T.L. Hughes

Tubi has added a live News 12 stream as part of a new "News on Tubi" section, a new FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channel offering that will also include NBC News Now, Black News Channel, WeatherNation TV, CBC News (the curated stream already available on Xumo), Bloomberg Television, Cheddar, fubo Sports Network, PeopleTV and content from parent network Fox Corporation (individual Fox Television Stations O&Os, NewsNOW from Fox and Fox Soul). Not explained is if the News 12 channel is a curated stream featuring content sourced from each of the News 12 Networks (Bronx, Connecticut, Westchester, New Jersey, etc.)--which is probably the case, a la CNN's AVOD streaming channel--or a feed seen by Altice subscribers in the New York metropolitan area. "News from Tubi" is only available on Tubi's Google Play, Roku and Amazon Fire TV apps; curiously, they didn't bother to roll it out to its other apps, most glaringly, its Apple app.

Tubi has added live news streams from the Fox Television Stations, NewsNOW from Fox and Fox Soul as part of a new "News on Tubi" section, a new FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channel offering that will also include NBC News Now, Black News Channel, WeatherNation TV, CBC News (the curated stream already available on Xumo), Bloomberg Television, Cheddar, fubo Sports Network, PeopleTV and News 12 New York (not sure if it's a curated feed of content from each of the News 12 Networks or a pure live stream of any of the channels). "News from Tubi" is only available on Tubi's Google Play, Roku and Amazon Fire TV apps; curiously, they didn't bother to roll it out to its other apps, most glaringly, its Apple app.

RBR+TVBR suggests it will launch by early 2021. As for timeslots, I'm guessing the existing 5:30 and 10:00 newscasts will stay, which leaves open if they'll add a morning show or expand their early evening news by 30 to 90 minutes.

Two new sale transactions to note: * Scripps is buying KCDO-TV/Sterling, CO and its Denver translator KSBS-CD for $9.5 million. The deal would form a full-power duopoly with KMGH, and force the sale of KPXC under the concurring Ion deal. * Tegna is buying KMPX-TV/Decatur, TX from Estrella Media for $19 million. A very odd caveat included in the agreement is that Estrella was given an option to purchase WFAA, which would become KMPX's duopoly partner, an option I doubt would be exercised and doesn't make much sense to include.

They're 35 years late on the draw for that, aren't they? That's about how long its been since they became an O&O through the CapCities/ABC merger, and WABC, KABC, WLS and KGO had been using the "Circle 7" pins even then.

They're not the only ones. I saw a report on KWTV's noon news today, in which the reporter's mask appeared to have a sticker of the station's logo on the left side.

NBC News correspondent Morgan Chesky has tested positive for COVID-19.

I just read about this. It sounds a lot like WGN America’s upcoming News Nation.

George Stephanopoulos revealed on GMA Monday morning that he has tested positive for the coronavirus. He states, however, that he is currently asymptomatic and only has experienced mild symptoms: what he described as back pain that he thought was due to strenuous exercise and, for a time, a relatively diminished sense of smell. George had been working from home since his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, tested positive a few weeks ago, with somewhat more severe symptoms. (IIRC, when he discussed Alexandra’s diagnosis last month, he said he, at the time, didn’t use masks or other precautionary measures when tending to her. Apparently since then, he had started to do so; it should be noted that he is one year shy of the age group of highest complication risk [yes, he’s 59!].)

KIVI will begin producing separate local newscasts for its Twin Falls repeater KSAW-LD, starting Monday (April 13). KIVI/KNIN anchor Roland Berres and chief meteorologist Scott Dorval will helm the weeknight 5:30 and 10:00 broadcasts, which will feature three multimedia journalists based in Twin Falls conducting local field reports. (KSAW currently airs a simulcast of KIVI’s 5:00 p.m. newscast, World News Tonight at 5:30 [which will likely replace the 5:00 news from Boise, if not move to 6:00] and a double run of The Big Bang Theory at 6:00.) KIVI’s Good Morning Idaho, and its weekend 5:30 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts will continue to be simulcast on KSAW.

UPDATE: TV Guide and OnTVTonight have revised their listings for WHME to account for the added WISH simulcasts, and apparently, weekend news simulcasts will be limited in scope. The full schedule will consist of these newscasts: * News 8 Daybreak - weekdays 4:00-10:00 a.m., Saturdays 5:30-7:00 a.m. * News 8 at 4:00 - weekdays 4:00-5:00 p.m. * News 8 at 5:00 - weekdays 5:00-6:00 p.m. * News 8 at 6:00 - weekdays 6:00-7:00 p.m., Saturdays 6:00-6:30 p.m. * News 8 at 10:00 - weeknights 10:00-11:00 p.m. * News 8 at 11:00 - Monday-Saturdays 11:00-11:30 p.m. Exempted newscasts are the Saturday 7:00-10:00 and Sunday 5:30-10:00 a.m. editions of Daybreak, the weekday 11:00 a.m. News 8 Midday (shown on WISH from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.), the Saturday editions of the 10:00 p.m. newscast and all Sunday newscasts (as well as The Sports Locker). Religious and secular programming as well as infomercials will continue to occupy WHME’s entire Sunday schedule. BTW, WISH parent Circle City Broadcasting states that WHME will basically be the test springboard for a statewide news network to include simulcasting agreements with other Indiana television stations (in cities like Terre Haute, Evansville and Fort Wayne) that don’t have a news operation of their own. So, the WHME arrangement is likely to be a long-term thing.

