tyrannical bastard

It looks like sports isn't completely going away at WXIA....after checking Gannett's jobs page, WXIA is hiring a "Sports Multimedia Journalist." It is indicative of trends of making sports just another beat, but a puzzling move for a station in a place like Atlanta.

http://lagniappemobile.com/circulars-racialsocio-economic-issue/

 

WKRG will begin their 9am newscast on March 30th and will be a half hour show. Lagniappe also confirmed Devon Walsh will anchor at 9am, noon, and at 5pm with Peter Albrecht. Ashley Knight will replace Avery Cotton on the weekends, who took over Walsh's anchor slot on the AM show.

 

Station management also hinted at the possibility of expanding to other times. Could this mean additional news on WFNA?

 

Weekend AM news would be nice, as WEAR is the only station that does it for an hour on Saturday & Sunday....could Mobile/Pensacola be the largest market with such a minimal presence on the weekend?

 

Well here's more on the latest layoffs to "get more news-gatherers in the field gathering actual news" with a focus on Investigative:

 

http://www.adweek.com/tvspy/after-layoffs-scripps-says-it-wants-more-people-doing-actual-newsgathering/142922

 

Just to summarize from the article which cites the layoffs rumored to have happened at 3 stations:

WFTS:

Manager of The Investigative Unit (well that makes no sense given their stated focus)

Promotions Manager

Special Projects Producer (Investigative is under special projects at some stations at least)

 

WEWS:

8 people including a Creative Services Writer / Producer

 

KGTV:

Investigative EP (again a conflicting layoff)

Lead Assignment Editor (this is really a necessity to manage "gathering news")

GM's Executive Assistant

 

Their CEO said "“We are focused on digital video..." in touting the growth of Newsy and their intention to focus on growing that. Apparently that focus comes at the expense of their TV properties including in the areas they are focusing on... Something has to be up with them.

 

Whether Journal is getting cold feet about the upcoming merger, sheer incompetence of Scripps' management, or some other bombshell, I have a feeling that Scripps' days in TV are numbered. Something is VERY wrong here. Even at the Journal stations, the people are running towards the exits it seems. Inbred content is going to be this company's downfall, ESPECIALLY after casting off top-tier syndication to their competitors on a silver platter.

Mario Gabelli had a large stake in Media General prior to the Young merger. He even mediated between Media General and hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners (siding with them) who was trying to buy 3 seats on the board of directors, prior to the economic collapse of 2008. Harbinger wanted to divest the newly purchased NBC O&Os in Columbus and Providence and other "non-core" internet assets. By the time Harbinger sold their shares less than a year later, the economy and Media General itself was in peril.

More WKRG news on the upcoming anchor shuffle....

 

Devon announced on her WKRG facebook page that today was her last morning show, and she will begin anchoring the new 9am show, and also for the 5pm as well. She will continue anchoring the noon show as she has done for the last 6 years.

 

Presumably, she will join Peter Albrecht on the 5pm show, while Mel Showers and Rose Ann Haven will continue to anchor at 6 and 10.

Since Avery Cotton anchored on the weekends, no word on who will be taking her place.

 

And a piece of trivia.....Avery is the daughter of Drexel Gilbert, who anchored across the street with Peter Albrecht at WPMI until they were both canned back in 2007.

WKRG is moving weekend anchor Avery Cotton to the morning show, while current anchor Devon Walsh will be anchoring a newly (re)-launched 9am show. WKRG had one until 2009 when staff cutbacks warranted its cancellation.

 

Based on some job postings...it looks like they are launching a weekend AM show including a 4th meteorologist/weathercaster.

 

Aside from WEAR doing an hour from 6-7 weekend mornings, no one else has expanded to the weekend AM in Mobile thus far...

Mike Murphy, the longtime ABC 33/40 (and now all of Sinclair's Birmingham stations) General Manager, is stepping down for a GM Job in St. Louis, and it's not with KDNL.....

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/02/abc_3340_general_manager_leavi.html#incart_river

 

The previous GM of WTTO/WABM, J.C. Lowe was moved to Pensacola to take over WEAR & WFGX, replacing Terry Cole.

 

Cleveland is one of "Dr." Phil McGraw's strongest markets and has been since WKYC landed the show. And Ellen is a powerhouse for them at 4pm.

 

(Seriously, Phil is as much a doctor as you and I are.)

 

Had it not been for the "non-compete" that Oprah and Dr. Phil had which forbade them from being scheduled over each other; WKYC would have likely scheduled Dr. Phil at 4pm. "Ellen" premiered the following year and has held the 4pm slot ever since. Even before "Dr. Phil", the 5pm slot was home for a slew of talk shows from Montel to Donahue.

Interesting. I wonder if WKYC will do likewise.

Unless Dr. Phil is getting trashed in the ratings, it's doubtful. That show competing against the other 5pm shows really helped WKYC climb out of 3rd place and made them a factor in Cleveland's ratings for the first time in decades.

