T.L. Hughes

Technically, Sox Entertainment (don’t know how new to the distribution game it is) is the one distributing it. Seems odd that Amazon didn’t assert syndication rights to Judy Justice through MGM.

Usually, an “original program” is produced in conjunction with the network/streaming service that airs the program or, in cases like with CBS Studios (for CBS programs) and Universal Television (for NBC programs), the primary television production unit of its parent company. The CBC arrangement meets the financing criteria of an original program to an extent (albeit with Cancon production funds contributing to the project).

You sure about that? The CBC logo and copyright are included during the end credits of most of their domestic scripted and alternative programs, and since 2021 (as evidenced with Heartland, which is syndicated in the U.S. and began including this tag with its 14th season), most of their domestic scripted shows are identified as being “A CBC Production”. That gives the impression that the network/Crown corporation maintains ownership of (at least, some of) its domestic non-news-and-sports programming.

According to CRTC signal maps (per RabbitEars), the only other Canadian stations receivable in Detroit are a translator of Ontario’s PBS analogue, TVOntario (CICO-32), and a translator of Wheatley CTV2 O&O CHWI-DT (CHWI-60). The former’s signal covers the entire Detroit Metro, while the latter’s signal only has rimshot Grade B and city-grade coverage confined to downtown Detroit. The rest—CHWI-DT, Leamington multicultural independent CFTV, and translators of Toronto Global O&O CIII-DT (CIII-22/Stevenson and CIII-29/Sarnia) and Hamilton independent CHCH-DT (CHCH-2/London)—are either not visible in Metro Detroit (CFTV, CIII-22 and CHWI-DT have signal contours that either brush up against the Detroit River or stop near Windsor’s eastern city limits) or are only visible in the northeast outer suburbs.

I don’t think that CBS Sports will produce any sports content for Showtime, at least not live sports events. This was structured as a total elimination of the Showtime Sports unit, rather than a consolidation of operations with CBS Sports (a la the 2006 merger of ABC Sports and ESPN into one unit, which came after earlier streamlining of certain staffs between the two divisions in the years following Disney’s purchase of ABC’s assets), so if the company really was intending to continue offering sports content on Showtime, all of those responsibilities would’ve been transferred to CBS Sports. Since Paramount didn’t qualify that it would, reports that mention this come off looking like drumming up false hope that boxing, MMA and docs would still be around from 2024 onwards. This doubt is buttressed by the fact that Premier Boxing Champions is reportedly looking at deals with Prime Video and DAZN, and Paramount is looking to offload Bellator, which hasn’t had a stable broadcast home since Viacom/ViacomCBS/Paramount bought it (it got bounced between Epix (now MGM+), MTV2 and Spike/Paramount Network and DAZN, before landing on Showtime). Some have blamed PBC’s management, citing it hasn’t been able to keep a stable broadcast home in its ten-year history (having carried events on multiple networks—with NBC/NBCSN, Spike, CBS/CBS Sports Network and Bounce TV, later joined by Fox Sports and ESPN—for its first few years, then moving to Showtime and Fox Sports in 2018, only to lose its deal with the latter by 2021), and suggesting its fight choices and purse amounts valued over fighters’ actual valuation made it not worth continuing with the deal). (The sports documentary unit is also being cut, meaning that all sports-focused series are effectively being canceled.) The company’s decision to cut Showtime Sports also likely has to deal with the fact that Paramount’s valuation has dropped from around $20 billion at the time of the 2019 merger to $8 billion today, resulting in layoffs and staff restructuring over the past year (Showtime Networks was folded into the MTV Entertainment Networks unit earlier in the year, as part of that operational streamlining). The company is struggling to make a profit on Paramount+ (though adding PPV events through the Showtime tier could have helped create additional revenue to some extent), and it’s losing retrans dollars because of cord-cutting.

The latest to be affected by community guidelines abuse is the Studio 31 Media Archive, which took down all of its newscast videos (despite news being a fair use exception) due to community guidelines violations filed by two Gmail accounts of unknown origin.

KMVT debuted the new logo on-air on Monday (October 23), but added it to their existing graphics:

Looks like KMVT is switching to GrayOne, ‘cause their apparent new logo is now live on their website:

Thanks to this, TIL, the lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins, for some reason, has owned a wrestling promotion for six years.

I stumbled upon this on Logopedia (yes, there’s a wiki for logos), apparently the Montana Television Network has updated its logo, dropping the longtime mountain outline emblem used in some form since 1969.

It was inevitable, another one of WGN’s old guard is calling it quits… and this time it’s the king of Chicago weather. Tom Skilling has announced that he will retire as WGN’s chief meteorologist next year, after 45 years with the station. His last day will be February 28, 2024.

The San Antonio Spurs have cut a deal with Tegna to broadcast 11 regular season games on KENS this season, starting with the November 20 home game against the Los Angeles Clippers. All of the games (including the lone non-prime time game, a February 10 away game against the Brooklyn Nets scheduled for a 5:00 tip-off) will preempt CBS prime time programming in some capacity on those dates. Bally Sports Southwest’s San Antonio-area feed will carry 61 other regionally exclusive Spurs telecasts for 2023–24, while four additional games (presumably produced by BSSW) will be broadcast locally on WOAI-DT2. (In its article about the KENS deal, NextTV misidentified the secondary OTA carrier as KMYS, failing to recognize Sinclair’s 2021 decision to move that station’s CW and syndicated programming to a WOAI subchannel.)

