tyrannical bastard

Had Akron & Canton succeeded in getting other network affiliates on the air in the 50s and 60s, they could have been a stand-alone market as well. They were slated to get a VHF frequency on Channel 11, but that was held up in the freeze, and later was re-assigned to Pittsburgh and became WIIC (WPXI). That could have been WAKR, but they opted for UHF and soldiered on as an second ABC affiliate for the market, at WEWS's dismay, but allowed them to take some levity in their schedule while WAKR generally cleared everything. Ironically, the only part of WHIZ's original ownership is the 102.5 frequency, which originally served Zanesville as WHIZ-FM, but was moved to the exurbs of Columbus to become part of that market. It served as an automated country format, the new home of WWCD (after getting displaced from 101.1) and is now a hispanic station. The current WHIZ-FM was sold to Marquee along with the other stations (AM & TV) as well.

At this rate, both sides may as well be...

Not the biggest fan of the new WLBT logo. I have a feeling that many of the Gray stations are going for this "overlapping letters" look. On the other hand, the new WIS logo looks great and really stands out with the new look.

Meanwhile, most viewers in Colorado with DirecTV or UVerse have been unable to watch Coach Prime and Colorado on FOX, since Nexstar has ties to all of their owned FOX affiliates. On the other hand, viewers in Grand Junction can watch FOX on DirecTV, but NOT on Dish!

There are so many things better than having to resort to Byron Allen for a NETWORK timeslot..... Color Bars. Test patterns. Tower Cams. A black screen with soothing sounds. Anything readily in the public domain. Infomercials (of any kind) Any 1980's first-run syndication (bonus points for She's the Sheriff or Small Wonder) I give TV as we know it until the end of the year unless someone reaches a deal. And Stephen Colbert better have a long beard like Letterman did during the last strike!

The way these channels have been usurped by Disney+ and Hulu pretty much makes them obsolete. Consumers can watch these shows without commercials, visual clutter and all of the other tom-foolery that make up your average basic cable channel. Not to mention the programming blocks are pretty much grouped for the DVR to pick them up or (heaven forbid) someone to binge-watch in real time....

Looking back through my DVR recordings.... WEAR "Channel 3 News Extra" (the 2nd 1/2 hour of their 10pm show) had their last airing on August 31st. No fanfare, just a "we'll see you tomorrow night". "Prep Football Final", their 1/2 hr Friday night HS football show aired at 10:35 to round out the hour the following night. Regular 35 minute newscasts started on September 1st, and on the 4th, Jimmy Kimmel and Nightline began airing in pattern. The only exception for this is on Friday nights with "Prep Football Final" pushing the shows to 11:00 and midnight. Before, this show would AFTER the hour-long 10pm show, pushing Jimmy Kimmel and Nightline to 11:35/12:35 on Friday nights in the fall. And over at WALA, the new 3pm show will be called "Fox 10 Live" hosted by Shelby Myers and Lee Peck. It looks like it's going to be a soft-news show, without the paid features of "Studio Ten". They recently launched their version of the GrayOne package, but it's more of a cosmetic upgrade since they had the prior Meredith package it's based on.

Bally, being a competing sports network was able to port their graphics package to Raycom to produce the ACC games they did in the past. As for the CW? Seems like Nexstar didn't want to pay the extra $50 to come up with another graphics package.

Interesting that the CW/Raycom sports coverage is basically using the ESPN package. This is probably the case since this game package for the CW is a loose extension of the ESPN/ACC deal?

Aren't pretty much all of the Cox/Imagicomm stations operating under an onerous retransmission deal that Coxpollo inherited from their purchase of the former Northwest stations? (of which were all spun off to Imagicomm along with WHBQ and KOKI) I'm surprised WSB is not affected....yet. Atlanta is a major Xfinity cluster, but they may be special since they don't want to endanger their carriage...

WALA in Mobile has gone GrayOne as of 4pm yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyX76AamMjY The lower thirds (and font changed) but much of the existing package remains the same. Being a former Meredith station, it's basically the same package GrayOne was based on. It's a nice change over the canned Meredith look they forced on their stations at the time, even though it uses the same color scheme.

Agreed. Fix the "M" and I could tolerate the font. It just has that Nexstar vibe to it based on that one package (that WSPA also uses). I really wish Gray would have sprung for a better font.

WALA was an exception, since WKRG has used "First Alert" on their Doppler radar for about 20 years and their weather coverage is the "First Alert Storm Team"...WALA using "StormTracker" for about as long, going all they way back to Emmis.

https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/9/3/scripps-is-tanking It seems the changes are not having a good effect on their stock price. The way Scripps is headed, they are an oversized albatross with too many worthless (Ion) stations. They need to right-size themselves by divesting the rest of the Ion stations to Inyo (at least the licenses) so they may be a company worth investing in and potentially merging into another as a means of survival.

I have a feeling KUSI is being groomed to become San Diego's CW station, as soon as the contract expires with KFMB. Despite the slant that KUSI and McKinnnon put out for years, the news-intensive format is probably toast. The ancient graphics and set are likely toast, but if KUSI had some dominance in some ways, they'll keep the stronger parts and merge those into KSWB's operation.

