tyrannical bastard

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?

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.

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?

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....

Not to mention the fringes of the Birmingham DMA were also their own markets...the western side was Tuscaloosa, and the other side was Anniston. 33 was the CBS affiliate for Tuscaloosa, and 40 was the CBS for Anniston. This was another factor in WBMG's doormat status as their own signal sucked in the Birmingham area at the time, and the fringes could watch these stations more reliably on their side of town. Well before WBRC got Fox, WDBB put on a 9pm newscast in the 80s, and was the ORIGINAL Fox affiliate for the Birmingham area, while being a Tuscaloosa station. They later signed on WNAL in Gadsden as a satellite (now WPXH), which almost became the eastern half of Albritton's operation. Neither station penetrated Birmingham well, so it eventually went to Birmingham-based WTTO, who bought WDBB, moved the license to Bessemer, and made it a satellite of WTTO, as well as relaying on WNAL.

Just curious....does Talkback 16 have any regular callers? (like with Paul Finebaum and Phyllis from Mulga?) ...or do they all seem to sound like the same grumpy old curmudgeons?

Cue the Talkback Feedback segment about this in 3......2......1........ (BEEP!)

At this point, it's engrained in the viewers' heads, no matter what channel it's actually on. Allbritton could have requested a cable channel across the market (like what WCNC did with "6" years back, and pretty much the entire Ft. Myers market sans WINK), but that ship has sailed. Birmimgham is just one of those markets that let APT/PBS get two of the good allocations....channel 10 (Birmimgham) and 7 (Mt. Cheaha), leaving only Channel 6 and 13. When FOX moved to 6, ABC was relegated to 33/40 and 58, and now its gaggle of subchannels strewn over WABM, WDBB, and for whatever reason they can get away with being on the former WJSU. All the while, the doormat "42" has finally overcome itself, and after an identity crisis before Nexstar got them, back to good old CBS 42.

Now that I"m reading James Spann's post about the 33/40 anniversary, he is grateful for all Allbritton has done for the station and his ability to broadcast severe weather. I have to wonder.....how he feels about Sinclair...

It will be interesting to see if/when the paperwork is up. SagamoreHill may simply be wanting out of the operations side of WLTZ and the "non-license assets" may be up for sale, and the result could be like with most of SagamoreHill's other stations, where they are the licensee, and someone else runs it. Market share could be an issue though. Mission seems to be on a buying spree as of late, could they take WXTX off of American Spirit's hands? That gives WRBL a sister station.

It will be interesting to see if the CBS station in Lake Charles will be a part of this transaction. During the strike of Hurricane Laura in the Lake Charles area, they were doing very primitive coverage using webpages of traffic cams and weather radar. It also looked like they get their forecasts from WLTZ in Columbus (same lower thirds) prior to the storm knocking them and the other stations off the air. Not to dive too deep into speculation territory, WLTZ could be a repeater for WSFA in Montgomery, giving the Alabama side of the market an NBC station that airs things at the right time for them (since Columbus and Georgia are in Eastern and the Alabama side is Central time)

Today marks the 24th anniversary of the launch of ABC 33/40 in Birmingham. At the time, it was a merger of WCFT TV-33 in Tuscaloosa and WJSU TV-40 in Anniston, coupled with a low-powered station in Birmingham, WBMA-LP. This also merged the two markets into Birmingham, and eventually made WBMG (now WIAT) the sole CBS affiliate for the now-combined market. WNAL was supposed to be the "second" station, but that went to WJSU instead....they served as the CBS affiliate for the remaining tenure of Anniston-Gadsden's time as a separate market. Allbritton would continue to run the stations until their merger with Sinclair. "33" and "40" were sold off to Howard Stirk at the last second after Sinclair tried some antics to "own" them outright, but decided to give up the licenses unless a buyer was found. Today, the station is avaiable on WBMA-LD, WABM-DT2, WDBB-DT2, and is still simulcast on Stirk-owned WGWW-DT2 (the former WJSU or "40") Several staff members are still there today, including anchor Brenda Ladun, and of course, the venerable James Spann who had departed WBRC for their switch to Fox as part of this launch.

MoffettNathanson to New Fox. "....dump the broadcast network." https://tvnewscheck.com/article/top-news/252665/fox-should-dump-broadcast-net-says-wall-street-analyst/ New Fox is pretty diluted as it is, since the entertainment assets are now part of Disney. It's basically Fox Network, Fox News, and Fox Sports. The latter will be even lesser if/when Sinclair rebrands the RSNs they bought.

Tonight, WJW weekend anchor and longtime I-Team investigator Bill Sheil anchored his final newscast after 21 years at FOX 8. Prior to that, he worked at WEWS. https://fox8.com/news/bill-sheil-retires-after-21-year-career-at-fox-8/