tyrannical bastard

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?

...and be sure to put us in your top 8 on Myspace! And for breaking news updates 24 hours a day, call our breaking news hotline...just 99 cents a minute!

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.

Coming this fall to U Sixty Tw.....er.....THE CW!

Here's the story from WTOK about their new set. It cost around $400K, with half of that invested into the technology side of things. https://www.wtok.com/2023/01/18/wtok-news-11-debuts-new-set/ It's better than I expected. Not quite as good as WLOX's new digs, but much better than the bus-station look I was expecting.. (it's there to a degree, but it's more set-like)

Just re-do one of the promos with that "Loving Living Local" song...because it's Nexstar.....right?

If Jerry Springer teamed up with a wrestling company to put on a news discussion show, I give you.... BEAT THE PRESS!

It's a loss leader for all of the money Uncle Perry extracts from pay TV providers for their local TV stations. Still, that profit is likely a drop in the bucket compared to all of the debt they're carrying around....

WGN as well for keeping their app and live streams. As for WJW, it's another blow. IF (and that's a major IF) Nexstar swipes the CW for themselves (for 8.2 or otherwise), that's basically telling WUAB to fill in the holes with newscasts. And with Gray's robust streaming platforms....

"In order to fulfill our obligations to our cable and satellite partners..." Give me a break. This is a money grab, pure and simple, to punish anyone who is not paying to watch a Nexstar station. Not to mention out-of-town viewers who would benefit from being able to stream a live newscast from afar... ...and OTA customers who CAN'T pick up their local Nexstar station... If this is some kind of actual deal, Uncle Perry may be right up there with Kevin McCarthy. If he was the one running Nexstar last year, he would have lost a lot more than WJMN's CBS affiliation. I've noticed that ABC's deal with Nexstar has passed (it was only supposed to go through 2022). I wonder how that's going for them?

My thoughts: - Graphics are way too busy and jumbled. - I HATE THE FONT. And that goes for all of the Nexstar stations using this package as well. Nexstar should have taken away this look (or provided a transitional package) when they sold the station to Dujuan McCoy. - WAY too much 3D. I thought the 2015 look was the upgrade for a second and thought it looked a million times better. Flat and simple is the new thing and not over-done, gratuitous 3D. It's so 2009-Nexstar. - The moire effect on the video desk is very jarring. What's the point of having it if it's going to look like garbage? Between the Nexstar and ex-Scripps looks being used on this station, it's like they went down to the Goodwill and bought themselves some used graphics packages and went to town trying to make it look unique.

Back in the analog era, the signals used to overlap a lot more between Dayton and Cincinnati (and even Louisville). IIRC, stations like WSTR and WXIX even had translators in the Dayton area. Dayton, in reality was the market that Akron/Canton never was, since they were blessed with VHF allocations from the get-go, while Akron never got theirs mostly because Pittsburgh was under-stationed, and didn't sign on most of their stations until the late 50's. And other market's tom-foolery with their daytime schedules made alternate affiliates a nice thing to have if they wanted to see a network show that another affiliate pre-empted. Digital-wise, when the stations shifted to UHF, the contours shrank, and likely in the repack, shrank even more because of close-spacing of frequencies. This makes DXing virtually impossible, because what was once likely a distant station, is on the same frequency as a local one, and when the skies act up, can cause havoc.

Touche. They also had the similar variant with a different font, before the prior "blue" package. Zucker was the one who started a decade ago. The years are beginning to run together these days...

They've needed new graphics for over a decade. It's a vestige of Jeff Zucker that needs to go. When he claims that their version of the font Helvetica is custom only to CNN, it just goes how much sh*t that one man can stack.

Sort of reminds me of a bank branch... Better than a bus station, I guess.