tyrannical bastard

With the gradual re-opening of the economy, still-closed restaurants in some places decided to take it upon themselves to reopen in full force regardless of the orders in place (with the proper "social distancing" protocols in place, of course) One in Spanish Fort Alabama, decided to reopen and got their hand slapped by the state health department. WKRG: https://www.wkrg.com/health/coronavirus/some-baldwin-county-restaurants-plan-to-reopen-friday-despite-orders-to-remain-closed/ https://www.wkrg.com/alabama-news/spanish-fort-pizza-restaurant-violates-gov-ivey-order-shutdown/ WALA: https://www.fox10tv.com/news/health-department-shuts-down-spanish-fort-restaurant-for-defying-safer-at-home-order/article_2895040c-8c0a-11ea-922e-7f7be0fbae75.html WPMI: https://mynbc15.com/news/local/alabama-health-department-briefly-shuts-down-restaurant-in-baldwin-county Why would I be posting this story here? Because if you read the WPMI story, the restaurant in question is owned by Greg Peterson, who is the primary anchor at WPMI. Can someone say conflict of interest here?

I think Sinclair is due for a reckoning, (fire sale) and Meredith may be a seller before they know it. Sinclair is obviously hurting from the enormous debt from all of their M&A and bad purchases (the RSN's), and Meredith is reeling from their magazines and advertising declines.

WCMH has followed up with him from time to time, it has affected him greatly. I just hope the decision to step aside was his own or his family's and not forced down by the station.

Terrible news for all of their employees, many who have been working hard during this crisis. It wouldn't surprise me if Sinclair is next...they took a horrible gamble on the RSN purchases from FOX, lost a lot of carriage before the crisis, and then came the COVID-19 crisis and all of it's fallout. Now the RSN's are worthless without fresh content and less ways to watch them. Meanwhile, the stations are chugging along producing content and many are working from home.

As of today, WEAR has resumed normal operations from their studios in Pensacola. They report that the two staffers of theirs who contracted COVID-19 are at home and are doing fine.

WJTV in Jackson, MS is producing a Coronavirus town hall meeting that will be simulcast throughout Mississippi, as well as in neighboring markets that serve the state. https://marketshare.tvnewscheck.com/2020/04/09/nexstar-hosting-live-coronavirus-special-across-9-stations/ To acheive full statewide coverage, Nexstar has partnered with Morris and WMDN-TV to broadcast the special in Columbus/Tupelo, Biloxi/Gulfport and Meridian. WREG in Memphis is also carrying it, and the Nexstar stations in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Mobile will be streaming it online. It should be noted that WMDN is about to be sold to a subsidiary of Sheldon Galloway (a license-holder to which Nexstar has provided services to) and most of us have discussed the other company as an M&A target.

While WPMI is still producing WEAR's newscasts and simulcasting their own when both are on the air, WEAR talent is more prevalent now, especially during their own newscasts. The shared ones are balancing content between Mobile and Pensacola.

If anything, the news employees having to go to work in this situation should be exempted from these furloughs. They are on the front lines and putting themselves on the line to inform the public. Even those who are working from home are using personal resources that would normally be reimbursed under regular conditions.

Sadly, this could be the case for many more companies across the media industry. Especially those who are highly leveraged and count on live sports programming to make them lots of money... Even worse are the retail workers who have been indefinitely sidelined by their own parent companies and government bodies shutting down "non-essential" business.

Checking back in with New Orleans and WGNO....News With A Twist appears to have been mothballed (for now) and (finally) replacing the news times with actual newscasts. I know they've been the cellar dweller, but this needed to happen LONG before the COVID-19 pandemic took over, and ravaged places like New Orleans. Over on WWL, Great Day Louisiana is still airing weekdays at 9, but shows are in repeats.

Here's the official word about WEAR having to suspend local operations and simulcast WPMI newscasts... https://weartv.com/news/local/changes-to-newscast-after-two-wear-employees-test-positive-for-covid-19 UPDATE: It appears WEAR is only simulcasting the newscasts that WPMI carries, so the 4:30 AM show was replaced with another half hour of America This Morning. They're currently running a presser from the state of Florida with no graphics at all, since their studio control room is off limits. We'll see what they do at 11am, 4pm 9pm on WFGX, and the extra half-hour at 10pm. Could this mean that Nightline airs LIVE for the first time in a generation? (or they could do like they are allowed to do with NBC for now, and have BOTH WPMI and WEAR go for an hour...WPMI has not opted for this option) UPDATES: 11am - Newscast from WPMI on WEAR. 4pm- Mobile-based newscast with Kelly Foster anchoring AND doing weather with WEAR reporters live out in the field from Pensacola. 5 & 6 - straight simulcast of WPMI newscasts - Sue Straughn is live from the front yard of WEAR and co-anchors remotely. 9pm- no newscast on WFGX, replaced by Inside Edition 10pm - straight simulcast of WPMI with Bob Solarski in front of WEAR building co-anchoring with Greg Peterson in studio. WEAR airs Inside Edition at 10:35 instead of taking ABC live.

