tyrannical bastard

It says something about the state of broadcast syndication when first-run shows go away, they're replaced by their repeats.

Any updates to "Fox 5 Zanesville?" Spoke too soon... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZjK-fad-S8 Basically slapping the "Fox 5" branding on a WHIZ newscast. Complete with the new WHIZ logo.

With Dr. Phil, The People's Court and Judge Mathis ending this season, that pretty much blows out WALA's remaining daytime schedule. They do news from 4:30-9am, Studio 10 from 9-11am and an hourlong Midday newscast at 11am. Judge Mathis runs twice at noon and 1pm, People's Court runs at 2, and Dr. Phil runs at 3. Followed by news from 4-6pm as well as a 9pm and half-hour 10pm show. Aside from Wheel/Jeopardy, FOX primetime, and some off-net sitcoms after 10:30, that's all that's left outside of local programming. Many other stations could be in the same boat and could possibly KVVU-ize their news output.

Marquee has introduced a new look at WHIZ in Zanesville, Ohio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkiZWDuwNOE The graphics are a major improvement. Set is blah (basically a monitor on a brick wall). And the technical issues are rampant, since this is probably automation, and in a place like Zanesville, it's a 180 from the way things may have been done for YEARS....

Not to mention before Sharyl Attkinson and Lara Logan went off the deep end.....

My lord...the CBS Evening News has been a dumpster fire ever since Scott Pelley "stepped down" from the anchor desk....and an underground mine fire burning out of control since Jeff Glor was given the boot. It makes Katie Couric's days look like quality television...and even how Dan Rather tanked the show in the 80s and 90s still look respectable.

If these groups (and potentially others) follow suit, I think Nexstar is prepared to subchannel CW in markets where they only have a single station. And if they can't secure another affiliate? Put it on cable (like the WB 100+) and tie it into the retransmission rights of NewsNation, because starting up another cable channel in this day and age is a great idea, right?

And WFXL's newscasts have mostly originated out of WGXA in Macon, save for some local reporters in Albany.

Nothing but a way to have total control of "Fox 28" under Sinclair. Columbus does not have and never had enough stations to permit a legal duopoly (or even an LMA) which is what WTTE is/was. Sinclair traded up to WSYX when they purchased River City Broadcasting, and since WTTE had to be divested, instead of selling it to another party, they sold it to CEO David Smith's mother (as Glencairn) and after she passed, her trust controls Cunningham Broadcasting. Then when LIN divested WWHO, they sold it to Stephen Mumblow, who let Sinclair run his station as well.

There is one roundabout tie to channel 33 in the 33/40 gaggle of frequencies. WSES (the former WCFT "33") on actual channel 36 and virtual channel 33 is one of the ATSC 3.0 stations serving Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and it carries the 17.2 feed of 58.1 in 3.0. So.....yeah. Then again, for damaged goods like WWJ, best to simulcast a streaming service called "CBS Detroit" as opposed to starting a news department on CBS 62. Maybe the 62 carries a little extra baggage because of the movie UHF? But moreso by the desperate moves to keep CBS in Detroit at the time, even preparing to pipe in adjacent affiliates and resulting in ABC buying stations in Toledo and Flint at the time because of the fear of losing WXYZ (which never happened) If you think about it, the fear of WXYZ going CBS really set the ball rolling for a lot of the secondary affiliation switches because of the Fox/New World deal. That forced Scripps to go all in with ABC, which caused Westinghouse to go all in with CBS, which caused the swap in Philadelphia, and so on....

WWHO is the 3.0 station for the Columbus market. All they would have to do to keep the other subchannels status quo is switch 53.1 to something else. Since 3.0 is such a coordinated effort between broadcasters (especially Sinclair & Nexstar), there has to be a level of cooperation and sharing. Nexstar taking away the CW from others may be a problem, but they still would have to "make nice" with Sinclair because of all of the hosting and sharing of channels. I"m surprised the FCC hasn't chimed in on how a station like WWHO could be exempt from ownership limits since it is a host station and that their originating program streams are effectively digital subchannels on other stations in the market.

