Samantha

Just trimmed everything back to the last post of mostly WPVI-relevant dialogue.

Was this the plan? Oh, sure. We've known that for a while. But Tegna's CW agreement, which I obtained years ago when everything went down, does indeed expire August 31, 2026.

Chip Davis (the contemporary material I see uses his name, not Mannheim Steamroller) also did the successor theme for WOWT, which debuted in the fall '81 season.

What a bumper year for Fort Smith footage and newspaper availability. That KPOM 1986 newscast is actually fairly interesting because that is the first week of the new name and music. Griffin bought KPOM and basically remade the news department in KWTV's image. Shortly after this, they hired Mike Nail (the longtime voice of Arkansas Razorback sports) to do the sports from Fayetteville, and Bradley left. The 1992 clip is from April, two months before the news department was shuttered. That look only lasted nine months.

The "seamed monitors" actually look like a static element, not actual monitors.

KION Monterey/Salinas aired its last newscast this morning. The news department was abruptly shuttered. They're going to provide news from KPIX instead. https://www.ksbw.com/article/kion-news-department-immediately-shut-down-after-56-years/68021534

Weather specifically is coming from San Francisco until meteorologists are hired and trained on the new system.

I think it's really obvious that Sinclair knew the Nexstar train was almost at the station and was using the media reports to put the offer in front of Tegna. They'd been in talks for months. This was 11th-hour, 11th-minute. By the time we heard of it, the Tegna board had approved of it.

Pretty big job for them. Pretty much only NewsNation DC and this are their only projects beyond New York City. (They did two floors of WPIX as well.)

It's a murder of how to manage a logo. You could drive a truck between the O and X. Tighten that up and it's a forgettable bad logo.

Just going to flag that this shouldn't be a list. Airport newsstands and what WDIV is doing are very different ventures.

I said this in BP and I think it goes here too. There are two markets above all where you could produce a newscast of international and national news that has a meaningful difference in a local market. Honolulu is one, and KHON has kept World Report on its lineup now for 29+ years. Miami is the other. The mix of international stories of relevance is very different in a Miami than even in Orlando or Jacksonville, with a stronger Latin American and Caribbean pull. Think how a Spanish-language newscast's mix of national and international differs from the Big Three and you might get a sense of what they can do. (WPLG has a bureau in Havana, and that's one piece of the big-picture puzzle.) It's giving 1994, but unlike some attempts post-New World that responded to "how can we look like we care about non-local news" (WDAF, for instance, did this for all of 12 months shortly after New World), Miami is not Kansas City. If they produce this correctly, this could actually be a useful news product. That's a big if.

WFOR has been a better station than you're giving it credit.

Curiously, the SatelliteGuys thread says this has not shown up on satellite. I wonder if given the circumstances this is about a deal between NBC and DirecTV itself for streaming for all affiliates.

Unsaid: all five clearances come at the cost of TheGrio.TV. In two markets the move is a lateral or downgrade (LA and Chicago) from lower-major-number Nexstar stations. It's an upgrade in New York (WRNN) and Atlanta (WUPA). And they had no clearance in Phoenix.

It does not unless the WJW facility were to be sold.

This is legit and corroborates with some other information I had previously gathered. @MarkBRollins88_v2 is it possible to get DMAs 201–210? Wanted to also add some context. I've been maintaining a database of ADI and DMA rankers that goes back to 1968 (the concept of exclusive markets itself only began in 1966 with Arbitron and 1967 with Nielsen). This is the first time AFAIK that Philadelphia has not been market #4. Dallas–Fort Worth was ADI #12 in 1968.

They're not there now, but apparently Gray is on board to dedicate subchannels of WSLN (Rockford) and WNDU (South Bend) to this service. I'd hope that the secondary channel would be static when not in use to optimize bandwidth. I could see a future where Yvonne Stroud (whose husband Joe died in April) sells WJYS soon. They are probably making good money from this arrangement, which makes sense when considering that WJYS has primarily been a paid programming purveyor in 33+ years of broadcasting.

