tyrannical bastard

I don't think he's been fired just yet, but the response to his "suspension" has been growing... https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190608/local-businesses-pull-ads-from-tv-20-in-support-of-joe-crain Meanwhile, DirecTV and the Sinclair side-cars are doing a fine job in their retransmission negotiations. It's been over a week now and no progress whatsoever. If I had to point the finger, it would be of the license-holders. Absentee broadcasters acting as stooges for their "parent company" who dropped the ball when it came time to re-up the contract. How often does a retransmission fight come across with ZERO warning to the viewer? And Sinclair can't do a thing about it because they have to leave it up to their pigeons...i mean "owners" of the stations they're operating. And AT&T is doing a bang-up job too. They finally got the trouble slides up for the affected channels after being in black (and still have a warning channel for a retrans fight that never happened almost TWO YEARS AGO!)

I know this was already brought up in the WUSA thread, but Tegna has re-upped with CBS for all of their stations....including WWL. Considering the damage has already been done, this could cement WVUE's dominance in the market, especially in the AM.

That's what Ernest (or Rex) said.....

Who wants to buy a TV station? (and buffet restaurant) Come to the Summit County Courthouse at 10am Friday....bidding starts at $2.89 million! https://www.ohio.com/news/20190604/ernest-angleys-cathedral-buffet-tv-studios-property-scheduled-for-friday-sheriffs-sale (I'm sure WBNX itself is unaffected, for now....that is unless the new owners evict them as this could be just for the building and not the license and "non-license assets") I'm thinking the default back in 2017 was the reason that the CW went packing and affiliated with WUAB. It seems like an act of default can invalidate something like an affilaition agreement.

Good ole DirecTV.....while the quoted dispute was resolved LONG ago, the "alert" channel is STILL there for WALA, yet no such channels exist for WPMI and WJTC. WPMI in black while WJTC has the "owner has removed this channel" slide up. Thank goodness I have an antenna, and the ability to watch WXXV out of Gulfport (and sometimes WDAM out of Hattiesburg...)

I wonder if this was just a classy way of CBS announcing layoffs (or buyouts), or if it was mandated as some form of union concession (if these employees were part of one).

Add WEYI to the list of DirecTV stations tied to Sinclair (they are HSH) The only other station of note is WWMB in Myrtle Beach, and there's no word on their status. The rest are Sinclair cast-offs that are completely owned & operated by HSH. While we're at it, should we expect a Cunningham blackout as well?

Mark Hyman is back..... I could see "The Point.....AFTER!"

Some of Sinclair's stations (owned by Deerfield Media) are being blacked out by AT&T (both UVerse & DirecTV) https://mynbc15.com/news/local/att-and-directv-have-removed-wpmi-and-wjtc-utv-44-from-their-systems Also, WHAM is off due to "reasons beyond 13WHAM's control". No word on other stations including WSTR, WUTB, KAME, KBTV. or the other Deerfield-owned stations run by Sinclair. All of the directly-owned Sinclair stations are not affected. UPDATE: It looks like the other Deerfield stations are affected, from reviewing Facebook posts from viewers (WSTR, KMYS) and stations (KBTV). No warning whatsoever on this one....It's not even June 1st yet!

Hopefully WJW can remain the dominant station it has become, and it seems that Nexstar is the best suited to maintain it, and possibly improve on it. The next best hope is WEWS, as much as Scripps has self-destructed their stations, it's still more tolerable than what Tegna has done. With WOIO, Gray needs to invest, invest, invest in that place (the talent drain of poached talent hadn't helped), and just cover the news without any gimmickry, mmkay? Then they can have a chance. With WKYC, you can only hope Tegna doesn't have any more stupid ideas up their sleeve. But the past year has shown they are not immune. While WOIO has been a landing pad for local poached talent, WKYC has landed bigger castoffs like Russ Mitchell and now Jay Crawford. It's too bad it's taken them this long to do a 5pm show, but Ianding Dr. Phil when they did really put them on the map at the time. Now all we can hope for is that Tegna doesn't WXIA or WTSP the place, or you'll have WOIO putting them solidly in 4th place...

They recently got a new General Manager, Charles Henrich who at one time was the VP of operations for Newport Television. One of the executives who worked with him at Newport is Gary Brown, who was hired as Meredith's SVP of content. With word on the street that Meredith is for sale I'm sure it's another feeling of instability for what's normally a more stable station.