Although the station hasn’t updated its listings to include which of WISH’s newscasts will be shown on its schedule, WHME has (mostly) disclosed which newscasts will be simulcast on the station on its website. On weekdays, WHME will carry all six hours of News 8 Daybreak (4:00-10:00 a.m.), its three-hour early evening news block (4:00-7:00 p.m.) and its late news block (10:00-11:30 p.m.). The only weekday newscast that WHME will not carry is the 11:00 a.m. midday show. While it also noted it would carry WISH’s weekend newscasts, the page didn’t specify which ones; presumably, it will carry the full schedule (Saturday and Sunday editions of Daybreak, and the 6:00, 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts as well as the SportsLocker), although Family Broadcasting’s stations have usually filled much of their Sunday schedules with religious programming, so it’s possible that WHME may have to shuffle some of those shows around the schedule and maybe even drop some of the secular classic series that it airs on Sunday afternoons (or even a couple of the religious programs it airs at other parts of the day) to incorporate all of WISH’s Sunday newscasts.

From what I was able to find out about it, Real Life apparently was cleared on 147 NBC stations (at least, initially) when it debuted in March 1996. (It was one of many failed talk show attempts that NBC tried during the first half of the 1990s, including among others, One on One with John Tesh, the Faith Daniels-hosted A Closer Look and an eponymous program hosted by Night Court star Marsha Warfield.) It effectively was a replacement for another failed talk show, The Other Side (an Unsolved Mysteries-esque series focusing on paranormal phenomena) which following its cancellation in late 1995 was temporarily replaced by a secondary run of Leeza Gibbons’ daytime talker, Leeza (the only reasonably successful talk show NBC aired during that period, before it was sent off into syndication in 1999, when NBC dropped it, NBC News at Sunrise [subsequently replaced by Early Today] and long-running soap Another World [which was replaced by Passions, even though Sunset Beach had even lower ratings than AW, which was in ninth place vs. Sunset’s 11th/last-place showing among the daytime soaps at the time] from its schedule). Along with in-studio segments from Boston, the show also featured reports filed by correspondents based in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, Miami and Philadelphia. Persistently low ratings led NBC to cancel Real Life in the fall of 1996, and hosts Lu Hanessian and Ken Taylor (who both had NBC connections prior to its premiere; Taylor as co-anchor of the weekend editions of WNBC’s Today in New York, Hanessian as host of the talk show Have a Heart on MSNBC predecessor America’s Talking) left prior to the end of its run; the show was replaced by the Aaron Spelling-produced soap Sunset Beach in January 1997.

Starting Monday (April 6), Full Court Press will launch a special coronavirus-focused weeknight edition to be anchored by regular host Greta Van Susteren (who will present from an in-home studio) and WVUE anchor Lee Zurik (who will host from New Orleans). The program, to be titled Full Court Press Now, will air most of Gray’s stations; no word on if it will air on non-Gray stations that carry the main weekend program (like KOCO in my hometown, which carries Full Court Press early Sunday mornings before the 5:00-7:00 block of their weekend morning newscast).

The bizarre thing about this is that earlier in the week, Baldwin was brought to tears during an interview with a woman whose mother died from COVID-19, and who couldn’t see her to say goodbye. Little did Baldwin know, she had been infected herself, but was asymptomatic at the time. Given this and Chris Cuomo’s diagnosis, it’s possible CNN may need to do to its Hudson Yards facility what CBS did to Broadcast Center when its first news employees tested positive. I don’t know if they’ll fall back on using CNN Center in Atlanta as an auxiliary facility for some of its broadcasts (like CNN Newsroom) if a temporary closure for extensive cleaning happens. At least, they should have all of their New York employees that have not yet done so, including on-air talent, work remotely.

Thanks for the clarification. The original post by MidwestTV made it sound as if it was a launch of a half-hour 5:00 p.m. newscast, as opposed to WDAF extending its existing, hour-long Saturday early evening news block by 30 minutes to match said block on weekdays (from 5:00 to 6:30).

