tyrannical bastard

It's like Nexstar is contracting their CW stations (and affiliates) on a station-by-station basis.  Much unlike the bulk deal they were forced to make with CBS that took away WJMN.

I figured the Marshall game on the CW was the reason Gray was getting a lot of requests to have WQCW put on YouTube TV.  Of course to the average viewer, they aren't aware of all of the "sausage-making" processes it actually takes to get this done. Much of it is probably Nexstar posturing in the negotiating process, especially since they own WOWK in the market.

KABB Fox 29 in San Antonio, TX is now "FOX SA"  with a custom package and the tagline "Puro San Antonio"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYj_fmFO9Ro

I wonder if this could become a trend for other Sinclair stations, especially those that were mortally wounded this past spring?

After 4 years at NBC 15 almost 25 years in the Mobile/Pensacola market (20 at WKRG), Alan Sealls is retiring in January.

https://mynbc15.com/news/local/nbc-15-chief-meteorologist-alan-sealls-to-retire-from-broadcasting#

Another blow to a station that was decimated earlier this year in Sinclair's local news bloodbath.

Caught some of the WEWS 4:30am portion of Good Morning Cleveland and it was basically an edited series of packages with a little weather in between.

Most likely, the future of Scripps newscasts.

In another thread, someone likened this approach to news like the Al Schottlekotte approach WCPO used until the 80s.  This was later copied by WIAT for their "42 Daily News" relaunch in the late 90s.

Back when Al Schottlekotte did it, it was unique and driven by his personality.  Now with Scripps launching this approach at their stations, it's cheap, lazy, and basically throws the concept of live news out the window.

And in Cleveland, WKYC has once again seemingly come to their senses after "normalizing" their newscasts and it's WEWS once again that's gone off the deep end.  Meanwhile, despite Nexstar taking hold of WJW, their dominance still remains and WOIO is now owned by a major broadcaster seeing how Gray has leaped ahead of both Scripps and Tegna.

6 hours ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

It's always possible they could snag an network affiliation once others have theirs expire.

ABC and/or FOX likely in Macon if one of them walks away from WGXA.

19 hours ago, atlnews2 said:

Once they got wpga in Macon (a stand alone metv station with no other purpose) it was clear they were launching some kind of statewide project 

With them starting a statewide sports network in Georgia, this could expand to other nearby states, especially ones where they own stations in every market (or close to it).   

And a big focus in these states could be high school sports.

Since The Simpsons have taken their fair share of jabs at Rupert & Co.....

Here's another question....

WFMJ is another station that airs Live! at 9am delaying the other 2 hours of Today to 10am-noon.

On the other hand, WPMI in Mobile aired Today in pattern for years, but aired Live! at 11am until 2019.   It's since moved to WEAR and airs at 9am.

We have a battle in St. Louis headed to the courtroom....

Gray is suing Tegna for using the phrase "Weather First Alert"  on KSDK while KMOV has been using "First Alert Weather"

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/kmov-sues-ksdk-over-branding-for-weather-alerts/article_032d25a6-5668-11ee-ad8c-1b6661b82814.html

3 hours ago, Abraham J. Simpson said:

If I were in charge of an ABC station and it was getting MNF back even for a season, heck yes, I'd be happy. It's a heck of a lot more sellable as an established brand to my local clients than some of the other programming. Is it as good as SNF in terms of matchups? Of course not. But while I'm still saddled with the Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars et al, a primetime marquee sports franchise back on my air, temporary or otherwise, is a win. 

Meh, times change, circumstances change and the world doesn't stay frozen in 1984. 

At least back in 1984, CBS affiliates had that time slot to themselves.  So many crap shows are on the air simply because the networks won't return time to their affiliates.

Johnny Carson and Tom Snyder are spinning in their graves right now.

Putting Byron Allen on CBS is like giving up Saturday Morning TV to Litton.

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.

1 hour ago, compubit said:

I’m liking their implementation - mostly due to not using the extra bold fonts everywhere. (Though a little mixed case text wouldn’t be too bad).

 

My biggest complaint on the font is that the M looks out of place, as the inside doesn’t appear to even go halfway down the letter…

 

Jim

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.

7 hours ago, MichiganNewsGraphicsJunkie said:

Pretty much all the Meredith stations were rebranded to First Alert

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.