Samantha

...That horse's mouth is, uh, interesting, but it is real: http://dishnetworkretrans.com/ That is SBG's website on the affair. They are claiming that the deal expires tomorrow and apparently lots of Facebook pages are buzzing with negative comments. Dish, for its part, says negotiations are ongoing and questions why Sinclair felt the need to involve consumers at this point.

Four months ago, when it was announced that Serestar Communications was buying KTMW with very likely plans to make it a Telemundo outlet, I mused that they were also going to have to get Airwaves, which owned the existing LPTV network of Telemundo stations, to sell to Serestar. That's happened. Serestar is buying KULX Ogden, KULU Park City and K17II-D Logan from Airwaves for $725,000 and taking operation immediately via time brokerage agreement.

KTVI, April 1994. There's a notable difference in this variant of the open...can you spot it?

...And it might not have been his biggest failure, either. Here's a look at WGXA in December 1989 with the WMGC/WBKO theme:

The worst tape quality I've ever seen on YT... EVER. KDLH, 1989:

A KBAK anchor was arrested by Kern County sheriff's deputies on spousal battery charges last night.

Station sale! KHSL-KNVN in Chico, California is going to Heartland Media.

KELO-Land News in the late 80s, weather segment. Get a load of that set...and that logo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXCby416Yj0

It looks like they couldn't replicate their first choice so they went with Avenir because it's installed on every Mac. I don't like the flares and Myriad look. It just...no. But the background, logo and 44 look great.

Who wants to launch a cable news channel in this day and age?

KPIX in 1993 (10pm):

I threw this together to explain the affair:

Well there's no other thread about this massive series of items. The sale of KTVH/KBGF to Cordillera is going to have some major consequences for that station. Cordillera owns the MTN state CBS network, which has a full-power transmitter in Great Falls (KRTV) and a low-power transmitter in Helena (KXLH) with little news output. Because KMTF is now gravy (it was bought by Gray on a failing station waiver), it's going to Montana State which is probably very excited about the opportunity to begin full-power PBS service in the capital of Montana. News consolidation is extremely likely; expect KXLH to move to KTVH's facilities and Cordillera to upgrade them considerably. The Wausau and Laredo moves are interesting. For one, WFXS has largely operated under the orbit of WAOW, with news share and technical agreements. That's going to end very quickly and WSAW is likely to take over the newscasts. In the case of KVTV, this was a Brian Brady station that has always been kind of neglected under various owners. I cannot find ANY technical information on this new KYLX, not even a new LPTV licensed to "Gray Television Licensee", though they have reserved that callsign. (Actually, giving things a closer look, Brady did something absolutely wild. He owned KNEX-LP, which had a CP to move to digital channel 14. He instead opted to apply for digital channel 13 - the same as KVTV - at 3 kW ERP - the same as KVTV - from the same facilities as KVTV. He also applied to run the LPTV on those facilities on STA. He essentially replaced KVTV with an LPTV, KNEX/KYLX. And yes, a sale of that was approved to Gray. So KVTV disappeared today and KYLX, on the SAME TRANSMITTER AND FACILITIES, replaced it. Absolutely genius.) But it makes me wonder about something Gray did in Rapid City, South Dakota. They have an LPTV there ready to duplicate KEVN's coverage in Rapid City. It would make a lot of sense if they were about to buy someone — most likely locally-owned KNBN — and move its programming to the LPTV.

If you're looking for news in Spanish in the Rio Grande Valley, there's a new option starting today as KRGV begins SAP translation of its newscasts. Why don't more stations in the southwestern United States do this...?

KNXV is doing...OK. It's got some turmoil going on, what with all the internal changes there. But it's in its once-a-decade "we're relevant" phase.

Well, KSAZ seems to be continuing on its road of occasionally being incredibly offensive. That earned it, specifically Cory McCloskey, a spot in a John Oliver rant: This is just the cherry on top to me... Rick D'Amico ran a segment in January that I found offensive. It was during the nightly Had Enough? segment (which had cited InfoWars and the Washington Free Beacon in the past) and discussed the sentence of 1,000 lashes given by Saudi Arabia to blogger Raif Badawi. D'Amico snarkily commented, “Well, at least they don’t wanna behead him”. Yeah, well...they DO behead people. They beheaded 87 in 2014. Badawi almost got the death penalty for apostasy — which a court threw out. I wrote a letter to the station and to D'Amico at the time. I got no reply. It seems that Had Enough was discontinued in March.

And Sinclair, in its application to combine KFOX and KDBC, counted Televisa Juárez in the market. Oddly enough they could have also counted Azteca (two stations) and XHIJ, but they didn't.

XETV would never have gone dark, it simply would have become a Canal 5 repeater — which they did use XETV analog for briefly after 2009, and then in digital as a subchannel. There's kind of an embarrassment of riches for Spanish speakers when it comes to TV down there. It's worth noting that of all the Mexican border cities, only Tijuana has a transmitter of a public station (that would be XHTJB/Canal Once). Then factor in the size of the market, the American/Mexican duplication...

If anything, given all the change in the Mexican media market, their "preponderant economic agent" status, etc., the US is a nice insurance policy for them. XETV probably does decently even without Fox. And they make north of $300 million a year on royalties from Univisión.

Their theme at the time seems to be the Toby Arnold KPRC theme. KRTV weather and close, 1996: (the close theme: Newsleader!!) KTGF in January 1992: (another unknown theme, probably a production track)

It's certainly a competitive news market. That's six shops in English alone. Not to mention several more in Spanish.

Darn, I thought it was Seattle... I knew she had just left whatever station she had left... Not sure on where de Florias was prior to KPHO.

And we all know liberals hate Fox because they hate foxes... Kappa Getting back to talent moves, KPHO added some weekend talent. Ashley DeMartino (last in Seattle) is doing weather, while Lena de Florias (an ASU grad) will join Adam Longo on the anchor desk. Surprised to see a two-anchor weekend newscast setup. KSAZ's had one for a long time, which is still unusual in this day and age (then again they have more of a news load).

KIRO 11pm, March 28, 1994:

I went through some of the stuff on their site. Didn't know that KAUT ever had a news operation in the 80s. There's also KFOR "News Team 4" stuff from the early 90s, which is incredibly hard to find for some reason.