tyrannical bastard

Hopefully HD and other technical upgrades were part of the plans. This is one station that is LONG overdue for a change.

And in many of these, Gray and Nexstar own ALL of the major stations in the market. A few more have Sinclair as a third owner. Grand Junction and Panama City have Nexstar owned stations because they were the Hoak leftovers when THEY merged with Gray! It's just like radio did years back, the same 3 companies owning ALL of the stations.

Gray and Nexstar have lots of room to consolidate in the smaller markets. But if one goes after the other, it would cause a slew of conflicts. The smaller groups or individual stations are sale bait now more than ever. Even if Nexstar gets Media General and becomes maxed out, the WVMH sale is a stopgap solution that doesn't give them immediate ownership, but operational control. Expect this to be the next Nexstar exploitation of the rules like they did with Mission before.

Too bad they dumped the "Your Town....Your State...Your Future" branding. That would have made for a great Nexstar-esque web site header! This would reunite WOWK with their former Gateway/SJL sister stations in Altoona and WLYH in Lancaster. Its only a matter of time before the Maag family cashes out on WFMJ. That's another station with Nexstar written all over it SHOULD they not get Media General. But if not, this time brokerage agreement is a loophole should they prevail in their mission to overtake MG. If they get turned down by Media General, expect them to be VERY aggressive in their pursuit of stations....

I nailed this one a while back when their CEO was sued.... And like I said before, Nexstar would be an improvement over WVMH. They have a good set of logos, but all of these stations (maybe not WBOY but especially WOWK) need some desperate help. It is disconcerting that Perry Sook once worked here, but so did fellow Ohio University alum Matt Lauer....

Former WPXI and WKRG morning anchor Jennifer Abney is now a primary anchor at WOWK in Charleston-Huntington.

WFMJ getting Bob Black was a major coup after WKBN was sold to out-of-town owners and the new management parting ways with him. He was a large part of WFMJs success over the last 18 years.

....basically anywhere Sinclair has a third or 4th wheel. Move the primary stations on to the strongest channel and put the secondary stations onto the strongest station outside of the top 4. Deerfield then can have all of the diginets on the other station in the top 4 and the 4th station is spectrum bait.

And yet they STILL don't have an 11pm newscast....not since they were a CBS affiliate.

Huge news indeed. Another change of the guard from the days when he and Colleen Marshall inherited the anchor slots from Doug Adair and Angela Pace. At least Jym Ganahl is staying put since he's been at the station since 1979. I wonder if Mike Jackson would move back to nightside. Having him on the morning shift may be an advantage since they lead into the "Today" show and WBNS no longer extends into the 7am hour...

Same goes with DISH and TEGNA...... http://static.11alive.com/dish/ (pretty much the same for all of their other stations) They make it sound like they've entered into some special partnership (with the banner reading....ATTENTION DISH CUSTOMERS....CLICK HERE FOR A SPECIAL MESSAGE!) But it's another pissing match. I give Media General props for at least providing a few weeks' notice rather than THREE DAYS.....

It will be interesting to see how similar the efforts are. I'm i'm not mistaken, WHPM is essentially operated out of WGBC in Meridian, which could mean a total simulcast, or even something very much like WHLT has done with their parent station, WJTV in Jackson by inserting local content segments into a newscast fed by the parent station. This also could explain why there's only an effort to produce a 9pm show as opposed to on at all of the other times for WGBC's .2 (NBC) and WMDN. The last time those stations had news was when WMDN ceased producing it over a decade ago, and a few years prior, they had taken over WGBC's as well by just simulcasting the news on both stations before settling on airing news on just WMDN. It's a long overdue move that should be an alternative to WTOK for Meridian viewers and that gives both markets a 9pm newscast finally.

I see it as a real estate move. It's a channel with a well-established national distribution on the major cable system that's NOT owned by Comcast, Viacom, or any other bundle-happy conglomerate that have destroyed cable and satellite television as we know it by driving up our bills with excess channels and bloated subscriber fees. Now whether Sinclair could pull off this deal, AND make it work is still to be seen. Tennis programming would be out the window and Sinclair will more than likely use it as a vehicle for as they please. A perfect example would be the CBC owned Newsworld International which became Current TV when sold to Al Gore/Joel Hyatt, and when they sold it....it eventually became Al Jazeera America.

A channel is a channel these days. If it has a slot on lots of systems, it's better than trying to start one from the ground up. I wouldn't put it past Sinclair to hit the reset button on TTC as either a national version of ASN or for their grand vision of NewsChannel 8 as a national news channel.

