tyrannical bastard

It's a longshot, but Gray could always get a low power station and relay WLUC or even WILX.... WLOX has the "News Now" brand.....here's hoping they don't get this monstrosity of a logo...

DirecTV has had that capability in their earlier receivers (like the HR20) and with their no longer available AM-21 Tuner accessory. Now it's some kind of USB dongle that wasn't available until recently.

If Biloxi-Gulfport is not included in the scope, then WLOX could be an option as well. Over at WPMI, they recently lost Jake Dunne as he will be going to mornings at KWCH in Wichita...sort of a homecoming for him since he's a Kansas native and interned at KWCH early in his career. And since WPMI is down to 2 (and Chris Dunn is on vacation?), WEAR Chief Allen Strum is appearing on WPMI in a pre-taped forecast. I'm hoping it doesn't set a precedent for the future. Kelly Foster, the only other meteorologist is still doing double duty in the mornings (BOTH anchor & weather), and the noon show is her solo.

The Lagniappe weekly newspaper had their annual "Nappie Awards", a best-of competition that readers vote on.... Best Meteorologist? Alan Sealls. (I'd post a link but the site is behind a paywall now) I'm hoping Ed can bring some experience back into this market but it may be difficult trying to fill the void with Alan Sealls' departure. This and the AT&T blackout could be devasting to WKRG's ratings....not to mention the "retirement" of longtime anchor Mel Showers. (He still fills in from time to time...)

WKRG has named a new Chief Meteorologist...Ed Bloodsworth from WFLA will be assuming the role vacated by Alan Sealls. www.wkrg.com/top-stories/wkrg-news-5-names-ed-bloodsworth-as-chief-meteorologist/

More sad news out of Cleveland, as market veteran Jeff Maynor, who worked at all 3 stations in Cleveland, has passed away at the age of 75. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-metro/longtime-cleveland-television-anchor-jeff-maynor-passes-away

If Sinclair gets stripped of their licenses, they'll probably shut down their stations instead of selling out.

It's YouTube TV and Philo for me. Since Google doesn't have any stake in most of the content providers (other than YouTube), they are willing to negotiate and have avoided the blackouts that most other providers have endured. Philo fills in virtually all of the other gaps (with Viacom and some other channels like A&E and the other Discovery networks) so between both services it's a cable-like package. The major selling point with YouTube is the complete availability of big 4 locals in virutally every market. The lone exception is Tribune and their ABC affiliates. CW and MyNetwork is still piecemeal, largely available with the O&Os and Sinclair, but not with Tribune, Nexstar, Scripps or Tegna. Some of the smaller markets lack networks simply because the network is not available locally there, with a few minor exceptions where NBC O&Os are provided in places like Alpena and Mankato (WMAQ).

Seems more like a Dish thing. This is the first time my locals have been affected, and between Nexstar and Deerfield, that's FOUR stations. The only major ones in my first stint with DirecTV were a short Viacom spat (during which my DVR was hit by lightning anyways), the loss of WGN America during a brief Tribune outage, and the 5 month spat with TWC. There was a couple close calls with Sinclair and Deerfield, Meredith & Media General (post-LIN) but they stayed on.

Has a single provider (AT&T) ever been in this many prolonged disputes at one time? This is why AT&T should have NEVER purchased Time Warner. Even Comcast hasn't resorted to standoffs like these despite their mega merger with NBCUniversal. It's like this merger needs to be undone. NOW. Much like the KYW swap in the 60s. Our DOJ should be ashamed of themselves for letting this happen. End rant.

It's been reported that Gannett could be sold to GateHouse..... https://nypost.com/2019/07/18/gatehouse-media-poised-to-buy-gannett/ If this happens (and TEGNA's antics really drive them into the ground), could the Gannett name return to this company?

Fred was the longtime host of The Morning Exchange, which ABC used their format to launch Good Morning America. After the show was downsized to an hour and cancelled outright in 1999, Fred spent another 12 years at WKYC, having a 15 minute show during the noon hour, and later his own show, eventually becoming a part of their pay-for-play show Good Company until retiring in 2012. In recent years, Fred has fallen on hard times after some health issues, even necessitating a GoFundMe effort to pay for nursing home care, after the government denied benefits he should have received from a stint he served in the military before going into TV.