WKYC wasn't broke when Tegna decided to "fix it". They tried the standard Tegna approach for a short while before deciding to reinvent the wheel for the purposes of chasing younger viewers. They've backed off in some ways, but they trashed the station in 2019. There's still some good Tegna stations behind the music and graphics....or in WNEP's case, just the graphics. Then there's ones like WWL that have fallen due to other moves forced upon them (like clearing CBS This Morning/CBS Mornings) and WVUE's ability to do what WWL used to do. And stations like WBNS, that have been owned forever by the founding family who invested heavily in them, only to be assimilated into a company that radically changes the look and feel of the station. This turns stations like WSYX into the "stable" station, and Sinclair's long investment into it is finally paying off. Believe me, I know the disaster that is Advance/Newhouse. You think the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com is bad? There's AL.com, which was THREE papers covering Huntsville (Times), Birmingham (News) and Mobile (Press-Register). They pioneered the 3-day printing schedule a decade ago. They will stop printing newspapers at the end of February. They did a decade ago what Tegna did to WKYC. It's basically a Birmingham operation with a Mobile bureau with a reporter or two for the entire area. There's a good story here and there, but it's turned into a meme factory that floods the internet with shareable content instead of actually covering the news.

Dispatch always held the advantage thanks to their early ownership of assets. That way, they could own EVERYTHING (radio, tv, newspapers, banks, and shoe stores) hence the WBNS call letters. By the time the FCC rolled out ownership bans on shared assets (radio/newspaper/tv), WBNS was grandfathered in and so was Taft's ownership of the WTVN stations. That lasted until Taft's restructuring, which broke that advantage, and WTVN-TV was spun off as WSYX. Nationwide couldn't have picked them up because of their WNCI/WRFD ownership, unless they sold them off. They hitched their fortunes to radio and opted to sell their existing TV stations to Young. Ironically, in the breakup of GreatAmerican/Citicasters, WKRC benefited from the union of the TV station with Jacor's radio sisters (and later Clear Channel). Columbus was always under-stationed and didn't really expand beyond 4, 6 and 10 until Sinclair's predecessor signed on WTTE. Later came WSFJ, and WWAT/WWHO. Sinclair's aggressiveness found a way to "keep" WTTE when they bought WSYX, and later took advantage of when LIN was selling WWHO with their JSA/SSA with Manhan Media. I really think Nexstar is going to take the CW with them when their agreement with WWHO (and other Sinclair stations) is up. By putting it on 4.2, it's their chance to compete against Sinclair with another channel that can counterprogram WSYX and WBNS, and compete against "FOX 28" in primetime news. Had Gannett still been the owner of the Tegna stations, I think they would be slightly better off than they are today. WKYC is a disaster under Tegna, when under the earlier guidance of Gannett, rose to the top of the Cleveland market for the first time in decades. Gannett instead decided to become the Nexstar of the newspaper industry, acquiring virtually all of the major newspapers in Ohio except for Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton and Youngstown. Their consolidation (under GateHouse) really consolidated their presence in places like Akron and Columbus, buying up the community newspapers (Dix) and the Beacon Journal (from Black Press), and using their existing Gannett holdings in Central Ohio to supplement their purchase of the Dispatch from the Wolfes.

When Media General took over the 4 NBC O&Os they wanted to dump, they got in way over their heads. They sold off KIMT, KWCH, WIAT and WDEF to make the down payment. They later sold their smallest stations to Hoak (WMBB & KALB), Nexstar (WJWB/WCWJ) and Morris (WTVQ) to get some more cash. WJAR was probably the only station that didn't tank under their control. They didn't move the needle at WNCN, and succeeded in tanking WCMH and WVTM (while WIAT climbed out of the basement for the first time EVER after their divestiture). This, the recession, and their unholy devotion to newspapers until Soo Kim came knocking (when they unloaded them to Warren Buffett and the Tampa Tribune to another party) was what led Media General to nearly filing for bankruptcy along with a series of layoffs and furloughs, even after others recovered from the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009... While NBC treated their smaller markets like garbage, the product still outranked whatever Sinclair was putting out at the time. And yes, WCMH got lots of hand-me-downs from NBC itself. I believe even their studio cameras were once used for Saturday Night Live in studio 8H at 30 Rock. Sinclair has always been "profitable" in Columbus. Having the Buckeyes on WSYX (on both ABC and FOX) has been a windfall for them, and the way they engineered their dominance in the marketplace clearly gives them the edge that WCMH and WBNS have not been able to match.

