tyrannical bastard

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.

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...

A potential worst-case scenario would be the breakup of Sinclair much like Adelphia (under bankruptcy due to their fraud) where their cable systems were largely divided between Time Warner and Comcast. There's plenty of broadcasters who could snatch up some extra stations should they be forced on the market. They need their day in court because of not only their Tribune antics, but other ownership games they've played before and gotten away with. Throw the book at 'em, Sonny!

It's semantics. Code Red takes it a little too far over the top and should be reserved for a true emergency situation like a terrorism attack or weather event of the highest severity. At least the "weather alert days" make it about the weather and hopefully make people more aware of the risks they could be exposed to instead of the "you're gonna die" mentality which if it's overdone and overplayed, people tune out especially if the storm does not live up to the hype....

AFAIK, Sinclair is NOT involved in these disputes, as it shouldn't be. This is a case of a group of licensees who for some unknown reason, have ignored the need to negotiate with AT&T to restore their stations to UVerse and DirecTV. There may be a boilerplate standard these stations work off from but it is ultimately up to the license holder(s) to negotiate.

It just keeps getting better for the sidecar stations locked in a dispute with AT&T... https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/at-t-files-bad-faith-retrans-complaint-against-nine-broadcasters Here's hoping the FCC puts the hurt on them. I guess there are worse things than being owned by Sinclair.... Just more proof that these sidecars are incapable of being independent broadcasters and should have never acquired the stations they have now...

If you take Akron and Canton (and possibly Mansfield) of the Cleveland area, it would roughly compare with the Columbus area population-wise. Cleveland has more suburbs and Columbus' population has swelled over the last two decades without a lot of major suburbs or cities in the viewing area. And in terms of TV coverage, Akron and Canton may as not exist anymore since the stations based there either have been re-focused on Cleveland or stripped of any local content (like WVPX and WRLM). If they were further away, they could qualify as their own market or markets.

Wasn't there some kind of lawsuit over the web address when NBC sold to Media General? NBC4i.com rolls off much better than NBC4Columbus.com. WRC already had NBC4.com in the bag. All I know is I'm forever grateful that Nexstar stopped changing the names of their websites to what they had been doing (CrappyLocalProud.com)

Ah yes....the middle finger incident. I remember it well. I'd give anything to see the Dave Kaylor Hobo story! That and his dentures incident during a political convention in 2000. Back to Columbus picking up market rejects.....the short tenure of Pete Scovill at WSYX/WTTE can be summed up in one of his stories. Tossing to Scott Taylor, who works (is live) at Riverside Hospital about the crash landing of a Beechcraft Banana (Bonanza) at Don Knotts (Scott) airport. Ok...back to the TEGNAfication of their newest stations...including WBNS.

IIRC, Tyler Bacome worked in Columbus before Indianapolis....sort of a lateral move market-wise. Also, Bob Hetherington was WUAB's original 10pm anchor before coming to WSYX in the 90s. Scott Light is in a better place...or so we can hope coming from Atlanta. Sort of a reverse Ben Swann situation since he went from Cincinnati to that dreaded CBS station in Atlanta to well....you know the rest of the story. Another out-of-market move was Rodney Dunigan. He's way better off at WSYX than he was at WPTY/WATN. (and they're getting sold to Tegna as well!) WKYC was in the ratings toilet back then as an O&O and a farm team for network talent. Even Al Roker left there to move to New York and eventually NBC itself. Doug & Mona were far overshadowed by the anchors at WEWS and WJW back then. I believe Judd Hambrick had his first stint as an anchor there after leaving WJW and Doug/Mona moving to Columbus. Needless to say, their arrival and the rise of NBC at the time pushed them to the top of the ratings for a while.

It was a short ownership because of their Enquirer ownership and was under a temporary waiver. It would have been OK under the old Gannett but definitely not under the current TEGNA. They're in a good place now. And WZZM was the other swapped station in the deal that sent KOCO as well to Hearst-Argyle.

I can believe reaching the outskirts of Dayton (especially Springfield). The Columbus market totally surrounds the Zanesville area (Muskingum County) and extends all the way to Morgan, Noble and Guernsey Counties. WTAP has only had WIYE-LD on the air for a few years, so WSYX and WBNS are still available in Parkersburg along with the other Charleston-Huntington stations. As for Cleveland area, that's probably stretching it a bit much. It reaches the fringes like Mansfield and New Philadelphia (especially South Tuscarawas County). WOIO getting CBS probably had a lot to do with this since it had less reach than WJW. Before Lima got their own stations aside from WLIO, I believe WBNS made it all the way up there as well.

Gannett could have had WLWT after the Multimedia purchase, but the newspaper rule put the kibosh on that. Wasn't it some kind of swap with WGRZ and KOCO and Hearst-Argyle? And thanks to the overlapping signal rule at the time, that forced Hearst-Argyle to dump WDTN in Dayton for WLWT. If Hearst ever goes to Tegna, that's how they get Cincinnati back. The other markets are too tiny and in the hands of parties that won't sell any time soon (especially WFMJ, Lima and WHIZ).

Another MAJOR departure at WKRG..... (And this is about a week or two after the departure of main anchor Mel Showers) Update.... he's walking away...