The last story was the jobs report, with a timestamp of 10:09am, right before the cessation.

ShopHQ is airing on the main channel of at least the Phoenix and Detroit Bridge transmitters. Sports News Highlights is replaced by some channel airing a show called Road Trip Masters. No ID, but the next program was Travel Thru History, so probably Fun Roads TV.

Hi @dzonershow, this isn't the place for speculation or list-forming, and I think it's worth stating that up front. My guess is that with Grand Rapids being closer to Chicago than Indianapolis and not in Indiana, it was not worth expanding the territorial rights area that far (with Iowa being a unique and compelling exception). The markets involved are all the Indiana markets (bar Terre Haute, where they must not have been able to get Allen or Nexstar to sign up) plus Louisville (a Tegna market with a bunch of Indiana counties), Cincinnati (which contains a few Indiana counties), Central Illinois, Dayton, and Lexington. Grand Rapids is closer than some of those last two, but closer in the direction of another WNBA franchise. Even some big markets to which Indiana is the closest WNBA team that have Tegna stations (St. Louis! Cleveland! Columbus!) are not included, and that may be to protect the national rightsholders.

At Scripps, nothing is trapped in amber. It's a virtue and sometimes a vice. Television stations are like any other business, especially given that they are facing the biggest change in consumption habits in their history. Scripps knows this. Their hometown headquarters station is feeling it. John Kiesewetter got these figures from Cincinnati: Scripps has very good values, usually, in journalism. They probably have the most value-driven approach to news operations of any major operator (aside from Sinclair, where the values are not beliefs about journalism but often about national politics). The broader problem is that tools originally conceived to make the process of assembling newscasts, or building out news extensions, are turning into tools to reduce headcount, which seems to be causing morale issues at some stations. Ion Media has done okay, but national advertising has been soft. There's a story there. Scripps has higher exposure to the national advertising sector than its peers, and that has been an underperformer because digital has been cleaning TV's clock as advertisers that are not political rethink and retrench their budgets. A decision this big is not done without studying the market. At some point, TV news cannot go on doing the same old things. You would have to assume, and I'd want to hear about this, that research was conducted. Perhaps people identified the Action News brand with an older style of newscast or one that didn't appeal to them. Perhaps adding "Detroit" was seen as necessary for SEO reasons. That said, if "7 News Detroit" is installed without a brand proposition or other points of differentiation from its competitors, then it will get lost in the sea.

All they did was cut mornings; they are still producing their midday and evening news.

The NMSA made this same mistake when they put up MCTYW — turns out it wasn't even originally Stroud's error.

We've been inching toward this moment for years, and today, the lines finally converged over Tyler, Texas, with this clip: KSL 1989 == KTRE 1989 (really 88) == KXGN 2004 =?= Non-Stop Music USA News A Timeline 1985: Colorado USA is debuted as an image package only by KUSA in Denver. By March 1987: WAFF begins using the package including news music and pairs it with the then-new "Squares" syndicated graphics package from Digital Images. The station has "Colorado USA" resung as "Alabama and 48 / People Who Care". February 8, 1988: KLTV and KTRE debut new openings using the package. KTRE is using close music that WAFF is using in a sports promo. By July 1988: KSL begins using the package. 1990: WSAV in Savannah is using the package. The community service promo to which the link is cued up was also used by KXGN Glendive, Montana, in 2004, and by WAFF in a sign-off. 1991: KLTV uses a different open cut at 10pm which matches the Non-Stop USA Music cuts. USA News is listed in ASCAP as a Non-Stop production with alternate titles indicating it was used by KLTV, KTRE, KOAM (extant), KJCT (1993–95, not extant), WUSA (in promos in 1998, maybe?), WAWS (July 1996–98, but they debuted with WWL News at the end of 1996, so they might have changed themes before going on the air).