The irony in that is that WTTE was their second station outside of Baltimore. They "sold" it to Glencairn/Cunningham right after Sinclair bought River City (and WSYX). To stay a step ahead of the FCC (and likely the DOJ), they moved "FOX 28' over to WSYX and made Cunningham's station a truly independent operation with no Sinclair programming at all. In a way, Sinclair's growth in Columbus has stayed constant and grown a little, while WCMH and WBNS tanked under their corporate regimes. WCMH"s damage was under Media General and the destruction of WBNS was largely at Tegna's behest after DECADES of local ownership under Dispatch.

South Bend (WSBT) originates news for both WNWO in Toledo and WOLF in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton with the SAME ANCHORS. Logistically, it makes sense since WNWO has a 6 and 11 while WOLF only has a 10pm. On the other hand, WSYX is the crown jewel in Sinclair's fold, probably even more so than their flagship, WBFF in Baltimore.

I guess the new saying is that 4 and 6 is far greater than 10! Oh how the mighty have fallen. It's clear that Tegna is the final nail in 10TV's coffin. I have to wonder how much better (or worse) WTOL is faring in Toledo against WTVG. There's no hope for WNWO now that it's a South Bend operation pumping "local news" into Toledo.

What makes it all worse is that they kept parts of the old graphics (namely the weather GFX) that don't mesh with the new look at all.

It's a good attempt, but it's lacking in a lot of ways. The graphics need to be bigger, bolder, and some of the animations need to be a little more pronounced. A little too minimalist, especially for a market like Northern Michigan. The old look, while it looked a lot like the CBS Nexstar package without all of the 3D, captured more of a feel of the vast area that the two stations cover. Even the simple touch of using the county maps in the background highlighted this. And given the scenery of the area, it's something to be seen, and you would think a local owner like theirs would use it to their advantage instead of trying to create another Tegna clone.

In an alternate universe, let's say that Gray screws the pooch with CBS and a station formerly known as "CBS 46". If that brought down their affiliation with WOIO, it could potentially reverse the swap from 1994 where Fox returns to "Nineteen" and CBS "comes home" to WJW TV8. Then again, that may put WJW's standing in jeopardy, since much of their success has been at counter-programming the networks (even in CBS's waning days, pre-empting parts of the CBS schedule, and pushing David Letterman ahead an hour) Bottom line, unless the station is a dog to begin with, I don't think Nexstar is going to push aside a major affiliation at their behest. Now if the network pulls it, that's another story., Remember that WTTV was prepared to push The CW to 4.2 after they secured the CBS affiliation. Tribune relented and sold it to WISH. Nexstar may easily take it back should their deal be up at WISH. Columbus would be a coup as well if WCMH puts it on at 4.2 since it would give them another station to compete against the gaggle of Sinclair stations they've assembled. Might even force Steven Mumblow to give up on "WWHO" if they get stripped of The CW. WWHO itself is the 3.0 station for the market where the 1.0 resides on WTTE's spectrum.

I don't think Nexstar is that stupid to put stations like "FOX 8" in jeopardy.... Then again, they lost all those Fox affiliatons about a decade ago (of which they got back the one in Fort Wayne and bought their way back in Springfield) And lest we forget about poor WJMN....

IF The CW bolts WUAB for WJW 8.2 (or even, heaven forbid, Nexstar buys WBNX to make them a CW O&O)....WUAB would probably morph into 19+, since it's basically been the overrun station for WOIO, and the patent disregard of WUAB itself goes all the way back to Raycom... It's best hope now is to be a news-intensive station to compete against WJW. Then again, if WUAB gets stripped of the CW for WJW, it would leave BOTH WUAB and WBNX without affiliations. The upfronts are going to be REAL interesting this spring....what will Nexstar have up it's sleeve?

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And with Nexstar's streaming service they can...... ...oh wait...

They're just begging the non-Nexstar stations to drop the CW so it can be brought in-house. Even if it's on a bit-starved subchannel....they'll just find a paying home on cable, right? At this rate, I wouldn't put anything past the suits at Nexstar just to tank things on purpose so they can swoop in and have everything to itself.