tyrannical bastard

Actually the way it is set up, the iHeart portion is separated through a glass hallway to the stairs and elevator and the other door (that was not broken into) only goes into this. They occupy the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, while WKRG is on the ground floor. This setup goes all the way back to post 9/11 to reinforce security between the recently separated entities. Access to the station itself is through another secured door at the other end of the lobby. Originally, they were all a part of WKRG-AM-FM-TV under family ownership. When WKRG was broken up, the radio stations were sold off and eventually became a part of Clear Channel, while Spartan got the TV station. Here is WPMI's account of the story. They are radio partners with iHeart (and were once co-owned during the Clear Channel days yet remained in the WKRG building) It sounds like iHeart was the intended target. https://mynbc15.com/news/local/man-claiming-to-be-god-smashes-his-way-into-mobile-media-complex-lobby WPMI dodges the football here by not mentioning WKRG. There seems to be some bad blood over a very well-known weather guy who came from here to work there now. As for the gender of the assailant, they did show his legal name including her assumed name. Whether it was trying to distance themselves from the issue, or just the fact of his/her status, it's a coverage issue that needs standards going forward. Seeing the assailant may have led the viewer to assume their sex, even if it was for perceived shock value.

The peak was definitely during the Applegate/Action News era. While it tested the limits of what was considered journalism. It definitely brought WOIO to a new level of success, along with WKYC rising out of the doldrums for the first time. Romona's return was probably the last major investment, and this was after WKYC couldn't afford her anymore. The same had happened two years before with Tim White. As the Applegate era was drawing to a close, so was the growth of Raycom and eventual merger with Gray. The "Cleveland 19" era was a mistake, it softened the newscasts too much and Raycom began to treat WOIO like another middle-market station. They had made the same mistake in their first go-around as "Hometeam 19/43" as the stations were indistinguishable from their cohorts across the country. Yes, the "19 News" was the oomph that WOIO needed, but it's too little too late given all of the slashing and burning that took place. They literally stacked the deck during the "Cleveland 19" relaunch with way too many poached anchors in the same place, and virtually all of them were gone within a short while. Meanwhile, WUAB was left to wither and die under Raycom, being overtaken by WBNX soon after, and WUAB only got the CW as a result of all of the Ernest Angley foreclosure drama.....and CBS's desire to put it on a major-grouped station.

Since my thoughts here were moved to the other thread, it looks like the WATN font issue was simply forgetting to load the correct font into the CG. It seems to happen a lot these days. And yet there are stations like WFMJ who have yet to fix the issue (or even care).

The move to Reserve was probably three-fold.... 1. They needed a little more space for all of the WOIO folks moving in with them (even with the number of layoffs between the two stations at the time). WOIO's facility in Shaker Heights was even smaller and is now a Goodwill store. 2. A developer made WUAB an offer they couldn't refuse. Parmatown was a thriving mall at the time across the street and WUAB was surrounded by a growing number of big box stores on Day Drive. OfficeMax was still locally owned and wanted to put a store where WUAB was. Soon after, South Park mall was built over in Strongsville and slowly sucked the life out of the area. Parmatown was eventually de-malled as the stores left and the big boxes left too (OfficeMax is now a Planet Fitness.) But there's a nice vacant Toys "R" us next door, and lots of space around town for a station to work with. 3. Downtown was/is the place to be. WEWS and WJW were firmly entrenched in their spaces on Euclid and South Marginal. WKYC eventually moved out of the East Ohio Gas building on 6th street to their sparkling new digital broadcast center on Lakeside in 2001. Even WVIZ, the PBS station moved downtown and merged with local NPR station WCPN. I think WQHS is still in Parma close to their transmitter, and it may be the same facility that Kaiser-owned WKBF used until they went off the air in the 70s. WOIO would have to be leasing that space downtown. Usually, stations own their own facilities. Another Gray station that leases their space is WTVY in Dothan, who is in the former Houston Hotel (The Woods Building) in downtown Dothan. The building itself is owned by the Woods Family, who used to own WTVY before Charles Woods sold the station, and it was sold again to Benedek. The former facility in Webb is still there, but has been rapidly deteriorating over the years. They even considered buying a former REX TV store on the main drag (Ross Clark Circle) a decade ago to move to, but have stayed downtown.

