channel2

My first thought was Mobile-Pensacola...

Is that part of New Orleans' TV territory?

Aren't a lot of Gray stations in markets where Scripps and Inyo plan to claw back the Scripps Networks when the current deals are up?

3 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

The industry is such a mess, the streaming services can't even afford to keep EXISTING content that PAYING customers either are watching or want to watch.

 

I sense another A.A.P. situation where a equity firm or consortium of companies buys up dead content to license elsewhere.   What good is it doing sitting in a warehouse when it could be monetized, streamed or purchased outright?

What good is it doing sitting in a warehouse when it could be out there in the culture for people to partake in?

We talk an awful lot about money, money, money, but not so much about the social or cultural value of things.

16 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

So you’re still arguing that Gray is going to balk over the terms of affiliation when they already renewed with CBS?

 

Given that Paramount is dealing with more important issues, like cutting content on their streaming service, I seriously doubt that pissing off Gray over one Atlanta TV station is a high priority. Hell, TV stations in general are not their priority. Why are they going to pour money into starting a local news operation from scratch on a channel few watch when their affiliate is not only doing the job, but also showing ratings improvement?
 

And it’s not as though CBSMV fare can’t air elsewhere; the only CBSMV show on WUPA is Drew Barrymore. That’s it.

 

At the end of the day, CBS renewed with Gray, and they’re not going anywhere in Atlanta.

Balking when it's time to renew.

Also, Atlanta is a huge market. A top ten market. CMV fare can air elsewhere, but if it can't get a clearance in the market otherwise, that's what WUPA's for.

It might look like a useless hunk of junk on the outside, but there's probably plenty of reasons we don't see for them to keep it. And if they gave it up, there would be no easy way back into Atlanta for them.

On 6/22/2023 at 12:37 PM, GoldenShine9 said:

 

Just as I expected. The best move for CBS would be to sell WUPA.

I'm sure they'd be all too happy to give up a guaranteed outlet for CBS Media Ventures fare, and a threat they can use against Meredith/Gray when they balk at CBS's terms for WGCL/WANF.

17 hours ago, RaleighTVBOI1 said:

You know Telemundo tried that in the 90s dubbing some of Sony Pictures movies and shows in Spanish since that was there owner at the time, and some were there international imports. Because it was cheap, Turned out horribly and it was a big flop. I see the same happening here. 

Didn't they actually remake some Sony-owned shows? Like Charlie's Angels?

Is it that, or is it that the networks people watch didn't want LIV Golf?

2 hours ago, mre29 said:

 

And let's not forget the massive programming overlap with Ion.

 

As for so many of them still having the MNTV-based branding.... well, that's just laziness on their part. But there might be something else. Way back in 2006 when the CW was announced and Fox announced MyNetworkTV in response, stations were rushing to affiliate with one or the other, including changing call letters (sometimes for the first time in decades) -- as if "independent" was a four-letter word.

 

This was especially surprising as Fox was using MNTV to test a format that was new, at least here in the US:  Telenovelas. Dramas that ran five nights a week for thirteen weeks, then ended; 65 episodes and out, replaced by another show of the same length. It didn't go well at all, and the telenovelas were reduced to two nights a week in March 2007 before being eliminated altogether. The switch from network to programming service came in 2009. All those stations that had rushed to affiliate with MNTV and change their call letters and branding probably felt foolish when the whole thing collapsed.

 

Personally, I think Fox's announcement of the switch to a programming service should have included a request that affiliates move away from their MNTV-based branding. But the aforementioned fear of the word "independent" was likely still at play.

 

I mean, the creation of the WB and UPN was in large part driven by independents' fear of being outcompeted not only by network affiliates and the nascent Fox, but by cable networks...

And considering how much bigger cable was in 2006 than it was in 1993, when those two networks officially threw down the gauntlet...

29 minutes ago, Rusty Muck said:

They’d probably be penalized tax-wise for selling them and in the case of KSTW, there’s no one to sell it to. Ditto with WUPA.

Somebody would probably want the spectrum...

Also you've gotta love big corporations and their aversion to paying taxes. They'd rather be in a cash crunch than pay taxes!

Doesn't Paramount need money bad? Wouldn't selling off KSTW or WTOG for cash help with that?

They hold some minority interest in Sarkes Tarzian, Inc.

1 hour ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

They still don't have 100% penetration in Georgia, as they need to get into Chattanooga and Jacksonville for that. 

They own WKSY-LD in Rome, which is part of the Chattanooga market.

7 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t understand this elevated perception of Deb McDermott. She runs just four godawful stations, yet I get the impression that people view her as some sort of broadcasting royalty.
 

The only thing she’s known for is turning Young/Media General into a massive behemoth that got sold off to Nexstar; that does not count as a positive contribution to journalism or the industry in my book. I don’t really give a pig’s fart if she’s collateral damage of Soo Kim’s irresponsible greed.

Oh she was at Young well before that, when Vincent still ran it.

I say this as someone with no ties to DFW, but my heart doesn't exactly flutter over the prospect of KXAS's star 5 being canned.

1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:

 

Also consider that Florida is a hot political state. 

So was Ohio in 2019!

5 hours ago, MidwestTV said:

As old as Waterman his, he probably has some connections everywhere. My first thought is he feels Hearst would be most likely to maintain whatever standard/level he thinks WBBH is and that Hearst would touch it the least out of the others.

