T.L. Hughes

Apparently, look at James Gunn. Disney just iced him from any involvement in the next Guardians of the Galaxy sequel for jokes about paedophilia and rape he made in the past. Although in that case, that was an alt-right trolling revenge attack led by Mike Cernovich, the same guy who got Sam Seder briefly fired as an MSNBC commentator for some of his past tweets before the backlash resulted in NBCUniversal researching Cernovich (which Disney didn't in the Gunn case) and realized he wasn't very credible, and in both cases was so-called "revenge" against Trump critics. In this and other cases, Cernovich did it to silence people who criticize his ideology. A debate over Gunn's misfired attempt at edgy humor can be made, but the way it came out and who brought it to the surface was more of an attempt to chill free speech. West's issue was more of a failure to realize that improper conduct occurring during worktime, even if it doesn't involve another employee, can backfire.

Weigel is launching yet another multicast network: Start TV will debut September 3 on Weigel- and CBS-owned stations (with many of the CBS-owned affiliates carrying the network on subchannel slots currently occupied by sister-network-to-be Decades, though Weigel appears to be moving Decades to its own stations in markets such as Los Angeles and Chicago). The network will focus on police and detective procedural programs with strong female leads (such as The Closer, Medium, The Good Wife, Crossing Jordan, Cold Case, Profiler and [early 2000s Lifetime series] The Division).

This must have been fairly short-lived, considering the only opens I recall seeing which featured that cut of "Image VIII" were after WSB adopted the original version of its current logo later in 1994.

Two major newscast changes to note in Indianapolis: * WRTV has cancelled its weekend morning newscasts; the Saturday editions have been replaced with a repeat of Pickler and Ben at 6:00 a.m., Newsy Special Report at 9:00 a.m. and Women of Power at 9:30 a.m. and the Sunday broadcasts have been replaced with religious programming from 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. Good Morning America has been shifted to the 8:00 a.m. timeslot on both days, replacing the first half of the 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. Saturday block and the half-hour 8:00 a.m. Sunday block * WXIN has cut back Fox 59 NewsPoint at 11:00 to weeknights only, with Fox’s Saturday late-night block being moved up a half-hour, while repeats of The Simpsons will take over that slot on Sundays.

The graphics in the KDNL clip clearly are a mod of the Ellis Communications graphics from that period, but more or less closely resemble the mod of said package that WSMV got about a year or two earlier.

And, another clip. This time from a June 1997 edition of its 11:00 a.m. newscast, from after the switch to the "Fox 2" moniker.

DTV America only buys low-power stations. WBNX is a full-power outlet, so I doubt if they would buy it.

Reuters reports that Apollo Global Management has approached Nexstar about possibly acquiring the company, in conjunction with existing Nexstar stakeholder P2 Capital Partners. They note, though, that the confidential sources who informed them of the offer contend that "Nexstar has not yet engaged in sale talks and there is no certainty it will entertain an offer."

I think WUAB carries MyNetworkTV from midnight to 2:00 a.m. now. And, yeah, you would think that there would be a two- to three-month leeway for the switch. The fact there was only five days notice that CW programming would be moving to WUAB is a little fishy.

To clarify, STIRR is a new OTT streaming service that Sinclair has announced it will launch, which would feature local news and various live and on-demand programming, including acquired television series, movies and sports. The BuzzFeed article about this notes that it could be used to have the company compete with Fox News:

A necessary bump to this thread. WBNX is losing its CW affiliation, and quite soon actually... WUAB will take over as Cleveland's CW affiliate starting July 16 (this coming Monday). The move will result in WUAB dropping its 9:00 p.m. newscast and re-extending its 10:00 p.m. news to a full hour.

Or, have watched any NBC News Special Report since "The Mission/The Pulse of Events" began being used by the network 33 years ago, depending on how old he is.

I realize I should have clarified that it would probably be the first time that a station had all-female anchor teams for their weekday morning/daytime and evening newscasts. Usually, a two-female anchor team is assigned to only one daypart, like with the Robin Marsh-Lacie Lowry pairing on KWTV's morning newscast and the Sade Baderinwa-Diana Williams pairing on WABC's weekday 5:00 p.m. news hour.

So that means, unless they hire another male anchor, we could be looking at something seldom, if ever, attempted in local television, where each of a single station's weekday anchor teams are both the same gender. Keep in mind that Abigail Ogle was promoted to weekday evenings eleven months ago, and now co-anchors the 6:00 p.m. newscast (in addition to reporting at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m.). Around the same time, Maggie Carlo took over as weekday morning co-anchor alongside Markie Martin, with whom Abigail co-anchored on the 4:30-7:00 and 9:00 a.m. broadcasts beforehand.

Yes, after doing some research, here's a brief history of Multimedia Cablevision. The cable system began in 1979, when Multimedia Inc. purchased 35% of Wichita's Aircapital Cablevision from Kansas State Network Inc. (yes, that Kansas State Network, apparently), in a deal in which it also was given the option to acquire the remaining 65% at a later date. In 1980, it was granted the franchise rights to build a cable system in the Oak Lawn suburb of Chicago. It expanded into suburban areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa during 1980 and 1981 (the cities themselves -- including some adjacent unincorporated communities like my hometown, the OKC suburb of Forest Park -- were served by Cox Cable and Tulsa Cable Television, respectively [the latter of which was eventually acquired by TCI, which transferred the Tulsa system to Cox in 2000]). Gannett sold the cable division -- which, by that point, operated systems in Oklahoma, Kansas and North Carolina -- to Cox Communications in 1999, effectively giving the latter universal reach throughout Oklahoma's two largest cities. (Multimedia was almost forced to sell off its suburban Oklahoma City systems when it merged into the Gannett Company in 1995, because of Gannett's ownership of KOCO-TV at the time and FCC rules repealed in 2003 that banned common ownership of a cable system and a television station in the same market, though it was allowed to keep those systems under a waiver until Gannett swapped KOCO and WLWT to Hearst-Argyle Television in 1997.)

