T.L. Hughes

The new SkyNews 9 didn’t even last seven months. The timing of the crash couldn’t have been worse, given it happened during the middle of Oklahoma’s peak severe weather season. If KWTV needs aerial footage to supplement their ground crews, for the time being, KOTV’s chopper will have to serve as an occasional fallback.

Couple problems: 1) the article is from last year and 2) it says nothing about the CW moving from KFMB-DT2 to KUSI in the timeframe mentioned in the thread title. In another thread (which I believe linked to said article), another user stated that KFMB’s CW contract didn’t lapse until 2026, so unless Nexstar confirms the affiliation will move to KUSI on September 1 (terminating the KFMB contract early), this thread was created prematurely.

Actually, Drew joined the lineup last year, moving over from Dabl when that network switched from lifestyle shows to Black sitcoms. Ironically, Dabl itself added Hot Bench to its overnight lineup last fall, putting it in the 2:00 a.m. hour that should technically belong to an overnight run of Are We There Yet?, which was added at the same time. (AWTY does air at that hour on weekends, however.)

Problem with this tactic is that much of the public either doesn’t care about or opposes the idea of the type of media monopolies Nexstar wants. Considering the animosity many conservatives have against the media (fed further by Trump’s attacks on the press), I doubt many of them support the idea of big media getting inordinately bigger with no limits, either. The only support comes from Beltway conservatives (including those who want to entrench their political power) and billionaire media moguls, so Nexstar isn’t reading the temperature of the public well.

After more than 15 years at TWC, Chris Warren has left the network (as confirmed by the well-wishes by colleagues like Jim Cantore, Mike Bettes and Charles Peek in the comments of this Twitter post).

Correction: WSVN switched from NBC to Fox, but marketed itself as an independent for the first couple of years with Fox because the network aired prime time programming only a few nights a week at the time. (Fox didn’t add children’s programming until 1990, and wouldn’t expand to a full seven-night-a-week prime time schedule until 1993.)

Which makes it highly ironic that Sunbeam agreed to ABC’s terms when it only has three more stations than BH Media has. Granted, the Ansins’ non-broadcast assets are primarily held in real estate, but if Berkshire Hathaway, whose investments pale in comparison was unwilling to pay, why were the reverse comp terms palatable enough for Sunbeam?

The one wrinkle here is, given the reason cited by WPLG management for dumping ABC, it’s a “broken clock” situation ripe for FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to intervene in his apparent “borderlining on abusing his authority” way of handling certain matters (an issue that Disney would’ve experienced at some point, given Carr’s governance style as chairman so far and Trump’s gripes with ABC that the network tried to paper over with his lawsuit that they settled after his election). From The Desk’s story on the switch:

ABC’s move to WSVN-DT2 will make Miami the largest market with a subchannel-only Big Four network affiliate, which is a weird thing to note considering that Big Four multicast affiliates are typically associated with sub-75 markets with nowhere near the number of stations that South Florida has. CMIIW, I think Atlanta (affected by the 1980 NBC/ABC switches and the New World deal), Baltimore and Denver (both of which saw all of their Big Three stations swap networks in 1995 as a result of the CBS/Westinghouse deal) are currently the only Top 30 markets where none of the Big Three networks has a “legacy” affiliate (i.e., a station that it has been affiliated with prior to 1980). Given that ABC stayed with WPLG during the 1989 switches, making it the only Big Four network not affected then, Miami will now join that list.

ABC being relegated to subchannel-only status in Miami of all places sounds like the biggest lateral move ever.

This assumes that this isn’t a negotiating tactic on WPLG’s part: walk away knowing ABC has no good options for a replacement affiliate (considering WSVN is most likely locked in with Fox, and six other stations are owned by the parents of the other major English- and Spanish-language networks), so that the network will have no choice but to crawl back and meet its offer, a gamble that’s incredibly risky (they’re dealing with Disney, after all). We know other station owners have been trying to claw back on the reverse compensation model for the same reasons why WPLG said no to ABC’s terms. WSFL is the only option (relying on its existing deal with Scripps, though that would necessitate Scripps building the market’s fifth English news department from scratch), unless Disney/ABC pulls what NBC did in Boston a decade ago and launches an O&O from scratch. If it goes through, none of the major English-language television stations in Miami will have been an affiliate of their network for longer than 36 years, a rarity for a top-20 market.

That would mark a return for the Stars on both stations: KDFI was the Stars’ local over-the-air broadcaster from 1995 to 2000, while KDFW carried Fox-televised games featuring the team from 1995 to 1999 via the network’s NHL package.

In advance of the expected tornado outbreak impacting portions of the Deep South (which some atmospheric analogues suggest could be under similar conditions to those that caused the 2011 Super Outbreak that struck the same region), TWC has announced schedule changes for Saturday (March 15). According to TitanTV and OnTVTonight, AMHQ will be extended by one hour until 10:00 a.m. ET, accordingly shifting Weekend Recharge one hour later (pushing it to 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m., preempting Pattrn). Long-form programming reruns will be preempted for extended storm coverage through at least 10:00 p.m. ET. (Barring that the event busts, Frozen Gold reruns still scheduled from 10:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m. ET will likely be preempted as well.)

And the aftermath… The station’s outdoor weather set was destroyed, several trees and tree limbs surrounding the building were snapped, and some cars were damaged (including the sunroof of meteorologist T.J. Springer’s car). The building’s roof managed to hold on, but it was partially bent from a couple of its clips, so it was a close call. It could’ve been worse, especially considering a house was completely destroyed farther south in Longwood. (Credit to an unknown user on the Broadcast Plaza Discord for the before and after photos.)

Well, this just happened… The tornado touched down near Lake Mary around 9:40 a.m. EDT (with a debris signature visible on radar), and approached the vicinity of WOFL/WRBW’s studios, where debris was reported falling from the sky onto the studio grounds.