tyrannical bastard

...Or Nexstar is trying to kill off the network. After her disastrous stint on Megyn Kelly Today, all she has to do is say the wrong thing, and she can be the scapegoat...er...savior and WGN America will be back so fast, Bozo the Clown and Matlock reruns won't know what to do with themselves....

Sadly, like most places, Nexstar's "corner set in a box" is worlds better than what the competition has. I present the "Gray-hound" station over in Panama City Beach.... And as evidenced by their graphics, anything would "bee" better! So, um...I preesent thee, um next star set in the uh, box. I can only hope and pray that the original version of their article used some kind of auto-transcription from a sound byte, and wasn't actually transcribed that way manually. Although it would be funny to [sic] it up!

Well, the new set is here! Anyone want to take a guess what it is before I start posting pictures?

Man, that's sad. Jon Loufman is a fixture of Cleveland TV. I think he's been on every station (starting as a fill-in meteorologist) before getting permanent roles on WKYC and WOIO. He just comes off as a likeable person, so what's not to love about him?

Well, I guess recycling a graphics package from Richmond is better than having a station from Richmond produce your newscasts. (like WTVR did for WDCW under Tribune)... Still, shouldn't something in the nation's capitol be a little more original? But then again, this is Nexstar we're talking about.....

WTOK (and the Meridian, MS market) is finally getting a midday newscast! Their only competition is WMDN/WGBC which only puts out a 6 and 10pm newscast, as well as a 9pm on WGBC's Fox station. All former Waypoint stations, so these are produced from afar. At least Coastal Television hasn't put their mark on these stations....yet.

Sooner or later, the golden goose of trying to make something out of WGN America is going to dry up. Once the OTT providers start dropping it, it's toast. Even worse is when a network that is FREE over the internet and gets roughly twice the viewers as NN (NewsMax)... I'd be shocked if Nexstar succeeds in getting the CW and trying to put NN's content there....then again, no I wouldn't. I'd be curious to see how the WFLANow content does. It does a much better job of covering the news than NewsNation does....sort of a low-budget HLN before they became the "murder porn" channel and home of endless Forensic Files marathons....

I see that WKYC finally came to their senses and brought back "news" on Saturday nights at 11pm. How long did the "Mike Polk Experiment" last before getting changed?

In WALA's case, it's filling the two hours for the outgoing The Real at 10 and Nick Cannon at 11. Wasn't Judge Jerry cancelled as well? If they do two hours of Studio 10 and a 2 hour Midday newscast, that would be 8 1/2 hours of local news and programming. I know Gray is ramping up their local news and programming efforts, but this could be the most of any market in the country up to this point, and a sign of things to come for local TV as we know it...

WALA FOX 10 is expanding Studio 10 to TWO hours and adding a midday newscast this fall. Not sure if the midday news will be on at 11am or noon. Joe Emer announced this morning on Good Day Gulf Coast, and he will be moving to these new shows, bringing Eric Reynolds back to the program with Sarah Wall. Eric currently anchors the 4:30-7am portion. That's the first time I've seen a lifestyle program expand to 2 hours....has this happened anywhere else?

It's how WXIA's logo "should" look. The agency overthought the WXIA version way too much.

Changing ownership is a factor that has played into both WALA and WKRG. Prior sets were initiated under prior owners (Lin & Media General) and WALA's set refresh was a late addition by Meredith right before turning the keys over to Gray. With the change of owners has been a shuffle of managers (and change in priorities that goes along with that). Sets are often budgeted years in advance and the "bandaids" that were implemented were able to fix things while not spending for a totally new set. Hopefully for stations like WJW that were gifted (finally!) a new set in the end days of Tribune, that it will last for a while, (hopefully not as long as the set it replaced!)

WKRG even did a retrospective of pretty much ALL of their prior sets... https://youtu.be/en3oiNW7KDU A takeaway from this, in the 70s, WKRG took some inspiration from WAGA. Their 1970-90s logo was based on the 60's WAGA logo, and the 'TV5' logo (which I've never seen before) is virtually identical to the WAGA logo they used prior to their "A5" "5 Belongs" logo. Yes, it's a Nexstar set. Yes, it's a corner desk. Still better than any other set in the market. I get the idea that it's basically things around the walls and nothing in the middle, giving little depth to each section. Nexstsr seems to cram as many looks as they can into a single studio.

Looks like storage room B. Is Milton still getting a check, or has Uncle Perry "fixed the glitch?"

Graham is well within their right to deny such a merger, since virtually their entire commercial competiton will be tied to Apollo, and that these stations have most of the networks. If one of the networks was to bolt from the Tegna or current Cox stations, ABC would look good on Channel 17 once again. This way, each owner gets a secondary station to complement their primary affiliation (or the other way around since WFOX and WJXT are the senior partners and the normally "primary" networks play second fiddle. Jacksonville is a screwed up market all because of Allbritton swiping ABC from Media General. Then they bombed and sold out to Gannett. Then Post-Newsweek cheaped out on CBS and lost them to Clear Channel. In an alternate universe, had all these companies stayed the course, Sinclair would have kept WJXX, or gotten the Newport stations, or Nexstar would still have Channel 17 through the MG merger, not because of an earlier divestiture. The ownership picture would be a lot more diverse and not as clashing as it is today.

