channel2

It's also a valuable domain name they wouldn't want to fall into the hands of a competitor. Especially since it's still a homophone!

Doesn't Gray own the "First Alert" brand? Can't they just revoke the licenses to competing stations when it's up?

Isn't WIBW the traditional powerhouse in Topeka? It'd be pretty sad if they just turned it into an extension of KCTV...

Nobody's ever said it outright but I'm pretty sure much of the reason USA ever put the Sci-Fi Channel on the air is because Kay Koplovitz loved the works of Arthur C. Clarke, and it just so happened that one of USA's corporate parents owned Star Trek and the other one a bunch of seminal horror movies. So of course they'd be willing to foot the $100 million bill that USA paid for a cash-strapped independent channel that had to keep delaying its launch! The thing about Syfy is that the domain name "scifi.com" still redirects to their site. Which I think hints at Syfy being an asset that somebody could do so much more with!

Syfy really seems like a hidden gem to me, even though its audience was among the first to ditch linear TV. The name change being a perceived middle finger to the audience didn't help!

Comcast is an MVPD! Having channels that have no traction and no growth potential is an active drain on their business. The subscriber fees they were paying NBC Universal when they didn't yet own it stay within the company now, so those channels remain viable only as long as advertisers and other MVPDs want to pay for them. Other than NBCSN, most of the channels they axed suffered from low or declining distribution. WBD and Paramount don't have an MVPD's infrastructure to worry about, and channels that have no apparent reason to exist can just toddle along by soaking up sub fees until the MVPDs force the issue. I'm surprised they haven't already, Disney's shocking concession to Charter aside. Isn't Sky News bound up in the infrastructure of Sky? It sounds like something they'd prefer not to separate.

I think Bravo is more popular than people here realize. The Real Housewives franchise, and the rest of their programming, holds a very strong appeal with a demographic advertisers love - and one that I suspect has little if any overlap with that of this board. Bravo plays a big role with Peacock as well. Sci Fi/Syfy has always been a bit of an outlier in the NBC Universal stable. Unlike USA, Bravo or Oxygen (pre-true crime revamp), it's overtly dedicated to a category, not a demographic. It strikes me as a hidden gem that could excel in the right hands but I don't think NBCU cares about it anymore.

Isn't it also being threatened by sea level rise?

Households can have more than one person in them.

It'd be the first time I heard "sunset" used that way without any seriousness...

Isn't INNOVATE (HC2) not interested in buying more TV stations?

CBS seems to be trying to pattern their whole group on KCNC and their revived WWJ news department. Unfortunately for them, the big-market glamour stations have been spinning their wheels in the mud for ages, and the CBS O&O group has a long history of not being particularly well-run. They try to pattern the group after WCCO or KCNC but the glamour-market stations can't seem to wash off the stains. I've been discontented with the CBS O&O rebrands precisely because people talked them up as though they would bring about world peace, and I don't like how the likes of KCNC and WCCO get lumped in with WCBS or WBBM, but the fundamentals of the approach are solid.

Fox doesn't even mention what stations they own on their own website anymore...

Paramount's trying to get the Skydance deal done, and they don't expect that to close until September of next year. So it would surprise me if they were interested in buying any stations.

Is that why local TV stations hardly ever seem to promote the diginets on their other subchannels?

Legally they've been "Gray Media Group" for years.

Foot the bill for a bunch of their more expensive movies, produce Grace and Frankie...

I feel like you're ignoring the movie and TV libraries Paramount owns - which would be the real attraction. But a Big Tech firm being interested in that would undermine a key principle of the Streaming Wars™: that content is interchangeable and ultimately disposable.

No deal has been announced yet.

Or they could shop them around instead of automatically putting them into the black box that is streaming?

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?

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.

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.

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...