 

As for Hearst, it's definitely a stunning move. There could be endless motivations behind it. They're like that quiet dude at the party that says some off the wall thing you didn't think they were capable of.

The political ad dollars Florida brings in? Their already strong presence in the state?

Aren't those LPs that don't count against the cap?

Oh jesus I keep forgetting that's what Standard General's logo looks like.

TEGNA has one class of stock, no controlling shareholder, and is much easier to push around. Gray is protected from a takeover by the way its stock is structured, Hearst is a huge private company and doesn't have to sell if they don't want to, and Nexstar is probably in too strong a position to be bullied into selling right now.

Paid for its operations, Paramount and WBD literally gave the 75% interest in the network itself away.

2 hours ago, CLETVFan said:

Both Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery have their own streaming services.  They both don't need The CW at all.  "All American" can easily move to either of the services.

Wouldn't the profit participants have something to say about that?

CBS owns the "Eyewitness News" name.

11 hours ago, Myron Falwell said:

Or “CBS (name of city/region)”. The way CBS is pushing this across the chain, I expect them to push the non-owned affiliates to go in the same direction, either as “CBS” or “CBS (city/region)”.

 

It’s something that I’ve debated @channel2 on in the discord as she values the brand integrity of the affiliates and the legacy brands of the O&Os, which I totally get. At the same time, harmonization is not new, from the time ABC had their O&Os all adopt the same Circle 7 in 1962, to when NBC pushed the same news sets throughout their chain in the 1970s to when CBS had their affiliates use Rockwell as their CG typeface in the 1980s.

 

The only difference here is the presumed excising of the channel number and retiring of call letters as brands in favor of a unified approach. It’s revolutionary in US broadcasting but is so commonplace elsewhere. Moreover, CBS has a clear and obvious brand issue with KDKA, WBZ, KPIX, WCCO and to a lesser extent KYW as stations that have to share a branding with their onetime radio sisters. It’s in theory not bad unless the radio station gets bad publicity a la Wendy Bell flaming out at KDKA 1020 and KDKA-TV has to issue statements that they had nothing to do with Wendy’s employment. It’s an awkward licensing agreement between Audacy, iHeart and Beasley Les Moonves made that never should have happened (but at the same time everyone would be grousing at KDKA 1020, the fabled “first radio station”, being forced to change their call sign. Look at the awkwardness of KOMO 1000 being forced to rename itself KNWN).

 

Moreover, CBS going with a unified “CBS” branding solves issues with brand awareness that have dogged the network since 1994, especially in Detroit. It’s also why I see them pushing the renaming before “CBS News Detroit” launches, to help get the marketing campaign underway and help to better promote the news service. It also helps the O&O chain’s laggards—WFOR, KTVT, WBBM and WCBS—a chance to start anew, they literally have nothing to lose. The chain’s successful stations—WCCO, KCNC, WJZ, KDKA and to an extent WBZ—will handle it in a transitional way, but the viewers will adapt. I highly doubt anyone in Pittsburgh proper is going to be no longer watching KDKA simply because they no longer call themselves “KDKA-TV 2”.

 

Thus, I expect the network to pressure the major chains—Gray, Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair, Tegna** and Scripps—to adopt these branding conventions on their CBS affiliates wholesale, which will set up an interesting confrontation between the groups and the network that @Weetershas been predicting on the discord for awhile. (“Why should we have to brand our stations as ‘CBS’ and act like the network owns us when we can fall back on NewsNation, the CW and Antenna?”)

 

** Fate of said company still TBD.

KCNC has been calling itself "CBS 4" since 2003 (and switched from "News 4" to "CBS 4 News" in 2005), so it's not that big a leap. It wouldn't be the first time they had to adapt to a longstanding part of their identity being dropped (they had to drop the KOA calls because GE let Belo keep them for the radio station).

But I do think trying to force the major affiliate groups to drop, in some cases, decades' worth of brand recognition and give up at least the appearance of an autonomous newsroom potentially problematic. There are a lot of people who are still, almost 20 years later, distrustful towards CBS News (rightly or not) over their handling of the Killian documents. Plus if CBS News gets into hot water again, why make it harder to distance yourself from the network? The O&Os have every reason to align themselves with the network, being owned by them and aggressively branded with the Eyemark and "CBS" visually or verbally. But if your newsroom is independent from the network, why act like it's not? Wasn't the longstanding "A CBS AFFILIATE" marker meant to indicate exactly that?

Also, it sounds eerily similar to NBC's failed gambit to make Young sell KRON to them at a loss. "Call yourself 'NBC 4' and pay us $10 million a year or we're pulling our affiliation."

The alignment of the O&Os with the network also serves another purpose I haven't seen theorized: It helps CBS News look like it's "in touch" with large swathes of the country. Over the last decade or so, the national news media seems to have retrenched into a handful of large metropolitan strongholds: New York, LA, San Francisco, Washington, maybe Chicago. Touting a presence in places like Detroit or Pittsburgh or Baltimore or Denver is huge, especially considering the national media's disinvestment in the Rust Belt and general ignorance of the Intermountain West.

It was pointed out that Universal Television wouldn't be happy with having fewer slots to sell shows to NBC in. I'm sure a lot of Hollywood types would need to be pacified as well...

(Then again, none of them had any advance knowledge of The WB and UPN joining forces!)

When did people start mentioning WWE among the sporting leagues? It feels like a recent phenomenon...