I wonder how long WOIO/WUAB is locked into their home in Downtown Cleveland. Any idea why they moved there in the first place? It seems the WUAB building in Parma could have worked, but at the time, the area around it was booming and it gave way to an OfficeMax store, and it was "cool" to be in downtown Cleveland. Flash forward to now, and Parmatown is a ghost town, and there are plenty of former big boxes that could be the new home for WOIO and WUAB. A little breathing room could help their issues, as it seems they are packed like sardines (amongst the rats) in the basement of Reserve Square. Gray has built new homes for their stations like the showplace for WRDW/WAGT in Augusta, but I doubt Gray would do such a thing for WOIO/WUAB.

As cringeworthy as the next 4 years could be if things remain status quo, could CNN jump off the deep end again if we get "46" and CNN no longer needs to be a 24-7 fact-checking, Trump-bashing machine? I'm sure COVID will be in the news for the next year or so if it finally starts to fade away (or be dealt with appropriately by the feds....)

The first two images were from their 1986-7 relaunch with the tvBd/Good News package, and lasted into 1990. I think the next set revamp happened when they retired "Eyewitness News". The second two were the NewsChannel5 relaunch in 1990 which lasted into the 1995 switch to the new "tilted 5" graphics and Edd Kalehoff theme. The set would be retired that July. The final two were the original 1984 set that lasted into the tvBd/Good News revamp. It looks like only the colored backdrop and overhead logo were the only major changes.

The first go-around earlier this spring only restored the RSN's to viewers in the primary viewing areas (likely the DMA of the teams themselves) on YTTV. Other DMA's lost them if they were a secondary market further from the teams covered. This time, it looks like everybody is losing them unless an agreement is made. Until the next sport starts up (Basketball or NHL this winter considering things get back to normal?), the channels are basically worthless.

Unfortunately, the cost of airing sports is so expensive, that subscriber and retransmission fees are such an enormous factor as the cost of sports has shot through the roof. I was devastated when WUAB lost the Indians in 2001. But it was one of the last stations to do their own telecasts (with an increasing slate of Fox Sports games), and what else was to be expected when the Dolan Family bought the team from Dick Jacobs? Larry Dolan helped start STO in 2006, and they owned Cablevision. They ended up selling their Cleveland-area clusters to Adelphia, whose territory became part of TWC in their bankruptcy collapse. Sports just needs to break away and let those who want to pay for it get it. The system is broken and is long overdue for a reality check that COVID-19 has certainly helped with.

It's time for them to eliminate the middleman and just let themselves or their league sell us the games. Some have partially done that through ownership stakes in their channels like SportsTime Ohio, YES, and Marquee.

They need to cut their losses and put the teams on their apps (especially STIRR), and even consider putting some games back on their stations. This would be great synergy in markets where they not only have secondary stations that would benefit from airing live sports, but the rights to those teams from Fox Sports RSNs. Sooner or later they're going to have to address the "Fox Sports" issue...might as well kill it off sooner than later when the rights to the name expire. And why the hell do they still have the Tennis Channel?

The clip that @bmasters1 was referring to is below, since the WAKR set looks like some that I've seen from that time period, namely for WTWV/WTVA 9 in Tupelo, MS, with that "in the round" desk and keyable oval backdrop. Probably a kit set? Back then, they had the financial backing and shared ownership of their radio partners (1590 AM and 97.5 FM WAEZ, which started as WAKR-FM and is now WONE-FM) The radio stations would be sold off several years later, and WAKC (a result of the 1590 calls going separately) would later be sold to ValueVision, then Paxson, who pulled the plug on news and their ABC affiliation. They covered Akron-Canton decently, but the way it was maligned under the ratings sealed its doom, since the overall ratings sucked, but was heavily viewed in the Akron/Canton area. This also affected its ability to secure programming and advertising, since it was at Cleveland rates.

