channel2

Just now, Adam MadMan said:

When he said "mature", I'm pretty sure he meant "not grown as a brand". Of course, his company decided they don't want to grow the brand, and have put it in the line of corporate fire, like in those stereotypical Mexican executions you'd see on TV.

 

And as for the whole kids thing, Symson said in that same call that he wants diginets to go for a younger audience - which makes the Qubo decision all the more baffling, at least to me. Even if the brand isn't that desirable, Nickelodeon was in a similar state in the early 80s before it turned around under Viacom. Obviously, the times are different now, but it still seems wrong that they're trying to go "younger", yet have decided to leave the youngest viewers of the bunch to digital services such as Netflix and YouTube, like they want over-the-air TV to die off.

The thing about Qubo is that Scripps would likely have to invest big bucks into it to make it even remotely competitive. That would mean spending big on original programming that they'd either produce in-house or otherwise lock down all the rights to. There would also likely be minimal help from the syndication market, since most of the worthwhile content (at least, animation-wise) is owned by Disney, WarnerMedia, ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal, and I can't imagine most of those companies are all that eager to help. They could perhaps look into old TGIF shows or what have you but I can't imagine they come cheap.

Remember The Hub? Not even Hasbro had the acumen or the willingness to spend big to make that network competitive. Were it not for My Little Pony, The Hub would've been even more of a flop than it ended up being.

I'm also under the impression that the TV business has more or less given up on children's shows on linear. Cartoon Network has basically packed it in (if only they hadn't ditched the multi-generational angle they had in their salad days!). The Disney Channel and its offshoots seem to be dying on the vine. Nickelodeon is still one of ViacomCBS's crown jewels and that NFL simulcast indicates some sort of self-preservation instinct. The fact that they have so eagerly flogged their '90s heyday and decided that we didn't have our fill of Rugrats in 1999 helps.

Scripps bought ION because it's cheap and hugely profitable. Qubo will never be a factor without significant investment, and reruns of 20-year-old Nelvana shows aren't going to cut it.

I can't imagine Scripps would've been excited about Qubo eating up spectrum on their new stations if they didn't own it...

The KCDO deal doesn't make a lot of sense, but I suppose Scripps thought Grit deserved a .1 here because we're Out West.

As for the Katz-Univision deal, the press release does say the migration will happen over the next five years...I'm sure Scripps's thinking is like Disney's seeming patience with regards to Marvel screen rights reversion...

re: Qubo

Dozens of Canadian media executives cried out in terror...

It's a cue they took from the 20th Century Fox logo itself.

I thought The WB jumped over from KXTX to KDAF right away. I know they were only doing two nights of primetime a week though...

I love me some flashy 3D stuff, for sure, but local TV in general seems to lack an understanding of building a multimedia brand. TEGNA has a lot of issues but they have a ton of stations that would sure as hell rather swim than sink.

Armin hardly EVER acknowledges local TV...

How often do VNRs air? It seems like every now and then people manage to spot one and there's a big to-do about it...it makes me wonder how many get through without being noticed...

5 hours ago, PTVNews said:

 

I don't say this much about people, but he is one of those very old school anchors who has not changed with this times.

What do you mean?

Scripps seems to be run competently and have a vision beyond "don't get bought out," so...

(The fact that the Scripps family owns the voting stock helps!)

I can’t help but wonder if Scripps and Gray and TEGNA and Nexstar are thankful to have their national assets around right now...

Does Hubbard make a lot of money from Reelz and Ovation?

1 hour ago, TheRolyPoly said:

 

I'm getting Star Wars vibes with this, especially the Tampa Bay text.

There's plenty of line-filled '70s logos I can point you to...

It's not just a Star Wars thing. It's an era of design that designers have a lot of affection for.

8 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Even the RKO General stuff seems tame compared to how Sinclair conducted themselves in the Tribune deal.

General Tire paid a ton of bribes to foreign officials, and RKO General committed all kinds of fraud...so yeah, General Tire was shady as fuck. So is Sinclair, but from what we know, they can't really hide it as well (of course, it helped General Tire that this all happened before the Web became commonplace)...

From the sound of it, broadcast news people and cable news people don't tend to like each other very much.

I'm not clamoring for a sale. I just worry about what it would mean for the likes of KUSA if TEGNA ended up being sold to private equity and, likely, sold for parts. I am worried about TEGNA's direction as a whole, given that they seem to have no broader strategy than "not being bought out." I don't like standardization either, and I love Troika but find their TEGNA look to be a little bland and inflexible. But I have no idea who might do a better job running the group than the current TEGNA management. Sure as hell not private equity firms or hedge fund guys.

2 hours ago, jerseyfla said:

The logo may look similar to KGTV and WJAR's old logos but I think it looks more like a knockoff of WFLA's 1982-1988 Spirit of Tampa Bay "Figure 8" logo. Kind of an odd looking logo for 2020.

 

 

Given how uninspired and/or dire a lot of local TV logos have been the last 20 years or so, I'll take it.

Meanwhile, here I am noticing the fact that CBS used to own the Yankees...a family reunion of sorts!

There’s that war chest at work...

And something more than just crumbs!

Sinclair is massively in debt. Something like $14 billion? Their financial statements are a bit opaque and confusing.

Evidently they don't know how to do a leveraged buyout properly, since they didn't seem to put any of that debt onto Diamond. Not sure that would have been responsible per se, but it would have sheltered Sinclair proper from a lot of the seemingly-inevitable fallout.

Sinclair just doesn't have the leverage with MVPDs that Fox did. They don't have a Fox News or even an FX to use as a cudgel. WUCW is not KMSP-WFTC, for instance, and I don't know what kind of cachet the Tennis Channel has.

Or a banner, or a pennant...

They dropped the full name after Chris-Craft bailed, so "UPN" didn't stand for anything.

On 2/29/2020 at 8:36 PM, detroiter313 said:

Despite the fact that 21st Century Fox once owned a stake in Hulu before the Disney deal.

That was a holdover from the days before it became every conglomerate for themselves.

3 minutes ago, oknewsguy said:

What would that F stand for if it's not going to stand for Fox?

What did UPN stand for starting in 2000?

He sold off 20th Century Fox, FX, and all that other stuff because he decided the streaming wars were one hurdle too many for him to clear. He's old and didn't seem to trust his kids to take the reins of 21CF as it was constituted.

And, quite frankly, I think he saw that his trashy ethos didn't really jibe with the tone set by the likes of Netflix. From what I could tell, 20th and FX were low on his priority list anyway.

The RSNs are cable nets. Regulators had antitrust concerns over ESPN's already-dominant position in national sports rights, that adding the top RSN group to Disney's portfolio would have led to them wielding way too much power over MVPDs.

I don't know how badly Disney really wanted the Fox movie operations. They bought them almost entirely for the film library, and they really wanted the TV division more, since ABC Studios wasn't as big as 20th TV.