tyrannical bastard

Finally, WBNS with purple graphics makes sense! (Not in a good way though, it's basically a "stay at home" advisory for Franklin County, home of Columbus and 10TV.)

Well crud, I was looking forward to "Alexander Shunnarah Sports South" and "Back & Knee Brace Hotline Sports Midwest!!”

An update to the WLTZ "rumors". Gray has been running WLTZ since September 1 under a shared services agreement. https://publicfiles.fcc.gov/api/manager/download/bf4c70a0-0bd9-9080-893f-6fba6bdbc7a3/1d06a0db-30a4-477b-9c1e-a1fc2b835195.pdf I wonder if the low power station acquired in LaGrange could be used as a replacement for WLTZ in the future? Looking at their website the talent has been dropping like flies over the last few months. It's only a matter of time before WTVM begins newscasts there (if they haven't already)....

I'm all for customizing a package, if it looks good and not "hacked" together. Sometimes all it takes is changing an accent color or two. Of course, most of us on here have seen so many of these packs that you can tell when part of one is part of another, or if it's "ripped off" another. The average viewer will not likely notice such things.

Here's a promo for when he was the 11pm anchor at WAKC, which was then Akron's ABC affiliate alongside WEWS in Cleveland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olhxv2bbpXY A lot of people either worked early or started their careers there. Paxson shut down the news department in 1996 and dropped ABC the following year.

WPGA lives on, even after the original owners filed for bankruptcy in 2015. The Debtors-in-possession sold the station to Marquee, and now it's a repository of subchannels, with MeTV on the primary feed. It's probably the best outcome of all, even though it's likely trounced by WMAZ, but could be nipping at the heels of WGXA and WMGT, given their efforts to begin with.

WHEN it happens, it will be must-see-TV. To see him go down in flames 24/7 on the way he pushed his way into our heads would be the single most gratifying thing ever.

Agreed on WMGT. And to think that the WGXA situation was all because WPGA dropped ABC over "moral" issues, and that was a trainwreck of its own. I'm sure that Macon doing newscasts for Albany's WFXL stretches them even thinner. It's the darkside of Sinclair few talk about, especially in this part of the country where they literally stretch themselves thin just to put enough on the air for them to offer the illusion of doing newscasts. WBIR, although it's full on Tegna, still has a lot of the "folksy-ness" features that make it unique. And their WTNZ newscasts do not use the C-Clarity theme, but use Arnold's Canvas instead. I wonder if Lockwood has a hand in this?

Trump losing the election is what finally shut him up. The mainstream media is done with him and his followers will follow him to the fringes of the far-right. Even Fox News sort of came to their senses by calling Arizona well before the rest of the media world. As for CNN, it's going to be interesting. Jeff Zucker threw down the gauntlet with endless coverage over a single subject starting with the missing plane, and we all know what came up next. Well, at least we have the COVID mess for likely the next 6 months to keep CNN on their toes. So sad it's come to this.

If only WBNS and the other newly-minted Tegna stations had stood their ground. WBNS is literally a turtle on it's back these days, a shell of what it was when it was Dispatch owned. So much talent and experience has walked out the door in the past year. At least there's hope for the uber-dominant stations like WBIR, WMAZ and of course Newswatch 16. How WBNS ever got to that point is mystifying, although Dispatch likely played a hand over time as WSYX was slowly catching up to them.

Well, WNEP went there in a Talkback 16 segment. A viewer didn't like the NXT tease.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdj1DpAQ-CU

Bob Grip is anchoring the weekend 9pm newscast on WALA Fox 10. He retired back in January 2019 after a 30+ year tenure as primary anchor. I wonder if this is a temporary fill-in position, or if he's looking to come out of retirement? Soon after Mel Showers retired from WKRG last year, he filled in a few more times over the summer and hasn't been seen since. EDIT:. It's a temporary gig, and he may be on election night too.

Only the Mission stations. Not the Nexstar ones.

Looks like Dish is on a "mission" to dump the Nexstar sidecars of the same name. Haven't we been down this road before? https://keepmystation.com/kolr

Well, they could always play it up to try and obscure the fact that it's blatant vertical integration, like "...to enhance our opportunities with our content partners, we may experience a temporary disruption to our owned and operated channels..."

Well, since it is 2020, could Comcast/Xfinity have a retransmission consent issue with (gasp) itself?!?!?!??!?!? https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/comcast-could-lose-local-nbc-channels-more-in-carriage-disputes-with-itself-and-others/?fbclid=IwAR074B03v6DGumw6RHc98mHNYmUQQgfbjJ7Hqxe5_BWpCKAdpie-jBeeD0Y Looking at the list, Weigel and others are up in October and Hearst, Cox, Capitol/WRAL, Hubbard and NBC/Comcast are up in December.

Update on Hulu/Nexstar...the ABC affiliates have been pulled. Here's a notification from WMBB: https://keepmystation.com/wmbb

As if screwing up their chances to own the former Tribune stations wasn't enough. Nexstar got them fair and square and is now reaches twice as many people. Any other deal in the pipeline is going to be a lot more messy should they want to grow their station portfolio...that is, if they can even afford it now.