Another upcoming retrans battle....this time it's Media General and DirecTV.... http://wlfi.com/2015/09/19/attention-directv-subscribers/ In the past, both companies have been good about negotiating. It started to change when DISH had the blackout two years ago. Now that DirecTV is under AT&T's control, and Media General is the former LIN in disguise...this has the potential to get ugly. LIN has had sparring matches with Mediacom, Dish and Time Warner (and Bright House) in the past resulting in month-long blackouts.

Chris Dunn, former KPHO chief meteorologist has been named as the chief meteorologist of WPMI in Mobile. http://lagniappemobile.com/merger-puts-wala-wkrg-back-corporate-roof/

Former WPMI morning meteorologist Deitra Tate has been named as the Weekend AM meteorologist at WAVY. http://collectivetalent.com/news/story/110

That may have been the plan all along if neither company wanted to operate WDSI as a going concern (or spin it off entirely). WFLI is out of the top 4 and could fall into "failed station" or SSA territory... EDIT: And now its official as Sinclair is buying the non-license assets and programming of both stations... http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2015/sep/11/sinclair-buys-local-tv-stations/324534/ The article goofs that Meredith still owns WFLI....they were divested to MPS media and shelled under New Age WAY back in 2008.

It's another possibility. WJW absorbing WBNX would bring another CW affiliation into Tribune's fold and would give the largest independently owned & operated CW station to the largest operator. Doing so would prevent competition to their 10pm show. They could even take the KPLR approach if they had to for an 8pm SHOW! Nexstar is another possibility since they purchased KASW in Phoenix. Cleveland is not far behind in market size and doing so would give Nexstar their first ever Ohio station. I believe the Indians going away from WUAB was mainly a result of the Dolan Family (who owns the Indians AND Cablevision) wanting an exclusive cable deal with Fox Sports Ohio at the time. Dennis Kucinich (then a congressman) even lobbied for legislation requiring teams that had facilities funded with tax dollars to broadcast their games on "free tv". It went nowhere and the Indians packed up for cable, snapping 21 years of ratings success for WUAB. WUAB once had the highest MLB ratings of any station that carried games, and was a large factor in the station being carried out-of-market in such places as Erie, Columbus, Youngstown, and even Portsmouth! The call letters WGCL have ties to Cleveland , as it was the longtime call letters for 98.5 until the mid 80s. It's been WNCX ever since.

It's about time Raycom did something with WUAB. It's suffered under their control ever since they lost the Indians telecasts, and gave away their schedule (and most of their ratings) to WBNX over the next several years. With recent revelations that Rev. Ernest Angley is cheating his employees (at his Cathedral Buffet subsidiary by classifying them as volunteers), it could be sooner rather than later that WBNX is duopoly bait for WKYC or WEWS. If that ever happens, expect WBNX to get into the 10pm news game too.

Lance Crawford is returning to WPMI as sports director.... http://lagniappemobile.com/wala-extends-nightly-news-go-head-head-competition/ This comes a little under two years after WPMI failed to renew his contract when he was the lead sports anchor with Clement Townsend... http://lagniappemobile.com/lance-crawford-out-as-wpmi-shakes-up-staff/ Clement took the reins as the sole sports director until leaving for another job several months later. The sports job was vacant until last September when Paxton Boyd was hired. He lasted less than a year. Interesting move as this is the second about-face the station has made under the current management, who made the earlier changes under their watch as well...the first being swapping Deitra Tate and Kelly Foster back into their prior roles as weekend and morning meteorologist, respectively. There's still no word on who will be replacing Deitra Tate, as well as departing Chief Meteorologist Derek Beasley...both who will be leaving in the next few weeks...

Something seemed small-market about the new WOIO logo...and this is likely the reason why. The question is....did Raycom rip off Gray or vice versa? The original WOIO "CBS 19" came into existence in 2002 ...and WCAV signed on in 2004... It's probably a coincidence, but ripoffs are becoming more prevalent and noticeable these days....

Thank goodness black and yellow weren't in the plans....that would have caused riots in the streets from angry Cleveland sports fans I do remember the brief "FOX 8 is News" branding.....it must have been someone's last gasp at doing anything to keep the station from being called "FOX 8" ...and of course, WJW kept a blue, gray and gold color scheme for over a decade from late 1997 to mid 2007, even though it was mostly blue from 2002 onwards with their Giant Octopus package.

Earlier, my thoughts about WOIO's new color scheme were that the colors were similar to Kent State. But WOIO may have made an even bigger fail with their color scheme... ESPECIALLY since the old colors (red and white) were similar to the Scarlet and Grey of Ohio State....

Here's the 1995 version of "19 News"