ABC 7 Denver

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/03/paramount-skydance-merger-deal-update.html https://player.cnbc.com/p/gZWlPC/cnbc_global?playertype=synd&byGuid=7000341982

This is Vulture Capitalism for you.

What is excess profit? Corporations are in businesses to provide value to shareholders. Persistent growth is the objective. There is no such thing as excess profit.

Finally! The bug is aligned.

We're going to see more stations folding!

Perry Jr. doesn't have a resume. Dur. Perry Sook is menial. Would you like me to county the ways?! I have laundry list. Exactly my expectations. WPIX means little to any other organization as it does to Nexstar, who runs a significant portion of their miserable cable channel out of it.

I've said before that Nexstar could experiment by hubbing all 3 Colorado markets out of Denver and airing a standardized broadcast schedule with local cut-ins, while, of course, sales, ads and management were all Denver-based as well. RE: NewsNation burdens under-paid local staff to develop additional packages and remotes outside of their normal workflows. Trying to do more with less and stations are already as stretched as they can be. I wasn't thinking about Scott Jones at all. I was thinking about their stock price, their green-screen sets, their lowball offers, cost-cutting into irrelevance. For example, the Creative Services Director for KMGH/KCDO is now responsible for KOAA and is being paid the same rate as he did when he managed two stations. He's also using the same budget for the one station (before KCDO was purchased). KOAA has seen a ton of reductions, as KMGH picks up the slack without any additional cost overhead. WPIX is only valuable to Nexstar both because of it's affiliation and because of it's footprint for NewsNation. It's a waste of money to anyone else. As I said, Graham isn't reasonable, and honestly, I don't think Scripps or Hearst is either. I was throwing ideas. TBH, Cox wants to milk everything for profit and I think they'd put up the money if they could absolutely destroy the station.

I see two additional opportunities. Sinclair is selling 60 stations as well. If a new player enters the arena, they could snap up whatever stations Sinclair wants to exit AND whatever Nexstar wants to sell to meet market cap. This second idea has some caveats. We don't know what Fox's position is on their O&Os are right now. They could be a buyer or seller. That might also be the play for Nexstar. Sell Fox stations to Fox, some in duopoly markets, and sign SSAs to manage Nexstar's CW assets in these market, or completely relinquish control of KDVR, KTXL, KSWB, WXIN, WDAF, WVBT. I'm sure there's an algorithm that they could use to identify audience cap and clearance to divest of the most appropriate stations. No no. Perry Sook is a pearl clutching, technophobic square. He believes in the sunk-cost fallacy which is why he's stupidly riding the NewsNation bong rip. He is a local manager who's duped everyone into some grand unifying vision that he's pulling out of his ass. Just like David Smith, Adam Symon, Dave Lougee and Bob Iger. None of these men are particularly shrewd when it comes to asset management. They fully believe in finding synergy in local news product and overleveraging their companies to expand rapidly, but the reality is that local news doesn't have any synergy. That's why it's LOCAL.

The way Scripps stock has tanked ($3/share), I can't see them being a buyer. They are far more in selling condition. Don't be surprised if that happens. WPIX would make sense for Hearst since they don't own a station in their HQ market. Graham would be weird. They don't own many stations and their only non-big 3 station is JXT which is news heavy and is a duopoly with WCWJ.

CSD: But we stole ABC's network slate design! GM: NO ONE WILL KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

Do you mean the Propaganda Network? https://adfontesmedia.com/newsmax-bias-and-reliability/

No no. They are going to crap too: https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2024/5/1/more-on-the-allen-media-massacre https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2024/4/29/allen-media-swings-the-ax https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2024/5/7/no-more-401k

Imagine if it's Imagicomm Communication, Costal Television and Standard that buy up these stations. Honestly though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's Cox Media Group underwritten by Apollo.

No one has lauded Sinclair for their shrewd operations.

Why haven't they remapped the PSIP to a UHF signal? It's the Deleware Valley for crying out loud and cable is dying. Fewer people will be watching PVI if they aren't subscribed to cable and can't watch OTA. Even Comcast knows this basic.

KWGN wouldn't have a news department without KDVR. If KDVR is sold, is Nexstar going to establish a news department? That seems unlikely given the cost of living in Denver. Why wouldn't Fox continue an JSA/LMA?

The design is over simplified big boxes with little detail, 1 font and 3 colors.

This is such a "Look what we made in PowerPoint" kind of package.

I think this would put former FOX O&Os in play. KDVR and KTVI, especially. KWGN and KPLR can be run through LMA by Fox, since they rely on the same news department and would satisfy a non-beard spin off.

This is a long-awaited reversal of Borkian Philosophy outlined in the book The Antitrust Paradox, where he insisted that monopolistic practices that harmed consumers would be sorted out naturally by the Capitalist system.

The viewers too. Let's be clear. If we see what I hope are many unwinding of side-care LMAs, the viewers will be the winners. This entire mass consolidation of stations has been awful for the viewers of local news. I know that these groups try to sell us synergy, but that doesn't work in local news, unless you are shutting down whole departments and consolidating their operations, but that's never good for local ad sales and local news. You can see this in the grocery industry as well. Kroger's ownership of all of their stores is a disservice to the vendors and consumers. Their stores, regardless of state, look, sound and sell all of the same things. There's nothing local.

They will lose.

It looks better for NYC and Raleigh, but not for WLS.

I still think the KABC package circa ~2012-2013 is great. It could work effectively with the ABC 3 dot redesign. https://hothauscreative.com/kabc-graphics-package

God, I hope not.