Funny it took Griffin this long to acquire radio stations, on account it has owned the Radio Oklahoma Network syndicated news service for at least 18 years now. Also, the deal creates strange bedfellows for the stations, since they'll be going from being sister properties of KJRH to being sister properties of one of its chief rivals, KOTV. This is duly noted considering that KFAQ -- which essentially founded KJRH in 1954 -- is involved in the deal.

I'll try.

Here's why I haven't uploaded news open compilations in the last two years. I used Wondershare Video Converter to edit and publish the videos; the application, however, was increasingly having audio/video syncing issues during the publishing process, which is why some of the later uploads and re-uploads had audio that was a few seconds off. My laptop's hard drive also crashed last December, and has been in the hands of a friend of a neighbor of mine (the latter of whom referred me to him to get it fixed) for repairs since then. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it back sometime this summer, and if a reinstalled Wondershare cooperates or I can find a similar video converter software that can sync video and audio properly, I'll add new compilation uploads to the YouTube channel.

If they ever did expand the 10:00 p.m. news to weekends, they could move Sports Sunday to 9:30 or 10:30. A few of Fox's O&O's (such as KTVU and KSAZ) already air their Sunday sports wrap-up shows after local newscasts aired in the traditional 10:00 (Central/Mountain)/11:00 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific) timeslot.

Apparently, yes. However, Fox O&Os have tended to use two sets of anchors on their weekday morning newscasts in some markets (some ex-O&Os like WDAF-TV still do that as well); so it's possible that Ryan and Pryzybyl will be shifted off at least part of the 4:00 to 7:00 a.m. portion of the newscast, to make way for additional anchors. The reports did say that KDFW was planning on adding staff for the expanded broadcast. The only existing newscasts I would foresee KDFW expanding in the near future would be the noon news (to an hour) and the 10:00 p.m. news (to weekend evenings). Yep. Though the newscast was titled Good Day Dallas from c. 1997-2004.

All I can say is... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=FyAsM9XovFk;m=3;s=18 It took KDFW ten years for them to expand Good Day to 9:00 a.m., and it was one of the last Fox O&Os to do so. Welcome to the club. That said, with KXAS running Megyn Kelly Today, KTVT running Let's Make a Deal and WFAA running Good Morning Texas at 9:00 a.m., once the expansion takes place, Live is probably going to be stuck airing on tape delay in DFW for the foreseeable future, unless it Disney-ABC chooses to move the show to KDAF, KDFI or KTXA (none of which are likely or tenable scenarios).

Sinclair's KidsClick block has a new (second) network home, TBD. The network began airing the block on Monday (May 7), and will air it weekdays from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. ET and weekends from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m. As a result, TBD will also begin airing its E/I programming for a half-hour daily at 9:00 a.m. weekdays and 10:00 a.m. weekends (instead of in 90-minute blocks on Saturdays and Sundays only). Even though the block has been added to one of Sinclair's in-house multicast networks, KidsClick will continue to air on This TV, at least, for now. BTW, how come Sinclair hasn't tried to syndicate KidsClick to CW, MyNetworkTV and independent stations outside of the group's portfolio? The 2018-19 season would be the best opening to offer it to other stations.

It's possible. Remember that ABC 33/40 in Birmingham retained several longtime personalities after Sinclair took over (James Spann, Pam Huff, Jeff Speegle, Brian Peters and Brenda Ladun, along with the now-retired Dave Baird). There are probably several other examples among the group, I don't know any more. I didn't know, either. How is she related to them? In-law? Cousin?

A couple of days late on the draw about this, but... former KFOR sports director Bob Barry Jr.'s 2015 death in a motorcycle accident has become the subject of a campaign ad by Gary Richardson, who is running for the Republican nomination to replace the term-limited Mary Fallin as Governor of Oklahoma. The ad -- which began running last weekend -- was intended to position Richardson as an anti-illegal immigration candidate, highlighting the fact that BBJ was killed when his motorscooter hit the side of a car driven an undocumented Mexican immigrant, Gustavo Gutierrez, who was driving without a license and was performing an illegal U-turn when the accident occured. (Gutierrez was given a 15-year prison sentence for vehicular homicide and cocaine possession in January 2016.) The ad omits mention that BBJ was not wearing a helmet, which resulted in the head injuries from which he succumbed. KFOR/KAUT General Manager Wes Milbourn noted that station management was "displeased with their advertising tactics and the exploitation of Bob Barry Junior," but FCC rules required them to air the ad as it met certain political advertising requirements. Richardson said he would rescind the ads from KFOR/KAUT, but he will run them on other Oklahoma television stations. BBJ's son, Matt, released this statement about the ad, and, to say the least, was not pleased, especially given that Richardson never sought permission from the Barry family and thought that KFOR/KAUT management would contact them about it: The ad in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDWg3POYVkE

As far as news at 6:30 p.m., that has been tried before more than once and failed (a situation that WPIX has experienced twice), presumably because the national network evening newscasts have dwarfed them in the ratings. That being said, NYC is the largest market where no non-Big-Three station runs a local newscast up against the network evening shows; I'm surprised WNYW hadn't at least experimented with a 6:30 p.m. newscast before 'PIX did. Quite a few Fox affiliates and a few non-Fox stations have six-hour-long morning newscasts. WGN is a key example.