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And yet they have yet to update Ion's website with the list of stations they held onto...

Don't stations like KILM and WDLI and WLWC eat up the bandwidth of their channel-sharing partners? With regards to WLWC, The CW got screwed so bad in Providence, didn't they?

It really is something how thoroughly MeTV eviscerated RTV... Cartoon Network is losing product to HBO Max in large part because AT&T is starving their still-tremendously-lucrative cable networks of resources. Nickelodeon has had their heads up their asses for the last 15 years or so and has spent most of the last decade blasting the sort of "hey, remember us?" messaging typical of organizations that are deathly ill (MGM, pre-Eisner Disney, and pre-Turner Hanna-Barbera all come to mind here). The one hit cartoon they've squeaked out since Avatar was quickly embroiled in scandal. I'm so bothered that that asshole turned Dexter's Lab and PPG to shit, AND co-created Trixie Lulamoon. SpongeBob has literally outlived its creator and from the sound of it the quality of the animation has improved over the last few years, which is good at least. The Classic Media catalog actually had some neat stuff in it (Rocky and Bullwinkle, Underdog) but they didn't plumb THAT deep apparently. Truthfully, with the cable bundle severely ailing, I feel like Scripps has an opening to make Qubo competitive, but of course, that takes money, and whatever in-house advantage they'd have isn't there anymore, because they sold it in 2010...that being Peanuts!

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.