With the new Big Ten deal, Columbus, Ohio's playing field may level out a little more after WSYX/WTTE has had explosive success with their coverage of the Ohio State teams. Now that NBC and CBS have games as well, it's the first time in years where 10TV has aired a Buckeyes football game (even going back to the ESPN broadcasts). And NBC4 can gain some of the action as well should they land a Buckeyes game. Newswise, 10TV and NBC4 are shells of themselves, but this may put a little more revenue and ratings in their pockets on game days....

Due to the 11th hour-nature of the pickup, it's probably going to be this way for this year. Sinclair is basically having to create a new channel to build the CW programming around. By next year, it may resemble more of a CW-like station lineup once deals are secured. I"m assuming that the ex-CW stations owned by CBS are still going to be carried by YouTube TV? They've traditionally carried their existing independents like WLNY, KCAL and WTXA. KOCB may be dropped unless Sinclair elects to keep them on. It would be their only independent station on YouTube TV. And Nexstar should be running with all of their new affiliates, sans WADL since that deal hasn't closed yet?

WEAR was probably THE very last station to do so, after WISN relented a few years back. Likely tied to their Sinclair renewal with ABC, they tweaked their logo with the latest ABC version as well. What would they have done...pulled KDNL's affiliation in retaliation?

A couple changes in Mobile/Pensacola. To replace Dr. Phil, WALA Is debuting a half hour 3:00 p.m. newscast on September 11th followed by InvestigateTV+ at 3:30. Equal Justice with Judge Ebony K. Williams will air for an hour at 1:00 p.m. Judge Mathis is still at noon and People's Court will still air at 2 as of September 11th. (See below where Judge Mathis' and Marilyn Milan's efforts will end up!) The Neighborhood will air from 10:30 to 11:30pm, followed by an hour of Mom, then Daytime Jeopardy at 12:30am, followed by a repeat of Fox 10's 9:00 p.m. newscast, both hours of Studio Ten, and InvestigateTV+ to round out the late-night into the 4:30am news. Over at WEAR, It looks like the last hour-long 10:00 p.m. newscast is done. It will now be a standard 35 minute length followed by Jimmy Kimmel "Live". They'll also replay the 10:00 p.m. at midnight following Nightline. On WJTC (WPMI's sister station), that's where Mathis Court and Justice For The People will end up. They'll air at 1:30 and 2pm and have an encore the following morning at 7:00 a.m... On WKRG, WFGX, WPMI, and WFNA, there's nothing too earth shattering, except maybe a new Byron Allen court show or two on WFNA and anything else on WFGX.... (I've honestly lost track at this point )

Well, so much for the "SuperStation" that launched basic cable ending up as a network affiliate after all of these years.

This morming, all of the Tallahassee stations are wall-to-wall. FOX 49 is carrying WCTV's coverage, while WTWC is getting weather coverage from sister station WPEC in West Palm Beach.

The Tampa/St. Petersburg/Sarasota stations are all wall-to-wall with coverage at this time. And Nexstar is streaming WFLA LIVE on WFLA.com. These Nexstar sets make for interesting use during a hurricane.... Surprisingly, up in Gainesville/Ocala, only WOGX is covering the storm (since it's 10pm and sister station WOFL is live with news anyway). The Sinclair stations are in regular programmng with weather alerts, and WCJB doesn't have a crawl or anything at this point. Up in Tallahassee, only WTXL is in wall-to-wall mode while WTWC is in regular programming, FOX 49 is airing WCTV's newscast, and WCTV has a weather alert on the screen. The storm is poised to hit the Tallahassee market, so they would be wise to go wall-to-wall soon.

WGTA is technically a Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville station, since it's still located (and licensed to) Toccoa in Stephens County. Still, it serves as Atlanta's MeTV affiliate (via a leased space on WUPA (along with their H&I subchannel. Past ties to Athens and UGA have still kept it officially out of the Atlanta market. Even it's past CBS affiliate status (as a semi-satellite of WSPA in Spartanburg) made it more of a convenience for eastern Georgia viewers who lost CBS when it went from WAGA to channel 46. If things get really desperate, Nexstar could simply start up a new CW affiliate and lease a channel on one of the Atlanta full-powered stations. No matter who owns it. All it takes is a willing station to lease a subchannel to and to collect lease payments from. No license to deal with, just a jukebox and a satellite somewhere to beam the "channel" to. The irony would be if it's WUPA that agrees to it!

A legend for sure. Spent many mornings during the summer, before college classes, even during work watching TPIR during the Barker era (He was still hosting during one of my old TV jobs). This brings back the memory of 10TV's premiere of NightBeat. More infamously known for the surprise appearance of wanted fugitive Donna Osborne who later turned herself into authorities after appearing on the show, Rod Roddy's passing was the same night and can be seen in the headlines pre-open. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyS9ouDaO0o

Good point. I forgot about WANF's news on WPCH.