"firing" CBS is a ballsy move in Atlanta, especially with WUPA being a CBS O&O and virtually the entire CBS network being available to the streaming public via Paramount+. But making something of Channel 46 would ultimately be the best move. One false move, and "CBS Atlanta" will exist on WUPA, and they would be glad to push CW to a subchannel there. Years ago when WAGA switched to Fox and CBS needed a new home, branding was a must, so viewers could find the network. Just by going UHF in these markets like Atlanta, CBS took a hit that took a while to recover from as a whole, Today, the threat looms where ABC content can be shipped off to Disney+ (like DWTS), NBC content to Peacock, and Paramount+ basically being a network home for the streamers (who watch CBS content). FOX has Tubi, but the split with Disney still took some shows with them (the ones produced by 21st Century that ended up under Disney) so their ties to OTT aren't as strong as the others, and bleed more than they think to Disney.... Back to WGCL, they have a great opportunity ahead of them given Gray's dedication and investment in Atlanta. So many false starts under Meredith, so hopefully this move pays off.

So in other words, an expensive ratings boondoggle that's continued to bleed talent and whatever viewers they had? In all seriousness, hopefully this is where Gray makes it work for them. But history has proven that as these mega groups impose their "way" onto an ascending profile of stations, their "way" takes precedent over the tried and true of the stations they've picked up along the way. And any actual success is totally dependent on the declines of others, or who is not losing viewers the fastest.

I hope it's a totally new look and not one of the current Gray packages in circulation. Being the flagship Gray station should command something to not only compete in Atlanta but to be a station to be envied by the rest of the group. Then again, even WVUE looks like a middle market Gray station now. And look how Gray handled WOIO, with the "sister" package that Meredith later ran with WSMV and their siblings. I believe the current set goes back to 2014 and the change from "CBS Atlanta" back to CBS 46.

It's more of a backdrop than a set. There's no dimension whatsoever to the background. It's just there. It has to be some kind of adapted hand-me-down taken from one of the old Raycom stations and shipped up to Presque Isle under Gray. Even the keywall seems narrow, like it was originally for 4x3 use. To get a full 16x9 shot on that, you would have to zoom in pretty far unless there's some good clipping going on (and it that's not the case, you would see it on TV for sure!)

That's good to hear. I figured that a potential move to San Antonio would be overkill, especially since that operation handles their 3 stations and does news for Winston-Salem. Hopefully they were compensated well for the eminent domain to overtake their current facility.

I don't think Comcast/NBCU has EVER had a retransmission spat get into a dispute where channels are pulled. They simply say "Yes" and just tack on the fee to the customer. All we've seen is distant NBC affiliates getting pulled in favor of their O&Os.... Based on TVNewsCheck's Top 30 list for station groups, Tegna is now #3 behind Gray and ahead of Sinclair with only 51 stations, 39% actual and 32% FCC discounted reach, and $2.88 Billion in revenue. That outpaces Sinclair's $2.78B total but lags behind Gray's $3.3B. $1.5B of that is advertising, and the rest is retransmission. https://tvnewscheck.com/business/article/nexstar-still-no-1-gray-scripps-allen-busy-buyers/

Well, an established network of broadcast stations would be a GREAT place to launch an all-news channel that virtually ANYONE can watch over the air, FOR FREE! But this is Nexstar we're talking about, the company that invented shaking down cable companies for the privilege of carrying their programming. So why should another "Fair and Balanced" news channel they created be any different? There's nothing like it out there so it should rake in the subscribers and retrans dollars...right? Then again, WGN America would be nice to have back....if they went back to when they actually carried WGN Chicago's newscasts....Heck, just rebroadcast the WGN Morning News and put Tom Skilling on at night, and it would be ratings gold!

Sinclair (Deerfield) may take issue to that, and may already have the rights to the name. WSTR in Cincinnati had been "Star 64" for much of it's history from 1990-98 and ever since 2009. Wasn't The Movie Channel also known as "Star" in it's early days as well?

CW would just be another name, despite any future obsolescence. Even with CBS (Columbia Broadcast System), it doesn't really mean anything anymore, since the "Columbia" it was a part of (the record company) was sold off in 1988, and it, along with the unrelated "Columbia Pictures" were both sold to Sony in 1987 and 1989.

Over in Central/Mountain, most CBS affiliates air Y&R at 11am, allowing for a 12pm news and B&B at 12:30 to round out the hour. Many of these stations have just as dominant of a noon show than if TPIR was at 11 (it's at 10am). LMAD seems like the wild card that goes between 2/3 pm and 9/10am depending on the market (and time zone). It seems the last time the networks were willing to give the time back to their affiliates was back in the 80s/90s when all the game shows started dropping like flies. Even when all of the soaps starting disappearing a decade or so ago, the networks kept the time and put on the cheaper "filler" shows we have to this day. The lone exceptions are things like ABC dumping "Port Charles" and NBC giving up on the "Later" shows for either a repeat of Nightly News or a late news rebroadcast. Back to "if/when" the CW ends up under Nexstar. Unless they royally piss off a network on a major scale, they're not going to dump their major affiliations. It's a good duopoly filler to be able to have a network and to chart their own course with it. The only churn could be the other groups who want out because their competitors don't want to be afilliated with a network owned by the said competitor.