Mobile/Pensacola is live. Sinclair and Nexstar have lit up 3.0 service on WJTC and WFNA. WJTC's 3.0 channel has WPMI, WJTC and WEAR. WFNA's 3.0 channel has WKRG, WFNA and WFGX. On the 1.0 repack, WJTC's subchannels are now on WEAR. WFNA's subchannels are on WFGX. WPMI has WJTC's main feed and WKRG has WFNA's main feed. No action by Meredith, since they're on VHF and may feel the same about not launching with their current alottment on 9. Here's hoping they go UHF regardless like Tegna is doing in other markets. It was on WJTC's tower where the tower crew was stranded on Monday where one was killed and another injured from debris. I think the work was related to general tower maintenance and not the transition itself. WPMI reported that the workers were replacing a guy wire. The condition of the tower may have been affected by Hurricane Sally which caused a lot of damage in the area about a month ago, and pushed back the launch to this week.

Sinclair is really digging themselves into a hole on this one if they think they can muscle the OTT providers. These are more worthless now with all of the shutdowns and restrictions COVID has forced into the industry. It seems they are planning on launching their own OTT platform, either through Stirr or some other means. Let the sports fans pay for the RSNs. I remember back in the day the Sportschannel Ohio feed was a premium service and the extra Indians and Cavs games were scrambled. And they want to restructure the 8 BILLION in debt they have tied to this deal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/creditors-brace-for-possible-debt-restructuring-at-sinclair-sports-unit-11603235294

A worker was killed and two others were trapped on the tower while performing maintenance work on WJTC's broadcast tower in Robertsdale, Alabama. This was a tower crew hired to do the work and not station employees. https://weartv.com/news/local/one-dead-two-rescued-in-tv-broadcast-tower-accident-in-baldwin-county https://www.wkrg.com/baldwin-county/sources-three-possibly-stuck-on-tv-tower-in-baldwin-county/ https://www.fox10tv.com/news/accident-on-tv-tower-kills-worker-injures-another/article_7742b336-1307-11eb-96bf-7fc08f3fa94f.html https://mynbc15.com/news/local/television-broadcast-tower-accident-in-robertsdale WJTC is the sister station of WPMI, and co-owned along with WEAR and WFGX in Pensacola. The market is supposed to have a "rescan day" tomorrow as WJTC and WFNA will turn into ATSC 3.0 stations and the existing programming will be sub-channeled onto the others. A very tragic situation indeed, and my personal condolences to the family of the deceased.

This move is likely to benefit WOIO/WUAB with better coverage in the Mansfield area. They lost out initally when WOIO got CBS, as even their analog 19 signal was weaker than what WJW offered at the time. 10TV was easier to pick up in Mansfield back then, despite being on the fringe of the Cleveland-Akron market. And when WOIO went to DIGITAL 10, it made the signal even harder to pick up, and even Cleveland has to deal with interference from CPFL in London, Ontario (both in the Analog and digital era). WBNS went UHF on 21, and even Sinclair moved WSYX from VHF to UHF soon after the transition. The Akron translator helped the Akron area, and this could benefit the western fringe even more. I doubt they would try and compete with WMFD. Akron and Canton still don't have dedicated newscasts anymore, and Mansfield is far enough away from Cleveland or Columbus to be considered it's own sub-market. A group tried to launch a super-station that served Columbus (WCOM) but it failed and WMFD was later launched to serve the Mid-Ohio area. While Canton and Akron are larger cities, they're still in the shadow of Cleveland and have been haunted by the effects of channel availability and distance to Cleveland to try and make something of themselves as their own TV market.

Losing the Indians was another blow back in 2001. Back in the 90s WUAB had the highest game ratings in the country when the Indians were good. By letting WBNX and other stations get the better syndicated shows, they overtook them in the ratings and cost them the CW initially. Plus at the time, WUAB was one of the few netlet stations that Raycom had at the time, so they had little experience to draw upon.

And now the OTT's are at risk. Nexstar could pull their stations from Hulu if a deal isn't made. https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/hulu-with-live-could-lose-nexstar-owned-local-channels-tonight/ Hopefully if and when a deal is reached, they can carry more of their stations, including CW, MyNetwork, independents, and WGN/WGN America.

It seems with the efforts that WUAB put out from their studios on Day Drive, they had ample room for all of their productions (Superhost, Prize Movie, 43 Kidsland, Barnaby, etc...) As well as housing operations for The Ten O'Clock News. But on a positive note for WUAB, they are launching a horror movie franchise on Saturday nights. https://marketshare.tvnewscheck.com/2020/10/15/wuabs-new-program-will-make-cleveland-viewers-scream/ Kudos to them, this is probably their biggest programming push ever since their "43 the Block" vignettes. Plus, it's a well known genre of programming going all the way back to Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson, and all of his spin-off and revived characters over the years. To this day, WJW still airs a half hour compilation of Big Chuck and Lil John skits on Sunday nights.