WEAR in Pensacola has suspended operations in their building for the time being due to two of their employees testing positive for COVID-19. They are currently simulcasting WPMI's newscasts out of Mobile. Sue Straughn, their lead anchor did a live shot outside of their station on Mobile Highway in Pensacola during Sunday's 5pm show. Steve Nissim, WEAR's weekend sports anchor provided a sportscast remotely from home. The interesting thing is that WPMI and WJTC's master control is inside WEAR's facility...so they HAVE to remain operational for the 4 stations in the market.

Given the number of cases in New York and and the concentration of our media sources there, it's a very risky time for anyone living or working in that area. The way things are going, now would be the time for the network's to have their backup plans in place and deploy their facilities in less-affecfed areas (bureaus and O&O stations). And of course CNN has a perfectly good facility in Atlanta they largely abandoned.....

It was dropped because Nexstar does not have an agreement with YTTV to carry their MyNetworkTV affiliates, while Fox did while they were both O&Os. Bahakel does with the CW, but Nexstar does not. On the other hand, virtually every market now has access to ABC affiliates since Stephen Marks allowed WBKP in Marquette and WBKB's subchannel in Alpena. Every other market, including Cheyenne & Casper, WY (despite the presence of KTWO) and all the others that lack an ABC station of their own now have a special ABC network feed as part of their service. The only other major holes are in Zanesville, OH (with no CBS or FOX feeds) and Glendive, (lacking a FOX feed). NBC fills in the holes in Alpena and Mankato with WMAQ, and Presque Isle gets WBTS.

Must be the bedlam from "working from home" But I made a tongue-in-cheek promo for WNEP, much like all of the other stations have been cranking out the past few days. WNEP SPEC.mp4

That makes sense. They're also good with keeping the sewer lines cleaner especially if people are resorting to less "flush-ready" methods of toilet paper.

The question is....what is WNEP Newswatch 16 doing with porta-potties?

Talk about full circle. His home base was Kansas City when Newport Television was operated there. Going back a few KCTV GM's....Bobby Totsch was let go and ended up in Mobile after Sinclair took them over from Newport. He's now in Des Moines at WHO.

It seems at this point, stations are cutting out all of the "non-essential"-ness in their coverage. Some stations have suspended their lifestyle programs outright, others have pushed them into reruns, and others have adjusted to the new reality we are all facing at this moment. There may be some tone-deafness in all of this, hopefully it's because the station just threw on a repeat episode. And sometimes, they'll be promoting an event (in a pre-recorded segment long before the chaos) that's been LONG cancelled along with everything else in society these days...and if any station is just airing it to recoup some lost $$$$, SHAME ON THEM!

As the Just For Men commercial said... No play for Mr. Gray! Gray is OUT of the bidding for Tegna, leaving it to Allen Media and Apollo.... https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2020/3/18/gray-pulls-offer-for-tegna

WSAZ has always had a dual-market approach and is currently the only station based out of Huntington. WCHS has always been Charleston based, but has attempted some coverage of Huntington over the years...mostly from their "Putnam County Newsroom"...aka the WVAH studios in Hurricane. WOWK was based out of Huntington for many years, and even copied WSAZ's "dual box" approach for a while, but ended up doing the whole show out of Huntington....until 2012 when the main studios moved to Downtown Charleston in a portion of the Charleston City Center Mall.

WSAZ... Social distancing since 1956. Even Chet Huntley and David Brinkley copied it years later...decades before it became a necessity!

It's happening in other places across the country, and in Mobile, WALA has suspended production of their Studio 10 lifestyle program in favor of another hour of news in the morning at 9 a.m. It wouldn't surprise me if WPMI did the same by putting Gulf Coast Today on hiatus and making their noon show a full hour again. Due to their ownership situation, they are landlocked with the number of hours of news they can produce... Could the FCC make an emergency declaration to temporarily suspend this?

In general, since WBNS has always been a leader in it's field, and now it's just another corporate clone. However, regarding the corporate mandates, I'm sure the stations have the levity just because of the uncertainty of Tegna's future ownership at this time...

WBNS = Bleh. If it wasn't for the total disaster up north at WKYC, I'd be more devastated. That alone makes the average Tegna-fication tolerable to some extent.