 

They used to have a 5 or 5:30 show back in the 80s and 90s, but it was short lived due to the then-powerhouse "Live on 5" which was the only game in town until WJW added news at 5:00 in the mid 1990s and WOIO following suit almost a decade later.

Meredith's "Better" is no more, instead it will continue to be a brand for their local adver-fluff fests (lifestyle shows)...

 

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/mobile/index/article/id/82436

 

It was already in the graveyard shift at recently acquired WALA, who also has a vacancy on their "Studio Ten" show after Cherish Lombard departed for an anchor job at WKRN in Nashville. Chastity Byrd has been co-hosting for the time being, and the job is posted on Meredith's job page....

 

Could this be an opportunity to retool the show with the "Better" brand?

Weigel and FOX's MOVIES! is launching on new stations....

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/82337/movies-network-adds-six-new-affiliates

 

It's a hodgepodge of stations...and it looks as if ThisTV is going to be bounced from WBNX 55.3. I highly doubt 55.2 is going away since it's the "All Ernest Angley all the Time" subchannel....(since they own the station).

That's the second place ThisTV has been kicked off of ever since WUAB sent them packing for "Bounce" a few years back. They've since added Grit to 43.3 in addition to Bounce on 43.2.

 

For WXTX, it looks like it will replace the soon-to-be gone LiveWell on 54.2.

The fact that KDNL's facebook page has less than 2,000 likes speaks volumes on how much this station is in the basement. Even on the low end, average "like" counts are at least ten times that with many stations having counts in the 6 figure range...

 

Whenever I think of WOUB, I think of this...

[yt]wzb_CDJ6U-s[/yt]

 

The video you post was of the OTHER student-run news program "Athens Midday", which used to run weekdays at noon on WOUB II (the local CABLE educational access channel for Athens, Ohio).

 

The channel itself was run by the WOUB Center for Public Media, but the show was an entirely student-run production of E.W. Scripps School of Journalism students in one of their 4th year Broadcast News classes. It used to show PBSYou and PBSKids programmimng between student shows, but since both of these channels no longer exist, i'm not sure what fills the schedule anymore. "Midday" ran during the school season, but went away after Ohio University switched from quarters to semesters. It used to be based in the basement of Scripps Hall (the Journalism building), but later moved to the same studio that WOUB's newscast came from in the Radio-TV Building (where WOUB is based)

 

WOUB (and WOUC) are full-powered PBS member stations serving Southeast Ohio and parts of West Virginia. They have their own news department (along with a network of NPR stations) staffed by paid members and volunteers, mostly students in Journalism and Telecommunications. They put on a half-hour "Newswatch" which airs weekdays at 5:30. As a result, it was like a virtual duopoly as students could be doing coursework for Athens Midday (being on that show) AND working for WOUB at the same time. If someone was a writer for the Ohio University newspaper "The Post", they were forbidden from participating in other writing or journalism activities, except if coursework required it.

 

And yes, this Louis guy is for real. I had several classes with him, and personally witnessed his other times going on the air. Luckily, he was never on WOUB itself.

WOUB-TV in Athens, Ohio, tries to make sense of their conundrum with Nielsen and the satellite companies...

(Athens County is currently in the Charleston-Huntington DMA, and WOUB, licensed to ATHENS, is now going to be carried in the COLUMBUS DMA)

http://woub.org/2015/01/12/why-woub%E2%80%99s-satellite-distribution-moved-columbus

 

Because Athens County has bounced back and forth between both markets in the last decade (since it's on the fringes of either market), viewers who actually LIVE in Athens County are denied the right to view their hometown station, which actually has a student-run newscast put on by university students at Ohio University.

:bang: :bang: :bang: :bang:

 

In addition, WOUB's coverage area includes large portions of Washington County (part of Parkersburg) and Muskingum County (the Zanesville DMA), as well as satellite station WOUC based out of Cambridge (Guernsey County; part of Columbus) whose coverage makes it the only full-powered PBS station for the Steubenville-Wheeling market.

 

Are there actually cases of satellite companies putting significantly viewed out-of-market stations on their systems? Up until DirecTV uplinked the Charleston-Huntington stations (the first time), Athens County actually qualified as a NRTC area, which was eligible to receive feeds from New York and Los Angeles stations.

 

Cable has always carried both sets of the Big 3 stations from Columbus and Charleston/Huntington, with the FOX and CW stations being swapped out depending on what market Athens County is assigned to.

Ratings and revenue make up the difference. WVTM is a distant fourth place station and WALA is usually in either first or second place most time periods with more market share.

Hearst got a hold of WVTM for a measly $3 MILLION....(for the building itself)

http://www.bizjournals.com/birmingham/news/2015/01/06/hearst-pays-3-million-for-wtvm-channel-13.html

 

Given WVTM's place in that market, i doubt the other assets added up to much. They are languishing in 4th place with a measly 4 percent market share. (from MG's annual report) And Hearst stepping in to immediately replace the GM with one of their own signals a change is coming...

