T.L. Hughes

No one’s gonna terminate their CBS affiliation because they chose to put an out-of-production Byron Allen show at 12:37 a.m. ET, BFFR. Considering the state of syndication these days, the current American network/affiliate programming model actually looks increasingly out of place, given that in most countries (as well as our Spanish-language networks and diginets), OTA broadcast networks handle most of their daily program output, fillling timeslots not occupied by first-run programs (e.g., dramas, sitcoms, reality series, lifestyle shows), news (local or national) and sports with acquired programming and repeats of current and past network shows. It kinda makes less sense now for networks here in the States to give lower-rated timeslots back to affiliates (the most recent occurrence being in 2021, when NBC gave up the 1:37 slot after A Little Late with Lilly Singh ended), given the downturn in the syndication market and stations’ tendency to just expand local news usually using an already stretched staff, rather than invest in other types of programming. Plus, CBS’s affiliates probably aren’t clamoring to take back the 12:37 a.m. slot. It’s too late for live news (outside of the occasional overrun during March Madness), and Big Three stations don’t run syndicated sitcoms and dramas in late night like they did through the 2000s (thanks largely to CBS and ABC making valiant challenges to NBC’s once-powerhouse late-night lineup with the Late Show, The Late Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!). If CBS had turned over the timeslot, it’d probably be filled by lower-rated first-run syndies (as was often the case until the 1990s), newsmagazines (either second runs of shows like Inside Edition and ET or lower-rated shows like Extra that the station might already air in a later slot), second runs of daytime talk shows (KOCO, for example, has done this since the early 2000s starting with Oprah and now Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson), or late news rebroadcasts. You’re likely not going to see the types of suited-for-late-night first-run syndies like Arsenio, Love Connection or Blind Date that did well in the past.

While the Spectrum brand will remain, the Charter name won’t (per a CNBC report): Cox Enterprises will also own 23% of the shares in the new Cox Communications, which will maintain Charter’s existing Stamford headquarters and old Cox’s existing offices in Atlanta post-closing.

It came from this photo of the new building on the FB post linked a few posts back. My guess is that logo was a prototype in case they got permission to drop the Fox branding, and they commissioned the signage before deciding to keep the “Fox 8” brand. The one branding change they did make was the replacement of the longtime “Your Weather Authority” brand in favor of “First Alert”, carrying over (a non-italicized version of) the Helvetica Condensed font and the stylized thunderbolt from the previous weather logo.

Let’s not exaggerate. Unless some were deleted, of the 41 comments on that post (as of this post’s writing), only four make reference to this, and two are from people confusing the Fox network and Fox News Channel. That said, I don’t know if they’re going the WBRC route with the branding (switching primarily to a callsign/channel brand, while keeping the network-centric branding in limited form) or dropping the Fox name entirely, since the post still makes reference to “Fox 8”, including on the standalone and desk monitors in the set pic (assuming that wasn’t taken from weeks ago, and updated graphics with the “WVUE 8” brand weren’t sent to the new control room yet).

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.