watch. And is any of this in 4k? I can't for the life of me even figure out a TV or even a dongle that's readily available to pick up these channels. Until it's an actually regulated thing (likely by force), it's dead in the water. Streaming delivers the 4K and is readily available through easily obtainable devices without the headache and bureaucy of the FCC. But it will cost you.

People like Matt Laubhan and James Spann are proof that they can start a new startup that people will watch. And when this happens to Tegna employees caught in the wave of consolidation, they will thrive in new platforms they join or create. And this will lead to the death of broadcast TV, not just the consolidation that is being ramrodded by companies like Gray and Nexstar.

Seeing as how Nexstar extorts their viewers for "free" television by gouging the pay TV systems for money, it's a recipe for disaster the way that is going.

And let's see what happens when Nexstar goes bankrupt because they're the last broadcaster who exists in a given place. Newspapers are at least dying a slow death with the marketplace. Radio has more "variety" even though it's all a bunch of jukeboxes and fringe voices. TV is being murdered against it's own regulations because someone doesn't like the truth being told. Let TV die with the market instead of murdering it by uber-consolidating it. That way, if a station or group goes bankrupt, the market can decide whether or not to bring it back either as a station or group.

The way things are heading, we have resorted to a "fight fire with fire" mentality. Remember when Media General refused to turn over WAGT to Gray a few years back in the Gray-Schurz merger? We could see this again as the Tegna staffers refuse to turn the keys over to Nexstar. Jobs are at stake and so are a diversity of voices in places where Nexstar gets a third, fourth, and even a FIFTH station in the same market. Unless people with a backbone start standing up, America as we know it is done for. Donald Trump is not a king. And his ass better be out of office by the next inauguration unless congress finds a LEGAL way to overturn the 22nd Amendment which limits elected presidents to TWO TERMS. End rant.

The shame in all of this is how you have two companies that couldn't be more opposite on how they see things for OTT. While Nexstar has moved light years this year alone, Tegna is thousands of years ahead with even creating their own 7-9am shows that run exclusively on their digital platforms. One of the most devastating side effects could be if Nexstar squanders all of this in favor of their piecemeal digital strategy. For a dying industry, they're still signing their death papers. And when they control all of the network affiliations in a place, the networks will revolt and they'll be left holding the bag when they walk. We're seeing all of the weather apps popping up all over the country, namely in Alabama and Mississippi. Local news is next when the market is decimated and there are still stories to be told.

If our administration ramrods this deal through as it is against our current regulations, expect it to be unceremoniusly overturned and even reversed by the next administration, whenever that is. And Sinclair (and others) could sue their way into the deal, getting some of the stations that should rightfully be divested or some cash as a consolation prize.

Here's hoping at the very least, should these stations be consolidated that Nexstar will keep separate shows with separate anchors, using a shared pool of reporters. That's how it's done in markets that have undergone consolidation. The other option is to pre-record another show to air alongside the other station's news. One studio with one staff and putting out the bare minimum on the secondary station. Then, there's the straight simulcast. Probably the worst option, but can be spinned in a way to make it look different than what's airing on the other station. Either way, it's a lose lose for everyone. More work for less unique product.