tyrannical bastard

Even if NBC (and ABC) drop 10pm programming and compete with Fox stations with newscasts, there's still plenty of dayparts where Fox can counter the networks with local news. Most notably, 7-9 am when Today and Good Morning America are on. NBC ties up 9-11am with even more Today and ABC stations are locked in at 11am with The View. CBS may be the first to drop morning news if they finally give up on the 7-9am hour after decades of failure. And WWL would have the last laugh!

I believe Spectrum does have both in Muskingum, I don't know if WHIZ blacks out the duplicate content on WCMH though. For all intents and purposes, WTTE itself can likely remain, because it is no longer affiliated with FOX 28, because of the end-around Sinclair pulled to put "FOX 28" on WSYX 6.3, and directly under Sinclair's control instead of longtime shell partner Cunningham, who now runs WTTE themselves as a repository of sub channels with little involvement of Sinclair. FOX is pretty quick about pulling duplicate affiliations in many other markets, especially when a local affiliate signs on for the first time. This means that viewers in Muskingum County will get the new WHIZ affiliate, while all the other surrounding counties in the Columbus DMA will still get WSYX 6.3...aka "FOX 28" WHIZ (NBC) has a lot of cable coverage in the surrounding counties, but the new FOX arrangement likely won't transfer, unless they start local news casts and/or black out the FOX content outside of Muskingum County. Muskingum County will still get WSYX 6.1 "ABC 6", which means they'll still have the same newscasts they got on Fox 28, since Sinclair uses the same news department to make news for both stations.

Realistically, WTTE (and WSYX) were the only stations capable of serving Zanesville as a FOX affiliate in the absence of a local one. Given their unofficial status, they still showed up in the ratings since they were the only viable option. Now that WHIZ has the rights to FOX in Zanesville, expect "FOX 28" to go away on the pay TV side in Muskingum County and any residual viewership will be via antenna. Even east of Zanesville is still part of the Columbus DMA and Sinclair still has the rights there.

But Sinclair apparently had an official status with WTTE (and later WSYX 6.3) as the "de facto" Fox affiliate for the market. YouTube TV even carried them. It's only Muskingum County, so it shouldn't be too big a hit to FOX 28's ratings...

Regarding Columbus and NightBeat, at the time WBNS was getting their clock cleaned by WCMH at 10pm (and other time slots) so they decided to shake up the 11pm show. This was when NBC still owned WCMH (and now we can say when 10TV was owned by the Wolfes) ... never could we imagine that WSYX and WTTE would rule the ratings and 10TV sells out to Tegna... But back to the recycled news titles. Cleveland had two times of "Action News". WKYC used "Action 3 News" from the 1970s to 1985-ish (likely because Virgil Dominic left WKYC to move to Atlanta for a few years, only to resurface at WJ(K)W to make them more NBC-like with "NewsCenter8" ). Then came the WOIO variant we all know and love until the "Cleveland 19" disaster. Same can be said for "Eyewitness News" in Cleveland. KYW (in their Cleveland years) was one of, if not the first to use the title for their newscasts. Later, WEWS would pick it up and use it all the way until 1990. The one thing that surprised me was how short the "Good Day" brand lasted in Cleveland. It only lasted from 1994 to 1995, from when they went FOX to the "ei8ht is news" era. Even before Fox got a hold of the station. That move of desperation was probably the one thing that kept Fox from implementing it at the time, coupled with WJW's rise to perpetual dominance in the ratings....

In the 2000s, WBNS in Columbus also revamped their 11 pm news as NightBeat, using a totally different graphics package and harder cuts of This is Your News. I believe it lasted until they went HD in 2007 and shed the 10TV Eyewitness News branding and became 10TV News HD. Here's their 2003 debut. The subject of the lead story, a wanted fugitive showed up at the 10TV studios right at the top of the show to give her side of the story.

How could we forget some station in Cleveland with such eye-popping "News" titles as... Go! What's New What's Now Front Row What's Next Any guesses? I"ll give you until the count of one...two......

I'm all for stations doing a 9/10p newscast to compete with Fox and MNTV/CW stations with only two hours of "prime". It would come in handy as a universal alternative to whenever Fox has sports on during the time. The only problem would be for those JSA/SSA stations that are already "maxed out" on news programming under the 15 percent rule. That's a high profile timeslot to just "fill in" with something else, and cutting from elsewhere in the schedule would seriously jeopardize their output if they already do a full compliment of newscasts. Maybe this could force their hand to "move" to the parent station to be under complete ownership? We shall see... Simulcasting shouldn't be a problem for stations like WRAL/WRAZ, although losing the WTVD newscast on WLFL does make them the only game in town during that time. It could be an issue for stations like WDSM and WRLH who rely on an NBC station (WHO and WWBT, respectively) who produce the FOX newcasts for them. That could force the FOX stations to get a new news-producing partner if the NBC station does a newscast for themselves, when it used to be a newscast they were "contracted" to make for them.