This is why vertical integration back in TV's infancy was illegal. When the providers sell their own and acquired content (and in AT&T's case bundle the hell out of it and give it away like candy) it stifles competition since the "negotiations" are souring between the mega-companies that own all of the content.

Hopefully it's only that and not the other networks they own (CBS Sports, Showtime, Pop, Flix, etc...) I think we're beginning to see these disputes taken up to a whole new level. AT&T still will not allow HBO on Dish. Cinemax is being phased out on Xfinity for their in-house Hitz channel. The networks had better start making their content a-la-carte when they start demanding too much money for it. It's the only way in this vertically integrated disaster we're seeing with these mega-mergers. No one should have to sacrifice a whole service because another channel is ONLY available on a competing bundle.

...and Meredith is now gone from Dish, several hours before a midnight (PT) deadline, and a day-long extension by both parties to continue negotating.... https://tvnewscheck.com/article/top-news/236899/dish-drops-meredith-owned-stations/ And now, CBS is the latest group to go to war with AT&T (at least it's only the O&O stations, but could be another blow to AT&T) https://deadline.com/2019/07/cbs-warns-of-potential-directv-and-att-u-verse-blackouts-in-17-markets-1202647179/

And they were a Scripps-Howard station at one time (co-owned with the Commercial-Appeal) until they were sold to Bert Ellis in 1993. They even had the 1970s era set from WEWS in the 80s and the other standard-issue Scripps set that many of their stations used in the 80s.

Thank goodness it's not AT&T, or that would knock out ALL of the Mobile affiliates, and leave only WEAR/WFGX, the PBS affiliates (WSRE & APT), and infomercial channels WFBD and WAWD on DirecTV. At least there's a warning about this. Dish seems like a good company anymore with all of the shenanigans AT&T is pulling on its customers.

All of these talk shows just goes to show you how all of the other major Cleveland stations have cut back on their syndicated shows for newscasts or their other inbred efforts (cough cough Scripps, cough cough Tegna...)

I hate to say this, but stations will take forever to fill something to save some money, and more than likely, to fill their own pockets with the saved money.

I could go either way on this one. It's definitely a Gray package, but it looks decent and doesn't seem too derivative or too "plastic-looking" versus some of the other Gray efforts.

Looks like it's only the Nexstar stations. I checked websites for WYTV and OzarksFirst.com. WYTV says nothing of an outage (so they're likely unaffected) and the OzarksFirst.com notification only applies to KOZL and KRBK, which are owned by Nexstar directly. KOLR is likely unaffected since they're a Mission station. In other words, the shells should be business as usual. It's the directly owned stations that are bearing the dispute unlike what's going on at Sinclair, where it's all of the sidecars....

Cunningham, Deerfield (Manhan), Howard Stirk, and all of the other beard companies that run Sinclair's extra stations. Whether or not there's collusion between ANY of these groups, the fact that they are doing NOTHING to resolve this dispute is unacceptable. At least in AT&T's eyes, they are "working with Nexstar behind the scenes" to get their stations back. I'm not holding my breath, since it was Nexstar that created this game of holding pay tv companies and viewers hostage when they couldn't cut a deal.

And now there was Nexstar and AT&T..... That's two more channels gone from my DirecTV service. Alongside WPMI and WJTC which have been gone for over a month now. And like the last one, little or no warning, and AT&T yanks the signal at a moment's notice. They can go to hell. This is the final straw with them. They are so gone when my contract is up.

WEAR now has the new graphics.

Gatehouse also recently purchased the Akron Beacon Journal, so along with their other Northeast Ohio papers (Canton, Alliance, Wooster, Kent-Ravenna and the associated weeklies) they have a very strong foothold in Ohio when combined with the Dispatch. They could easily pool all of their resources to cover the Mahoning Valley since they upped their sharing of content. Most likely, the T-C will expand their distribution to Mahoning County and become a full-market paper, maybe by acquiring the rights to the Vindicator name. They may have been able to sell the Vindicator if they kept up with the times a little more. It was my understanding that the presses were only modernized less than a decade ago, while other newspapers had made the same move 10 or so years prior. Now with WFMJ, the target on their back just grew exponentially, since they will no longer have a daily newspaper tied to them. I'll bet the Wolfe Family said the same thing when they sold off the Dispatch, only to sell their TV stations to Tegna a few years later...