tyrannical bastard

The latest on AT&T & Hearst.... https://www.multichannel.com/news/hearst-stations-go-dark-to-directv

It could be worse, they could have ended up with the Educational Media Foundation. One of the more notable stations they've taken over is WPLJ to replace with their satellite-fed "Christian Rock". They're like the OTA Broadcasting or ION of the radio world...sucking up stations.

Mediacom subscribers dodged another bullet. They made good with Nexstar on a new agreement. https://www.multichannel.com/news/mediacom-nexstar-avoid-blackout This stuff is starting to get really stealthy. Should we just assume that on the last day of the year, your channels could be going away?

Update: Nexstar and Xfinity reach a deal: https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/comcast-nexstar-appear-to-have-reached-a-deal-to-avoid-a-blackout/ As for WGN America getting yanked, I can believe it. CLTV will be ceasing operations tonight as well.

Here's a big one.... https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/comcast-may-lose-nexstar-locals-wgn-america-more-tomorrow/ Nexstar....we all saw that one coming. This is a rarity for Comcast, but now that AT&T has decided to misbehave as a mega-conglomerate, now's their chance too! Looking at Comcast's list on their website, it appears Marquee, Waterman and Paxton (WPSD) are up in February, and Gray & Graham in March. This likely allows for plenty of time for negotiation, and Comcast is being forthcoming about these contracts coming up...

The sad thing is that WKYC out-Tegna-ed Tegna on their latest disaster. Usually WKYC has forged ahead of the corporate mandates, putting out BETTER stuff than if they had towed the company line. The ultimate 180 will come when they FINALLY launch a 5pm newscast with Jay Crawford next month. As if his current lunch-time show wasn't enough of a bomb. Remember, it was WKYC counter-programming Dr. Phil at 5pm which even rescued WKYC from the doldrums they were in going WAY back to their days as a farm team O&O for NBC.

With WDAM, their graphics were immediately followed by their set upgrades. WLOX only got a graphics upgrade.

I see they pulled a Meredith there....with the video wall. Seems like it's a lot like WSMV's last set refresh before their current one. Seeing as how Hattiesburg is market 160ish, this is a big move for them. How did WLOX get left out of the set upgrades when they were Gray'd? WDAM is uber-dominant in their market, and pretty sure that WLOX still dominates WXXV down on the coast.

Ironically, Marvel is one of Disney's cash cows, so if they conducted themselves like a certain broadcast company that forced commentaries on their viewers, ABC could have turned the tables on their affiliates....

This may be worthy of it's own thread, several markets across the country seem to be pre-empting the Stan Lee Tribute on ABC for other local holiday programming. In the article, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh are called out specifically. https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/12/21/marvel-fans-outraged-they-cant-watch-stan-lee-tribute/#8 Seems like a lousy thing to pre-empt. Don't they have other re-runs that they could push to the graveyard hour?

To put that into perspective, 15 dollars an hour for 40 hours a week is slightly over $31,000 a year. That would have been nice starting out since my first tv job was $22,000 and my second was $27,000. For most people, they have likely been over this threshhold for a while, so it's meaningless to them and a slap in the face to those who have worked hard to be where they're at and only making SLIGHTLY more than this minimum.

Some good news for the underlings at Sinclair....they just raised their minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour.... http://sbgi.net/pr-news/sinclair-broadcast-group-raises-minimum-hourly-wage-to-15/

Looks like Nexstar shell White Knight Broadcasting has a dispute with Dish Network. https://keepmystation.com/wvla/

Very doubtful. At the time, they were just purchased from their longtime owners, the Berk Family by ValueVision, and by some miracle, they kept their newscasts and ABC affiliation, although they tried to rebrand themselves as "The North Ohio News Station" despite being based out of Akron and a signal that reflected that. ValueVision is now ShopHQ, after a long string of names and owners....(ShopNBC, Evine, Evine Live, and a first stint as ShopHQ before Evine). Paxson would have probably bought another station (or kept WOAC and moved it to where Shop At Home moved it to....Brimfield or somewhere in that area) WBNX would have probably been far more likely to land CBS. Their signal was more comparable to the Cleveland stations (and that could have gotten REAL interesting given their recent saga!) They did benefit from the switch by picking up Fox Kids and ramped up their syndication efforts....and they ended up getting the WB several years later. In the mid 90's CBS's ratings were trending downward even before the switches happened. It wouldn't be until they stole the AFC from NBC 4 years later when they began to rise again...which may have cast doubt on WEWS/Scripps trying to get CBS (back)...