WJET (and likely countless others in the Nexstar Nation) have an "exclusive" look at the terror camp in East Alabama.... https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2019/5/23/no-you-did-not (Yep...the same story broken by WPMI, covered by WRBL and "copied" by WKRG)

WKRG has caught some flack for "copying" a story done by WPMI several weeks before.... Here is the WKRG story (it looks like it has since been edited to remove the "exclusive" claims....) https://www.wkrg.com/news/exclusive-news-3-takes-you-inside-a-possible-terror-training-camp-in-east-alabama/2004827895 WKRG got the story from sister station WRBL, which was closer to where the suspected terror camp was.... (read the WKRG story and it was largely "borrowed" from WRBL...even down to the News 3 mentions) https://www.wrbl.com/news/local-news/exclusive-news-3-takes-you-inside-a-possible-terror-training-camp-in-east-alabama/2004438883 They may have gotten wind of the story from an AL.com article, that gave credit to the WPMI series.... https://www.al.com/news/2019/05/it-was-in-our-backyard-alabama-terrorist-camp-report-shocks-macon-county.html In conclusion... WPMI did the story a few weeks ago, AL.com did a story about it making claim to the WPMI piece...(even though Macon County is not served by one of their print properties despite having a "Montgomery" version of their site.) WRBL did an "exclusive" look into the facility (keeping in mind this happened CLOSER to them, even though Macon County is just outside their viewing area, nonetheless, it is part of East Alabama.) ...and WKRG, being a sister station to WRBL (and since Nexstar stations share and share alike.....) gets the story and someone there carelessly teases the story like it was above. Needless to say some people at WPMI are pissed, but given this background, they may have overreacted a tad. WKRG should have been a little more forthcoming about WRBL's reporting rather than "cutting and pasting" the story. It's almost like the Glenn Austin scandal a few years back when he was fired for alleged plagiarism of an article, as a result of sharing a news article for review, and the webmaster posting it to the site under his byline. He later settled with the station and they retracted the plagiarism allegations. And in another twist of irony, the WKRG anchor Peter Albrecht, was one of the 3 canned from WPMI in the Purge of 2007, which also saw Kim McCrae and Drexel Gilbert (who is ALSO once again at WKRG) getting the axe.

Forgot about TWC I was thinking of all of the ones that end in .TV that air his shows non-stop. No wonder they're buried after the religious channels on DirecTV!

Even better, he'll put all of "his" channels he sued to get on DirecTV and Xfinity as subchannels on these stations!

Fun fact of the day..... Ernest Angley's middle name is Winston. Whoopsie.... Forgive me Lord for I have sinned....

Well so much for saving the T-P....the owners are laying off the entire staff.... https://thehill.com/media/442133-entire-new-orleans-times-picayune-staff-laid-off-in-sale A real dick move by both parties....Advance for reducing the Times-Picayune to this and selling to someone who puts everyone else on the street.

Agreed. I know firsthand that they are more trouble than they are worth. Just with the back-and-forth of signals, all it takes is one bad link to screw it all up. Maybe in the event of a catastrophe, a company can have a "reserve" operation that they can bring online should one of their facilities go down.

Ah yes....now I remember. There was a good Entertainment Weekly article about it in 1998 right when the show was straddling 3rd place with CBS...

Deepest condolences to WALA's recently retired Bob Grip, on the loss of his wife Marie from Pancreatic Cancer. Even WKRG sent their condolences on their facebook page. Before coming to WALA (and a stint in Virginia Beach), Grip anchored and reported at WKRG in the mid to late 70s...

IIRC, ABC started GMA from their entertainment division and moved it to their news division at some point in the 90s. Was it when Shelley Ross overhauled the show in 1999 after the failure of Kevin Newman & Lisa McRee (replacing Joan Lunden & Charles Gibson)....Charlie being brought back to anchor with Diane Sawyer.... GMA was largely based on WEWS's The Morning Exchange....ah a time when networks listened to their affiliates and used their expertise to create programming...

(insert WWL adding the show to their station finally comment here) It's too bad the affiliates can't protest like they did in the 90s and 2000s and take back most of the 7am hour. I had so much hope for CBS in the morning, but with this latest chapter, it's the end of The Early Show all over again, and virtually any CBS morning show incarnation that's preceded it. The last thing we need is another clone of GMA and Today...something that CBS has failed at many times before.

While not TV related....this is BIG news out of New Orleans, and proof that good old fashioned demand can overcome the stupidity and short-sightness of a lousy owner.... https://www.nola.com/news/2019/05/owners-of-the-new-orleans-advocate-buy-nolacom-the-times-picayune.html The Manships created a New Orleans edition of the Advocate in response to the T-P going to a 3-day schedule. Eventually the T-P relented and went back to publishing 7 days a week. The Manships ended up selling the Advocate to Georges Media, while retaining WBRZ and KRGV. Even as the T-P tried to undo the damage, the new Advocate pushed them into 2nd place in New Orleans. Now if only someone can make the other Advance papers (and clusters) great again. I know newspapers are a dying industry, but the decent companies are still putting out a quality product while those that slash and burn are getting wha'ts coming to them for their cost-cutting...

If WJW gets them, they could always play the KPLR card, either with a 8 or 9pm news (or both!)

It seems like it should be the other way around. After seeing the beating that Panama City took after Michael, Denver seems like a much better place to house a broadcast hub than Jacksonville...