tyrannical bastard

Then...you have stations like WPMI that make you keep score with their morning anchor team, since they have Kelly Foster doing double duty as a meteorologist and co-anchor to Darwin Singleton two days a week, and as a co-anchor joined by Jake Dunne the other 3 (who works on the weekends and fills in for the often-missing chief Chris Dunn). Translation...they were too cheap to hire a replacement for Kelly Jones when she left and gave Kelly Foster some anchor time....

While looking for the infamous Marvin Zindler quote, I came across this "tribute" from competitor KPRC, nearly a decade after his passing....

At least with WDLI, this means that they're going away for good. Ion is getting the license and the ability to take back WVPX to themselves, essentially.....unless they want to air even MORE Ion subchannels on zombie station WDLI!?!?!?!? Had the auction not happened, I bet WDLI and other TBN's would have sold out, eventually. The only beneficiary of the proceeds is the bankrupt owners of TBN probably throwing the money at their debtors.....

I guess all of the other Morris stations have "virtual" ice machines!

WSYX has a new website. It's a much simpler, more mobile-friendly layout than the current template. It appears WSYX is the only station with it as of now....not even WTTE has it yet.

Actually, since WKRG revamped their newscasts about a month ago, the WFNA 9pm show is now just another WKRG newscast and doesn't focus on Pensacola like they used to....as a whole, WKRG has stepped up their coverage of the Florida counties to Destin and has come to rely heavily on their sister stations to cover the fringes of each other's markets...

With FOUR 9pm newscasts in the Mobile-Pensacola market, you figure how long that would last..... Well, the first shoe to drop is the WPMI-produced 9pm show on their sister station, WJTC UTV 44. The final show airs tonight, and beginning on Monday, will move to a half-hour show at 7pm.

Impressive enough is someone there who survived through Stan Sanders' tenure as news director. Media General finally pulled the plug on him in 2009 amidst their cutbacks...

In Nexstar's defense....the only issue is that Scott took their video from WMBB's website, and posted it to his FTVLive YouTube channel. Had he simply hyperlinked the original video, it would be a non-issue. But Tom Lewis has blown this way out of proportion. Scott has had his run-ins with people over the years about things on his site, but this has to be the worst I've ever seen. He really hit a raw nerve with him. And based on people who used to work for him, it's not a surprise... At one time (when he was at WJHG)...he not only was the main anchor (for 6 & 10) and news director, but also the co-host of the top-rated radio morning show in Panama City! If that doesn't inflate who you are...

The plot thickens over at the World's Most Beautiful Beaches between Scott Jones and Tom (Tyrannical Bastard) Lewis....

You may have heard about the standoff/shootoff in Panama City yesterday where a reporter and her interviewee were thisclose to being hit by flying bullets... Scott Jones posted the video from WMBB on FTVlive this morning. Soon after, Scott gets a "nastygram" and hostile phone call from news director Tom Lewis that this was a violation of Nexstar "copywrite" and hostility and profanity ensued... https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2018/5/23/nexstar-news-director-threatens-ftvlive On a personal note, some of you may be wondering how I came up with my username here...

Ok...I'll chime in with some that I can recall... Bill and Patti Burns...father and daughter that anchored together at KDKA (referred to as the Patty & Daddy show but was a hit with viewers) Fred and Wally Griffith....Fred was the longtime host of WEWS' Morning Exchange and Wally was a reporter at WOIO in their early years as a CBS affiliate. He even appeared (with WOIO's blessing) on TMX for an anniversary special and his gift....a CBS 19 coffee mug! And there's the Gumbels, we all know Greg and Bryant...and then there was Elton, who anchored sports at WCTV in Tallahassee. I believe he was a nephew to the elder Gumbels? And then there was Jerry Peterson, longtime weatherman at WSOC in Charlotte. His son? Greg Peterson....now the primary anchor at WPMI in Mobile.