...now if only MG doesn't send WIAT back into the basement where it languished for almost their entire existence.

 

For comparison, Meredith bought WALA down in Mobile for $86 MILLION.....

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/81744/meredith-completes-wala-mobile-purchase

 

First, if CBS 19 drops the "Action News" brand, they can re-brand as CBS19 News or 19 Eyewitness News.

 

Cleveland is one of those markets where the slogans have re-appeared on other stations over the years.

 

KYW (now WKYC) was the originator of Eyewitness News. It later lasted for almost 3 decades on WEWS from the 60s until 1990.

 

Action News was WKYC's brand from the late 70s until 1983-1984, when they adopted their longtime moniker "Channel 3 News" which is still in place today.

 

And "CBS 19" was the official station brand from 1996-2000. It replaced the inaugural "19 News" and "Cleveland Television News" monikers for their co-ownership with WUAB. It only re-appeared as the non-news brand when "Action News" was launched under Bill Applegate & Company...

 

And if they really want to succeed, they'll choose the "Hometeam 19" branding. :bang: :bang:

This was all Raycom's doing; as soon as WUAB lost the Indians in 2001, the branding was slowly eliminated until the great purge of 2002....

Adds a lot of validity to the rumors that they're about to dump their long-running "Action News" brand.

FTVlive agrees.....

http://ftvlive.com/todays-news/2015/1/6/cleveland-station-taking-the-action-out-of-action-news

 

It would solve the identity crisis by unifying WOIO under the CBS 19 brand, but it's been done before, and failed.

 

Action News has run its course, but the last thing we need is another news organization that thrives on the endless glut of social media and the web...

...my bad, forgot about Steubenville. I guess they would cheer on the Buckeyes, but due to their proximity to Pittsburgh (and getting some TV from there until recently), it's Steelers country.

WABM's "The Zone" is being simulcasted on WJTC-UTV44 in Mobile, since Alabama is playing Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

 

Are any of Sinclair's Ohio stations carrying this show? It's hosted by ABC 33/40's Mike Raita, and has columnists Tim May of the Columbus Dispatch and Kevin Scarbinsky of AL.com (Advance's Alabama newspapers). Since Columbus is a heavy Sinclair market, with stations in Toledo, Cincinnati and Dayton as well, it seems like a natural opportunity to capitalize on this game.

The likely scenario is that the old music package's license was up for renewal, Sinclair opted not to renew to save $$$, and said to the station, "Here, use the glass package we use on our other stations." The current graphics will likely be in place until technical upgrades are made to the new package, unless the former Fisher stations maintain some independence given the distance from HQ. As far as I know, many functions of the former Fisher stations are still getting services from Seattle for the time being.

 

With a company like Sinclair, I expect these out-of-sync moves to be the norm as they slowly transform their acquisitions into the fold. And probably the biggest reason of doing things piece by piece and by contract expirations is because it SAVES MONEY.

Seems like a very basic set, compared to KABB's and the other Devlin Sinclair sets.

 

...and it could very well be a fraction of the size of KABB's given the challenge of shoehorning WOAI into the existing KABB facility.

http://www.sbgi.net/site_mgr/temp/Swaps%20Closing%20Press%20Release.pdf

 

With the swaps in Providence, Tampa, Green Bay and Colorado Springs, Sinclair actually lost a percentage of reach! (mostly due to getting out of Tampa)

As the old saying goes, "You can't polish a turd..."

It stands true for WNWO and all of the "effort" Sinclair's put into the station, drawing numbers that pale WTVG and WTOL/WUPW.

Of course, being off the main cable system for almost 6 MONTHS probably helped....

http://ftvlive.com/todays-news/2014/12/19/toledo-station-might-have-lowest-rated-newscast-in-the-country

 

 

But wait....there's more!

Down in Charlotte, our favorite O&O is pulling in EVEN WORSE numbers compared to WNWO (seeing as how Toledo is market 76 and Charlotte is 24)

and to add insult to injury, FTVLive used the old "FOX Charlotte" logo from WCCB!

While the other stations are raking in tens of thousands of viewers, WJZY is WAY behind the others, getting a measly 700 viewers for the 6am show and topping off with 7800 for their so-called "newscast" at 10.

 

Here's the numbers from the Charlotte Observer that FTVLive is talking about...

http://charlottemediascene.blogspot.com/2014/12/ratings-for-key-charlotte-newscasts.html

Another passing to report.

 

Mark Leff, a former CNN Correspondent (from the network's inception until 2001) passed away in Shanghai, China.

 

After CNN, he was a Journalism professor at Ohio University who taught broadcast news classes and assisted with the WOUB news department. He later became a consultant for Shanghai Media Group's ICS News.

 

I had the pleasure of working with him, and his teachings still resonate with me to this day, especially his pronunciation of Iraq (eh-ROCK). He will be missed.

 

http://ftvlive.com/todays-news/2014/12/15/former-cnn-correspondent-mark-leff-is-dead