IMHO, the new ESPN graphics are too big and clunky. especially the scorebox. They should have kept it in the corner like they've been doing the last several years. Even FOX with their football graphics has made theirs simpler by centering it in the lower third of the screen, but not taking up the entire width.

I thought WLBT was on Channel 30. Down in Hattiesburg, WDAM originally had channel 28, but they were able to move to channel 7 once WLBT vacated it. It still is that way today with no issues, and they even are receivable in my neck of the woods when the skies cooperate. 28 ended up on WMAW (PBS-MPB) in Meridian, after having to move from 44 during the repack. I used to get WLBT on 30, but it was overruled by the local PBS station (WEIQ/APT) that also moved to 30 during the repack. Biloxi and New Orleans were failed attempts to VHF on their original channels for WLOX and WVUE. WLOX was particularly short-spaced to Baton Rouge (WBRZ) and both stations had many complaints, so they switched back to their original DTV alottments of 39 and 29. WVUE is still on 29 while WLOX made the early switch to 32 at the behest of the buyer of their spectrum in the area....I believe it was TMobile?

Either way, there is blood on Jeff Zucker's hands. Trump aside, he still nearly destroyed NBCUniversal during his tenure.

And yet another Scripps station with the 70's set....WEWS's clone WPTV. Even down to the logo animation. The only difference is the "Action News" and "Part of your Life" theme.

Remember the seemingly never ending fight between AT&T and the Sinclair sidecars last year? Well, the FCC has upheld that the parties failed to negotiate in good faith, and each station could be on the hook for an almost $500k fine. https://www.nexttv.com/news/fcc-proposes-dollar10m-in-first-ever-retrans-negotiation-fines

It seems that Meredith is indeed using the "effects" of COVID-19 to clean house of their older and more experienced (cough cough expensive cough) talent. And they were just getting their groove on after their last set of management that pulled the plug on his co-anchor several years back, among other cutbacks and issues at the time. Wasn't he the heir to Dan Miller's throne?

Found another station that also used the same set WMC used until 1986 and WEWS used until 1981. KTVK in Phoenix. Back then, it was owned by Ernest McFarland's group (later MAC America Communications), whose family and heirs would run the station until its sale to Belo in 1999. The intro and music is much like the ones used by several of the Outlet stations (WCMH, KSAT) and Storer's WAGA. I have to now wonder if the set was another designer outside of Scripps and the package used was syndicated at the time.

Sooner or later, WSYX is going to become the #1 station in the market. Because Sinclair has been pouring money and talent into the station for years, while WCMH has been trying to recover from Media General, and now WBNS is just another hopeless Tegna clone. I have to wonder if Jym Ganahl really retired from WCMH.....because it seemed he came right back to WSYX when his non-compete expired.

Well darn.....here I was hoping they would select someone else other than Nexstar to run their station But really, should this be a surprise to anyone? We saw this coming a mile away.

Should be fixed now

Remember the anchor who thrust his side-hustle in to the spotlight by defying state orders not to open his dine-in restaurant back in May? Well guess who's been off the air for the past month after catching COVID-19?

It's a Devlin job, who did many of their sets going back to when they first went HD, as well as some second-generation ones like WSYX. Love the hybrid on the graphics, it looks so much better than the Helvetica. WOIO would look so much better with those lowers.

It was LIN that dropped that ball. It lowered the value of LIN as a whole by over 100 million dollars. It seems that if the network even has the sense that the affiliate is going to balk, they take their ball and go to who wants to p(l)ay. CBC Raleigh likely did the same, and CBS would rather align with a major broadcaster (who was about to be taken over by Nexstar) and scale up. Plus. NBC was more than willing to finally upgrade their presence after being "cursed" for decades on WRDU/WPTF/WRDC and later WNCN....