In what may be a first for the OTT bundles, Sinclair had pulled ALL of their stations from PlayStation Vue... https://tvanswerman.com/2018/05/02/playstation-vue-pulls-sinclair-owned-local-channels/ Unlike the traditional dispute, no one is saying anything....this primarily affects markets where Sinclair has Fox and CBS stations.

If Scripps is syndicating their package, It's another sign that the vultures are circulating them (with all of the layoffs and proxy fights)...

Once Sinclair-Tribune goes through (if it does...), then it's Nexstar's move to swallow up some smaller fish to catch up. It's about time the investors made them shape themselves up. Even though Tegna has passed them in terms of wackiness, It was Scripps who first self-inflicted their model of stupidity to their stations (by eschewing proven shows for cheap, inbred fare) Of course if Gamco gets their way, sooner or later Scripps will first swallow someone else (like Meredith) only to get sucked away by Nexstar. I have a feeling we're seeing Media General 2.0 again....

The WOWK one goes all the way back to the late 90s with their Hearst-esque look. (before that it was the "13"elieves logo) WVMH simply changed the color of the current "13" and cookie-cuttered it for their other acquisitions....

WALA has hired Byron Day as an anchor for the station's 5pm show. http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/112158/anchor-byron-day-joins-wala-mobile-ala Not only is he a Mobile native, but he worked with soon-to-be retiring primary anchor Bob Grip. Methinks this will be his successor. Over at WKRG, Peter Albrecht has been splitting anchoring with market veteran Mel Showers (Peter does the 5, 6:30, and 9pm on the CW; Mel does the 6 &10). I imagine it's a successor plan as well when Mel decides to retire.

...as well as the same amount of time for Clear Channel / iHeart to finally be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy...

Cristi Jessee has been canned from Meredith's KVVU in Las Vegas after attempting to hire conservative whackjob Laura Loomer....resulting in Meredith spiking the hire and forcing her suspension and departure from the station. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2018/2/9/not-your-typical-news-director-fired Read the comments....one is from a guy named "Scott Livingston" who would love to add her to his staff.. We all know who he is and where he works... And hope this is some random dude making a joke instead of the real person trying to reach out....

... Here's hoping he doesn't end up at a certain company that owns too many stations...

At least KGPE kept a form of their prior logo. Former sister station WTEV (now WJAX) got Cox-ed with this disaster of a logo....

Even the last WBMG logo is a vast improvement! (and it looks like their bastard cousins over in Atlanta ripped them off for their CBS 46 logo several years later!)

It appears that WHLT has all but given up doing any newscasts of their own of ANY kind....and just simulcasting WJTV's with a WHLT bug added to them. They're trying to pass off this as news "from the capital." And of course, WDAM eats their lunch since they're a LOCAL station and have covered the PINE BELT for YEARS...even the Raycom content from around the state sprinkled in (WLOX, WLBT and WMC) mixes better than what WHLT is doing! Hopefully, the Nexstar graphics are coming soon. WIAT 42 CBS WBMG-TV has certainly gone from hell to good and back to hell again. (New Vision saved them and LIN made them terrible again) I'd even take a Nexstar parallelogram over their disaster of a look. (cbs eye) WIAT would be a blessing of a logo. Now if only WKRG would use ANYTHING but that darn Media General music that should have been canned 5 years ago!!!!

Florida wants to make Daylight Saving time year round...and move the counties in Central time over to Eastern like the rest of the state. http://www.wjhg.com/content/news/Bill-to-keep-Florida-on-Daylight-Saving-Time-all-year-moves-forward-470960303.html Panama City would be the only market to have consistency since it's already bisected by the time line; the easternmost counties are in Eastern already. It would get dicey with Tallahassee and Jacksonville since they border Georgia, and wreak havoc in Mobile-Pensacola since WEAR is based in Pensacola and virtually every one else is in Alabama. The result would be when Alabama falls back in the fall, Pensacola would be TWO HOURS ahead of Mobile...and that primetime would start at 9 instead of 8 in the Sunshine State when the rest of the country "falls back".

Big news out of Mobile.... Bob Grip, primary anchor at WALA FOX 10 will be retiring after this year.