In the last few days, Nexstar and NewsNation have covered debates in Michigan (gubernatorial) and Georgia (senate), with all of the same. It does feel a little extreme the way that Nexstar is going about it, but then again, some of the races have enough shock value (especially with Herschel Walker flashing a badge) to let Nexstar "own it" so it could come back to haunt them, rather than providing a "clean feed" for others to use at their own will.

If NBC really wants to cut an hour, do we really need FOUR hours of Today? Yes, it's news and in the morning, but i'm sure the affiliates wouldn't mind getting an hour or two back in the AM. Maybe ditch the 9am hour and make Hoda & Jenna it's own show. Megyn Kelly should have spelled the end of that timeslot.

Thanks for catching that! I don't know what I was thinking. WFLA is airing it in Tampa for sure.

We'll see how Sinclair behaves in Florida in a few weeks with the Florida gubernatorial debate. It's originating out of West Palm Beach at WPEC. It would have been yesterday, but it was rescheduled due to the effects of Hurricane Ian on the state. Here's a breakdown on who's airing it. Nexstar gets Tampa and Panama City. Cox gets Jacksonville and Orlando. WFOR is airing it in Miami and WBBH is airing it in Ft. Myers. All the other Sinclair markets in Florida are airing it on their stations.

It wouldn't surprise me for Nexstar to have kept it to themselves and relied on NewsNation to fill in the rest of Ohio and the nation, because it's a such a great news channel with millions of viewers....right?

Curious to see how the Ohio Senate debate did on NewsNation, vs. the Ohio Nexstar stations that carried it (WJW, WCMH, WDTN, WKBN/WYTV) as well as border stations WTRF in Wheeling and WOWK in Charleston/Huntington...

So far, I like it more than the others that WSET and WEAR got. Better use of video walls and I like how they worked in the "mountains" at the top. The stone accents on the others are a little too much. This is much more streamlined.

I couldn't resist....

They'll learn their lesson soon enough, if they keep up their current antics.

Well, after AT&T, Verizon and numerous other pay TV providers dropped the One America "News" network, it looks to be seeking the free-tv route.... https://www.nexttv.com/news/misinformation-finds-a-way-oan-goes-ota-re-invents-itself-as-broadcast-subchannel The good news about this is, the low-powered stations that this network will land on should be easily picked up by the tinfoil hats of their average viewer.....

The DOJ, and even the FCC should force companies like Dish to some form of consent degree, where notification is required. FCC would be involved in the case of broadcast stations, especially since ABC still has their O&Os. Are ABC affiliates affected like they were on YouTubeTV back in December?

There should be some degree of transparency when these contracts are due to expire, and ample warning if an agreement has not been reached yet.

Sadly, the WFNA calls still exist, on the CW station run by Nexstar's WKRG in Mobile-Pensacola. It was launched when they were WALA"s counterpart under Lin. And yes, they infer what you're thinking. Even launched a marketking campaign around it....FnA baby! (Florida N Alabama, officially)

Curious to see what Gray's plans for the station are.... Could Telemundo Cincinnati be in the future? Maybe even something related to 3.0. it's basically been a subchannel repository for the last decade or so after losing out on the CW to WKRC 12.2. Speaking of WKRP, when's the last time that show's been shown on TV? At least the DVD release restored a lot of the original music that was stripped from later TV airings.... And one last thing, my fellow babies....

Depending on the outcome of damage and insurance coverage, could spell the end of WINK-TV's longstanding local ownership. It's amazing that Fort Myers has gone on as long as it has with two local ownership groups owning most of the stations in the market, leaving Scripps as the lone corporate owner there. The family that owns (and signed on) WINK is tied to the founder of the Cleveland Browns, Mickey McBride.

I remember during one of the storms in 2017 where WFTX had to evacuate to WFTS in Tampa. Given Scripps' expansion in the state with their stations in Miami and Tallahassee, you would think they would have a spare studio in each of their markets they could safely evacuate to should one of their markets become a target for an incoming storm. Not to dive too deep into speculation but if there are conditions with the Standard General-Tegna-Apollo deal, perhaps Scripps could also pick up a station or two in Jacksonville.

I don't know what is going on with WFTX. Back around 10pm, they were switching from what appeared to be a Florida 24 simulcast (basically looking like the OTT feed with countdowns during commercial breaks), regular programming, aborted live shots, some WFTS, and a makeshift chromakey studio. Did they evacuate to Tampa or choose another place to originate programming from? Last I checked they were basically in regular programming with weather crawls.