tyrannical bastard

It's about time for the sports empires built by the leagues and networks to crumble. Viewers are sick and tired of being held hostage and fleeced so these entities can get more and more money. The national championship and the Superbowl this year have been Poetic Justice. While they're at it, just give up doing the overproduced half time shows too....it worked SO WELL for Imagine Dragons during the national championship.... End rant. Thank goodness football season is finally over.

As anticipated, the Superbowl drew drastically low ratings, especially in New Orleans. Overnight numbers showed the game drew rougly HALF of prior Superbowls and even some regular season games on local New Orleans TV. https://www.nola.com/saints/2019/02/super-bowl-ratings-plummet-as-who-dats-strike-back.html I think the NOLA fans won the Superbowl. They got screwed by the refs by the no call, and the game was an absolute shit show for the NFL.

With this sentiment, I think WWL is going to have a lousy Super Bowl....ratings wise.... https://www.nola.com/expo/sports/g66l-2019/02/09ba5a36476103/25-reasons-not-to-watch-the-super-bowl-no-1-roger-goodell-.html

I thought about where I should be posting this, but with James Ingram's recent passing, I finally put 2 and 2 together in his involvement with the "Give Me 5" promo https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-metro/legendary-r-b-singer-james-ingram-sang-in-promotional-video-for-news-5-in-1995 WEWS claims Carly Simon did vocals...but it is definitely NOT her. I believe it's Andrea McArdle, the then-wife of Edd Kalehoff who was the original Annie in the Broadway musical, and sang lead vocals on Edd's "4 New York" campaign released several years earlier. This was a great promo that had a limited shelf life due to the Browns' being yanked out of the city that year. Not to mention, it was probably expensive. (WJLA had a campaign with Jeffrey Osborne back in the 80s that wasn't renewed due to $$$)

Part deux.... https://www.ohio.com/news/20190121/split-with-ernest-angley-tough-for-his-assistant And here's an article from Cleveland Scene talking about Rex Humbard, considered the "founder" of televangelism, and how his former empire ended up in Ernest Angley's hands. https://m.clevescene.com/cleveland/jesus-for-sale/Content?oid=1503067 The article doesn't mention that Humbard originally had a permit to sign on WCOT Channel 55 and would have broadcast from the now-unfinished "tower" in the property. He started construction in the 1970s, and Angley's ministry resurrected the TV facility's construction and bought the Channel 55 CP to sign on WBNX in 1985.

Let's say this type of thing happened with a station owner of a major group. The investors would be calling for their heads, advertisers would pull their accounts, and the FCC could strip them of their licenses. It all depends on the "abuse" aspect....if it was consensual, that's one thing. It's a sin in it's context, but that's another ballgame in the eyes of the FCC beyond their jurisdiction. This saga will probably keep on going until Rev. Angley goes upstairs, or the money runs dry and the sheriff sale sells the property to the highest bidder....

Well...the Ernest Angley saga has taken a disturbing turn.... I'll leave it at this article posted in today's Akron Beacon Journal (and it's only the first part!) https://www.ohio.com/news/20190119/rev-ernest-angley-admitted-sexual-encounter

Bottom line, even if the ratings suck, WWL and Tegna will profit from it regardless of the ratings....making up lost ground from the damage they inflicted on the news product.

WSMV has a new General Manager (TVNewsCheck says she's leaving WIVB/WNLO, but she was bounced from there soon after Nexstar took over the station from Media General) I can only hope she can get WSMV back on their feet again, but her track record speaks otherwise.... The question is did the last guy quit, or did Meredith pull the plug?

You cant forget Doug and Mona, who worked in Cleveland AND Columbus! But that one didn't last as they eventually divorced and Mona married Mike James who used to run NewsBlues and had her own grammar column....

I believe there's also a revenue threshold that must be met to require closed captioning. If they make less than 2 million dollars per year I think they're exempt due to "financial hardship" and can qualify for a waiver.

I'd love to see a carriage dispute between Cox and Cox.... ...or Xfinity and NBCU.... If Cox stations get sold to another company, it could get ugly for sure....