With all of the hoopla about Joe Burrow winning the Heisman Trophy, WBRZ in Baton Rouge sent a reporter to Burrow's hometown (Athens, Ohio) to get reactions and went live at 10pm. http://www.wbrz.com/news/joe-burrow-s-hometown-of-athens-ohio-reacts-to-his-heisman-win?fbclid=IwAR1-_vTTWdStgXKYBRRijuuJldnUv7SR3zIi3R4at667y21RJ_eYj6BQZWE WBRZ went far and beyond WAFB and WVLA covering the story by sending a reporter there. WVLA could have used pieces or reporters from WCMH or WOWK, but chose not to. No one from WSAZ or WTAP was in Athens covering the hometown gathering (they posted AP copy to their websites), but WAFB looks like they sent someone to New York to cover the awards. Despite not having the resources to send a sister station reporter there, and the importance of LSU Football in Baton Rouge, seeing this kind of dedication to a story is a good sign of good local ownership.

If the dates are correct, it would be interesting to think if KSAZ had to be an independent station for 3 days until they could get FOX from KNXV. Definitely a place where one deal triggered many more, especially with Scripps and Meredith securing deals (at the time) for their stations as a result of the New World/Fox deal... The Scripps deal was tied to WEWS keeping ABC, and it triggered the Westinghouse alignment with CBS and some more network swaps along the way...

Well, if this is what ROH is shilling....

They still have Full Measure with Sharyl Atkisson and America This Week with Eric Bolling..... does this mean we'll soon see Cooking With Boris?

WDAM looks okay, it could be far worse. Better than what WLOX has for sure. Usually, they're one of my "fringe" stations (along with WHLT which comes in more often), but reception is worse this time of year. Here's hoping WVUE gets something halfway decent. Bonus points if they work in purple (and put the final nail in WWL's coffin...)

And it appears the dispute is now over, as AT&T has reached deals with all of the affected sidecars...some agreements going back a few weeks. https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/at-t-reaches-agreement-with-cw-affiliate-in-nashville

Some sad news out of Cincinnati, as Elliott Block, the owner of "WKRP" has passed away. https://www.wvxu.org/post/wkrp-tv-station-owner-elliott-block-dies-71#stream/0 WBQC-LD has been known as "WKRP" for the last decade, capitalizing on the infamous sitcom about the easy listening station turned rock and roll. It was the original home of the WB, and switched to UPN after Sinclair dropped that network in favor of the WB. When the CW was launched, WKRC added it as a subchannel and WBQC returned to independence. It was always a station that tested their limits with coverage, launching a campaign to get a slot on Time Warner Cable, long before the retransmission boxing matches we have today. When DirecTV picked them up as a UPN affiliate, they did a parody of the Verizon "can you hear me now" commercial, using a guy and a satellite dish asking "can you see me now?" Even as an independent, it has been a repository of subchannels, with RTN replacing regular programming on the main channel in 2011. I don't know what the future holds for the station, unless he established a trust or heirs to run it. Up in Cleveland, W16DO, formerly W35AX was sold by Media-Com television to HC2 Holdings. Media-Com (the Klaus Family) still owns WNIR-FM, one of the longest running FM talk stations in the nation.

It pretty much involves building out the new site and configuring it with all of the feeds and programs, of course this involves some redundancy in the transition phase where materials are fed to both locations for operations and testing. And it should pretty much be a flick of a switch where the old site no longer feeds then the new site kicks in. And as a safety measure, the old site is usually kept going a little while longer (if it was automated) as a backup in case there are hiccups or failures.

If only more management agreements worked like this. Then again, Berkshire Hathaway is a well regarded public company with solid and stable investments. Private equity on the other hand loads up a company with lots of debt and the product suffers to keep costs down and profits (ROI) up.

How tied to Graham is WPLG these days? BH may be exerting some independence.