tyrannical bastard

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.

For a Gray station, this set is pretty good. For the market size, it's very impressive. At least they got something halfway decent instead of the "Gray-hound" bus station look that ended up in Panama City and Meridian. Curious to see what Hattiesburg is getting. They also switched the graphics. It took a minute for me to notice, since all these Gray looks run together. It's actually the old package WJHG had before they "bee-came" a honey-comb clone like WTVY, WTVM, WTOK, and others.

Longtime WKRG sports director Randy Patrick is "stepping down" this Friday after 43 years at WKRG (starting in radio) and the sports director since the early 90s. Insiders claim that his contract was not renewed. Nexstar strikes again. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/1/9/longtime-nexstar-anchor-is-pushed-out

The graphic package (itself) is a hot mess, a definite downgrade from the prior look. Logo is meh, it makes it look like a Nexstar station for sure....severing the last link between Media General by ditching the almost-20 year old crescent logo. I've noticed that ABC affiliates are opting to roll out new or modified logos with the newer "ABC" variant to it around the time affiliation contracts are up for renewal (Nexstar and ABC are overdue to be renewed any day now). I wonder if the other networks are holding groups to the same fire. Speaking of affiliation renewals, Uncle Perry is probably playing poker with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald and Daisy Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Pete and Bob Iger as we speak...

Vaughan as well. WYTV and WBDT are affected.

When they can't even carry their own content on HBOmax. Just heard that they let all of the Looney Tunes cartoons go away. THEIR OWN CARTOONS.... At some point, they may pull another A.A.P. sale...this was the sale of their pre-1948 content to Associated Artists Productions. Later sold to United Artists, then merged with MGM to form MGM/UA....then Ted Turner bought MGM/UA and resold the studio to Kirk Kerkorian (while keeping all of the content)...and when Turner sold out to Time Warner, voila! The WB (and pre-1986 MGM/UA) is all under Warner Brothers again.

I saw this pop up on WLOX 13.1 a few weeks back... This would have been after their 10pm news on weekend, so it was probably a mis-punch by master control or mis-direction by the broadcast automation.

You know it's bad when networks (like NBC & ABC) are moving shows to their online service (DOOL to Peacock, DWTS to Disney+) and moving digital content to replace it like NBC News Daily and Top Story with Tom Llamas. Fox O&Os and affiliates are virtually all-local during the day aside from 1-4 pm and overnights depending on the station and timezone. KVVU in Las Vegas has virtually achieved this and several other stations aren't far behind them. The other networks (their affiliates) want a piece of this and that's why we had the rumor of the 10pm hour going away. I'm surprised the networks didn't do this years earlier when they cancelled most of their soap operas, instead, replacing them with talk, news and game shows. Even the game shows have taken over ABC. Even the ones that may precede the primetime lineup that have been syndicated since the beginning of time (even going back 40-ish years). News and Sports have little repeat value to them, that's why they're all over the networks. Cable TV may as well be dead in the water since it's the "bundle" that's holding it all together, even if all of the content could live on it's own streaming service. If this had happened back in the 40s like the movie industry, it's vertical integration all over again.

Truly unprecedented. It looks like they are filling the hour until 10/11pm (on ABC) so local stations can start their local news on time. They definitely made the right call on suspending this game until both teams feel they are able to play again.

Paxson was especially destructive in both Akron and Canton in terms of putting their programming in the Cleveland television market. To do this, they pretty much destroyed the local television that was serving the Akron (WAKC) and Canton (WOAC) areas. Paxson's first target was WOAC, a locally run indepdendent primarily targeting the Canton Area. In 1993, they got carriage in Akron on Warner Cable (thanks to the new must-carry rules). I believe the station was sold to another owner who LMA-ed the station to Paxson. Entertainment programming and local operations (and all of the staff were fired) in the fall of 1995 and inTV began running infomercials 24-7. While this was going on, Paxson was working on acquiring WAKC from ValueVision, who had acquired WAKC from the Berk Family only the year before. The initial plans were to put home shopping on 24/7, but due to existing commitments to ABC until the end of 1996, was forced to run the station as is. After Paxson took control in February 1996 and let the ABC affiliation lapse at the end of the year, they added the same inTV programming WOAC was already running. Somewhere along the line, WOAC was sold to Shop At Home, and they dropped the Paxson programming and went Home Shopping 24/7. Scripps ended up buying WOAC several years later (with the Shop At Home network) when duopolies became legal. Still, I don't think any operations were ever integrated with WEWS. Scripps then got out of the Home Shopping business with the wind-down of SAH, and their SAH stations were sold to Multicultural Television, and infomercials came back. WAKC morphed into WVPX and went with the full transition into a PAX station. WEWS did weather cut-ins for them before the NBC (and WKYC) partnership began, leading to an Akron/Canton newscast that lasted about 3-4 years before PAX changed to "I". Years later after WOAC morphed into TCT-owned WRLM, TBN sold their spectrum of longtime O&O WDLI , merged their license onto WVPX's spectrum, and sold the WDLI license to Ion as well. For some reason, both WDLI and WVPX were both sold to Inyo, and not to Scripps when they purchased Ion. Likely, the dual license of WDLI and WVPX would be better to be kept to themselves, for must-carry purposes.

Most channels are turn-key jukeboxes these days. Look at virtual OTT providers like PlutoTV. You have entire "channels" of old shows. Trying to watch the 24-hour look of "A Christmas Story", both TBS and TNT are basically barker channels for the latest Superhero movies and HBOMax. Aside from sports and news, the entertainment channels are useless since all of the content can be watched without commmercial interruption and visual cluttter promoting some program they want you to watch. I can see why Scripps wants to focus on news and sports. In terms of channels, Ion is like the "Ollie's Bargain Outlet" of TV shows. Just off-network runs of mediocre TV shows no one else wants anymore.

The sad thing is, Media General and Tribune had really good streaming platforms through their use of Livestream (now owned by Vimeo) and Media General even had many of their stations on the NewsOn service. Nexstar has stripped much of this away with a very web-centric strategy, making their streams confined to websites and phones, and not easily translating to OTT. Fast forward to now, and the major broadcasters have pretty much put their stations news products on air 24/7 with their existing newscasts, re-airings, and other exclusive content that seamlessly works into its own virtual channel. It allows for new and targeted revenue streams that can reach viewers down to the ZIP code. And Nexstar is taking what they have and making it less valuable, all in the name of shaking down every Cable customer and cable company to squeeze every penny out of what should be a free service to the local viewer.

The next news theme you'll hear on WNEP is the one-time airing of "Nearer My God To Thee", presumably a copy from Ted Turner when the world ends....

That right there is the fastest way the networks are going to pull their affiliations off of Nexstar. NBC is a big one. Nexstar had better behave or they're going to get what's coming to them and quick. Then again, what would this world like had Meredith gotten their way with Media General and Sinclair absorbing Tribune?