Looks like WEWS (and the other Scripps stations) underwent a website revamp, so that could have been how Mark's bio disappeared (it's back now, but empty) I'm sure the Gibber is happy to see Don again... And some very famous bloopers came from Don on the weather wall... And maybe he'll make up with Dorothy Fuldheim over this.... Godspeed.

Very sad news indeed. Next to Dick Goddard, Don Webster was a fixture of WEWS, from hosting Upbeat, and even serving as the stations' general manager in the 1980s (when he ceded weather duties to Tom Tasslemyer). He returned to weather in 1989 and was the chief meteorologist for the next decade until his retirement. It's good to hear that Mark didn't disappear either...could he be going back to mornings?

Trent Magill is leaving WATE in Knoxville and returning to WEWS in Cleveland. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2018/12/13/back-to-the-land He's rumored to be replacing Mark Johnson..any idea what happened to him? It seemed that Mark moved up to the spot after his predecessor Brad Sussman disappeared in the 2000s....only a few years after replacing longtime chief Don Webster.

I'll give Sinclair a pass for how they went out of their way to offer condolences for Chris Bradley. Remember, he was WSYX's chief before he went over to WBNS. Even better is how the entire market came together (including WCMH) to honor him and encourage others to support the fight against cancer. It's an issue that affects millions and anyone can be impacted by it. On the other hand, there is no excuse for what they did in Chattanooga. Bravo to their GM for leaving them. If she was subjected to a non-compete, it should be declared null and void and she should be free to work wherever she chooses when she is able to. There needs to be some kind of federal law to protect people from stuff like this. Since TV markets often cross state lines, it is an interstate matter that warrants federal protection. Sadly, under the current climate, it will probably never happen. Hopefully, Sinclair gets sued over this one....

Yet Scripps yanked them a few years back in favor of their own inbred syndication efforts. Stations like WEWS have never recovered...and helped stations like WBFF rise out of the ratings basement.

More like Sinclair has gone from the Washington Times to Breitbart and Infowars.... Probably being phased in when either software or hardware changes are made with the WX Central or Baron systems. These systems are much more standardized than the various CG systems throughout the company, and the base graphics are often pre-loaded.

Since Mike Davis has been filling in on evenings, who has been handling mornings? If Elwell is returning to WBNS, he could possibly get the morning job especially if the interim wants their old job back. Keeping Mike Davis in the evenings may be good for stability, given all of the other changes afoot...

WEAR has overhauled their weather graphics to the new ones like WBFF's package, although they still are with the 16x9 variant of the original "Curves" package. Here's a sample from their radar: Have there been any other Sinclair stations to take the plunge? Usually the WX computers are before and separate of the rest of the graphics, due to their specialized purpose....

It's downright ridiculous. These are premium a-la-carte channels that people spend money on (like $15/mo PER channel), and if the provider yanks the access (of course it's Dish, which is notorious for this), then the paying customers SHOULD be properly reimbursed. On the flip side, HBO should allow their paying customers to access their content regardless of the provider, especially if Dish yanks away the access. It could hasten the demise of the "bundle" and encourage others to become a-la-carte services (like HBONow), telling the cable and satellite companies to shove it once and for all...

And not a good sign of things to come since AT&T owns BOTH DirecTV AND HBO. And vertical integration is good because..........

Looks like Mel Wheeler is out of the TV business...all that's left is a group of Radio stations in Roanoke, VA. IIRC, they were the co-founders of WEAR in Pensacola and the second owner of WJDM Channel 7 in Panama City....before selling to James Harrison Gray, as WJHG.

At this rate, the kids these days will never know the difference between serif and sans-serif....then they will have no regard for Normal, Bold, Italic, etc... And soon uPPERCASE AnD lOWERcASE!! Perhaps I should have worded the problem differently....font-itis, font identity disorder, Typographitis..... Even a little "Chyron 101" may help these people learn how to load fonts into the system....I mean, in Windows, all you have to do is load it somewhere, click on it, click "install", and voila!

There's some kind of font-impairment disorder at the Youngstown stations... Talk about an unholy mix of Gotham and Arial! At least the ticker blends in nicely with the graphics in News89's post...even though that adds Lato to the sea of fonts being used!!!