WDAF already had a Saturday 5:00 p.m. newscast; the more frequent sports preemptions on Saturdays caused by Fox in the past few years effectively placed it on an inconsistent hiatus (I believed it still aired on the few recent occasions when Fox didn’t have a sports event running in early access; previously, it would be delayed to 6:00 if there was no sports scheduled during that hour). Also, TV listings I looked at for WDAF (including its Zap2It-powered listings on the station’s website) show it as running for one hour, the length its 5:00 p.m. news had been airing on all seven days of the week since the 1994 NBC-to-Fox switch.

Circle City Broadcasting has struck an agreement with the Family Broadcasting Corporation (the former LeSEA Broadcasting) to simulcast WISH-TV’s newscasts on religious-secular independent WHME/South Bend starting April 6. Family Broadcasting’s flagship station will carry around 60 hours per week of WISH’s newscasts, though exactly which ones will be carried and which ones will be exempted have not been immediately specified.

KTRK weekday 3:00 and 6:30 p.m. anchor Chauncy Glover announced Thursday that he has tested positive for coronavirus and is under self-quarantine. The disclosure from his Facebook account:

The FCC appears to be going down this route. They have issued guidance opening up waivers of the 15% weekly programming time limit for stations operated under brokerage agreements to offer additional news programming they couldn’t run otherwise under current rules for as long as the pandemic is considered a national emergency. From Broadcasting & Cable: Also of note, WMC-TV has formed a partnership with Shelby County Schools (the district encompassing Memphis and its suburbs within the county to offer distance education telecourses for language arts/English, science and math for students from pre-K to 12th Grade on its 5.2 subchannel (relegating Bounce TV programming on that subchannel to nights and weekends mainly) starting today. This lasts likely until the district is able to either resume in-person classes or the calendar school year ends. It’s interesting that the school district approached WMC to do this, since telecourses have historically been broadcast on PBS stations (like Memphis’ local PBS member station WKNO and nearby Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Arkansas PBS [fka Arkansas Educational Television Network]) and other non-commercial educational stations.

I don’t think Tegna was behind the retitling of WTHR’s news brand necessarily. WWL still uses the Eyewitness News branding for its newscasts five years out from the company’s spinoff from Gannett. I think it may be a station-dictated move in conjunction with the changes to the graphics and music, just like when WMAZ dropped the Eyewitness News moniker for its newscasts about two years ago to become simply 13WMAZ News. These “vanilla” titles have kinda become more common over the past decade, probably because station consultants probably think they convey an “old school” air to the brand, just like when NewsCenter and NewsWatch went out of style by the end of the 20th Century and NewsScene went out of style towards the mid-to-late ‘80s. Unique news branding makes sense, it’s just no one thinks applying it to the newscast title is “modern”. Those still using brands like Eyewitness News, NewsChannel, NewsCenter, etc. are really more of an exception these days than they were before the early 2010s.

Surprised no one mentioned this, but there is now a case of COVID-19 involving a network news personality. ABC News correspondent Kaylee Hartung revealed Wednesday that she is recovering in self-quarantine after contracting the illness while reporting on its effects in Washington State, one of the coronavirus’ early hotspots. Good news is her symptoms—which she originally thought were allergies, given she didn’t experience shortness of breath, dry cough or chest tightness, the primary symptoms associated with the coronavirus—aren’t as severe as they were early on, stating that at its worst, “I was fatigued. I was not looking forward to getting out of bed. I had a headache right between the eyes. I was congested. I had body aches. My lower back was really hurting.” She is worried about having spread the illness to others when she was asymptomatic. Also, the coronavirus is affecting the family of NBC/Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, as his brother, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) was one of two Congressmen to be diagnosed (along with Ben McAdams [D-UT]) in an announcement Wednesday, resulting in other Congressional members who had contact with the two House Reps. to self-quarantine. I don’t know if Jose decided to take time off from his anchoring duties at Telemundo in light of his brother’s diagnosis, but it would seem difficult to report on your own brother having been afflicted with a respiratory disease you have been reporting on for a few weeks.

Springer's commentary made pointed references to Marin's decision to resign because of him being brought on to be a commentator for what was apparently a segment that was to feature rotating guest commentators, even suggesting it as "elitist snobbery [...] hidden in the self-righteous cries of journalistic integrity".

In that case, the tornado came at a bad time. Had it touched down during the daytime and had there been more lead time ahead of the tornado to do such a thing, WTVF management could have sent somebody to the airport to move Sky 5 out of its hangar to avoid damage. Since the twister touched down just west of Tune Airport at 12:30 a.m., that idea appeared to be a non-starter, hence what happened.

Sky 5 was severely damaged when the tornado (then at EF2 intensity) hit Tune Airport. When I first heard that the helicopter was parked there while watching a live stream of their 7:00 a.m. newscast Wednesday morning, thought it seemed odd, considering that many news helicopters are housed on their station’s studio grounds, not at general aviation airports like John C. Tune Airport. Considering the airport suffered $93 million in damage and WTVF’s studios escaped damage, putting the helicopter at the WTVF building would have prevented this.