Samantha

My comment was mentioning other isolated family-owned TV stations.

WVIT 1998: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=WwrmJb8ANQ0;t=30 versus KRBC 2000:

This deserves the double post. They don't get much rarer than this:

Lots and lots of stuff: WPRI 1991 with a different VO: KJAC 1998: KALB 1988: KTVZ 1991: (what's with the discolored peacock?) KTAB 1992: KRBC 2000 (Impact!): WBRZ 1996 (late era Pride Inside):

That could be very interesting and is plausible. Sinclair's acquisition of New Age hit the rocks when the FCC cracked down on SSAs, and the WDSI-WTVC news relationship predates Sinclair.

KTBS, KFMB and WDAY+Z are also on the list.

A KTSP news story from 1982 about the then-new carrier current radio station at ASU: This has to be late in 1982 because of the station's switch of calls and logo. Note the odd news set. I wish he had more of this... 1992 RNC coverage from Houston's local stations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvwMAYLGvIw KTVK commercials from 1989, from the guy who has great material but really needs a capture card. The end of the tape is an open!:

There will be the occasional local outlier, but as scale becomes more and more of an issue in the local TV market, it certainly obligates these small market station owners to sell. The Cedar Rapids Gazette brought to KCRG the backing of the town's newspaper and the strength of its news reputation. But it had to go alone on many of the sales, programming acquisition and services sides. Gray loses a good portion of the newspaper connection, but think. It will run its own national sales business in the near future. It has a standardized graphics package. It buys syndicated programming, negotiates network affiliation, etc. on national-level contracts. Gray has snapped up quite a few stations in recent years from isolated clusters and single-station owners. KEVN, KMVT, WAGM, KOSA, now KCRG. It's a great strategy for them as they are getting decently rated stations in each market. And in the case of KCRG, they may be paying a premium but it's because Iowa is evergreen in terms of political advertising.

A WJW clip from 1995, in 60fps:

These family broadcasters really like Gray. That $100 million valuation is quite high. If the station weren't in Iowa, would it fetch quite that much of a premium? Note this sentence in the release: "The Gazette Company and Gray will continue the long-standing and successful partnership between The Gazette and KCRG-TV." It almost sounds like they're going to be partners in the operation of the station, with Gray taking the station under its wing and providing significant operational synergies. The Gazette probably realized it needed to do this.

So they own LPTVs in... Rapid City SD (KIVN) Augusta GA (WBEK - the asset purchase agreement stipulates a callsign change upon closing)* Casper WY (KSBF) which are unaccounted for and do not appear to be broadcasting. It would be speculative territory to ask what the plans are for each station, though the most likely station asset buyouts in each market would be KNBN/NBC (Rapid City) and KGWC/CBS (in Casper). The Augusta station could be used to offload the My station they operate there.

The sale of KTMW closed. On the same day, other news from Serestar as KNSO will begin early evening newscasts today. The anchor is Vanessa Ramírez-Ávila, who formerly worked for competitor KFTV as well as television stations in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. Nexstar will provide newsgathering resources; it owns the Telemundo outlet in Bakersfield as well as KGPE/KSEE.

Well, they are on track to carry nine Cowboys games in the regular season and can theoretically have a maximum of 13 regular season contests a year (but they appear on NBC three times and ESPN once; they must have one Thursday night game and two CBS AFC games). It's not like KTBC isn't the home of most Cowboys games. KTBC I think provides certain support services to KDFW and KRIV, particularly Texas government coverage.

KTVT has the rights to Cowboys preseason games in Dallas, and KEYE has them in Austin (but on tape delay on this occasion, probably because they had to carry the network game). A look at the Cowboys network roster shows that it has quite a few Nexstar and Sinclair stations. Perhaps the contract dates to the Four Points days? If not, Sinclair stations in San Antonio, OKC and Beaumont do have the rights to the Cowboys. There are a decent number of group deals with preseason games. The Falcons preseason network is composed in its majority in Raycom-owned Fox stations. The Quincy Wisconsin system holds the rights to the Packers in four markets. The Chiefs 65TPT network has a substantial chunk of Nexstar stations. And, of course, a substantial proportion of NFL preseason broadcasters do not have regular season rights to the teams. There are a number of ABC, CW and independent stations, as well as NBC affiliates. The Cardinals network is KNXV-KWBA-KVVU, for instance (and I expect that at the next contract renewal Scripps obtains Cards rights for KTNV).

Between KGTV in SD and KTVK-KPHO here, it's like a competition to see who has the most churn on their news staff.

And on top of that they used NBC's affiliate theme from 1983. And debuted Great News either very late in 1987 or in 1988.

Ahh! Great detective work. Wow did WTHR go through themes in the 80s.

It looks a little better here, for some reason.

There is such a major mismatch between the awesome graphics and that logo. Wow.

KTVI promos, 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxfOZ747lVE KDKA promos and open, 1991: It looks like XenForo automatically inserts the YT player.

That logo looks like it came from 2005, not 2015.

Harry Volkman has died at the age of 89. He died at a nursing home in Des Plaines (near Chicago). He worked for every station in Chicago but WLS, but prior to coming to Chicago in 1959, he worked in Oklahoma, where he famously issued the first public tornado warning while on the staff of WKY-TV in Oklahoma City. (He also briefly worked for KOTV Tulsa.)

WHOI Turn To promos and sign-off, 1986: KPLR "Newswatch Extra" open, 1986:

WOW-L! That's right, a WOWL news open from 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twL_4T6xC0M Never has the Toby Arnold KPRC package sounded so cacophonous. Also, the station slogan in the ID... "Write it down!" Were they that ratings-obsessed?

This was Hayes Productions work and the jingle and ID appear in the Hayes "Package of Packages". Thank you for finding that! I think this would have been used as part of the ABC switch campaign. The box in the package shot says "Deliver by March 31". March 31, 1980, was the date WTLV began its 8-year odyssey with ABC.