Thanks for the correction. Remembering how the Thunder move went about, the Sonics name and trademarks remained in Seattle for use by a future expansion franchise; the Clay Bennett-led ownership group also agreed to share the Sonics’ team history between the Thunder and a future Seattle franchise. So, the (original) Hornets not allowing for a similar arrangement with the city of Charlotte before the fact looks like they were less sure that Charlotte would snag a new expansion team (and agree to build a new stadium) down the line.

Lowell Register was the one who did that, and that decision was moreso guided by his more socially conservative views. Gray owns WPGA now, so the content of network programming doesn’t matter; all that matters is whether Gray can snap up a major network affiliation. (BTW, WPGA, under Register, was with Fox for the station’s first six months of operation until WGXA took over the affiliation.)

Technically, such a concept could develop localized RSN-like sub-feeds that carry the main MLBN national schedule most of the time, and allow for breakaways for games and team-related programming. However, MLBN carries some live game broadcasts during the MLB regular season and postseason that games from local teams could preempt, so it’s not the most feasible option. Creating a group of local MLBN channels separate from the national version is a non-starter because of the potential impact on carriage fees for carrying both.

This, however, poses a Catch-22 for Scripps. The subchannels that will carry the Coyotes games don’t have satellite or vMVPDs to rely on for additional distribution, unlike with KTVK (which has enough available options to view most Suns and Mercury games shown on the station that it mitigates any risk to the revenue stream Gray gets from its pay-TV carriage). Dish and DirecTV/DTV Stream subscribers thus would have to resort to either using an antenna or switching to a cable provider that carries the subchannels (e.g., Cox) to see the games. (Reception issues come into play for residents living in hillier regions of Arizona served by KNXV, KGUN and certain translators of theirs; luckily, the planned Coyotes streaming service will be an available backup option for those who have trouble receiving the OTA signals reliably.) Thus, Scripps would technically be risking taking a loss in subscriber fees from defecting customers of providers that carried BSAZ that can’t view the KNXV/KGUN subchannels on their lineup, a risk that it could mitigate by putting the games on the wider-distributed CW stations it owns in Phoenix and Tucson. Scripps and other station groups still rely on that revenue, even as the un-level carriage negotiating power by media companies (through the poorly regulated and long-broken retransmission consent structure) is responsible for accelerating the downturn of the pay-TV ecosystem.

After it acquired the station earlier this year, Marquee had planned to launch a standalone news department for KNIN, which would have given Boise four television news departments for the first time since 2011, when KTRV shut down theirs not long after it lost the Fox affiliation to KNIN during the network’s reverse comp disputes with several sub-60 affiliates (KTRV, then owned by Block, was one of the only non-Nexstar/Mission stations affected). This new news share agreement with KBOI, either indicates they’re putting those plans on hold for a while or have called them off entirely.

I dunno, it would have been feasible to delay CW programming until late evening, once game-delayed editions of KASW and KWBA’s prime time newscasts concluded. By not putting the games on KASW and KWBA, Scripps put the Coyotes at somewhat of a coverage disadvantage in comparison to the Suns and Mercury, given that KTVK (which is/will be carrying most of their games) has distribution on satellite, YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, while KNXV and KGUN’s DT2 subchannels (due to them being Antenna TV and Laff affiliates, respectively) as well as KUPX and KSTU-DT2 in Salt Lake City (both of which will be alternating carriage of Coyotes telecasts there, and the latter lacking satellite and vMVPD coverage for the same reason as KNXV and KGUN subs) have no pay TV distribution beyond cable in their respective markets. Between this issue and the Coyotes planning to launch their own streaming service for the games, some ‘Yotes fans (read: those that subscribe to satellite or DirecTV Stream) have good reason now to cord-cut. (Cable subs in those areas just have to switch to a different channel.) Although I saw the writing on the wall for Bally Sports Arizona when the Diamondbacks, Suns and Mercury all ditched, it’s interesting they didn’t choose to carry on with the Coyotes, other than for financial reasons. It wouldn’t have been the only Bally Sports network to center around just one team, given that former owner News Corp/Fox built four of the RSNs around just the Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres, New Orleans Pelicans and Oklahoma City Thunder (only the San Diego service has lost the rights to their sole team thus far), while compensating for the lack of other team rights by carrying games from the sister RSNs they spun off from. (The New Orleans and Oklahoma feeds were both spun from Fox Sports/Bally Sports Southwest when the Thunder and Pelicans relocated from Seattle and Charlotte, while the Kansas City and San Diego feeds were spun from from Fox Sports/Bally Sports Midwest and Fox Sports/Bally Sports West when the Royals shut down their broadcast/cable syndication service and the Padres cut ties with Cox’s 4SD local access channel, respectively.)

There’s also the issue of what graphics systems are used at the station level, and whether the group-standardized graphics have to be customized to support the station’s existing system.

*ba-da-bum* Seriously though, Yom Kippur is the holiday in question.

As far as NBC goes, through its control of the Victoria, TX market, MMM currently has one station affiliated with the network, KMOL-LD, which is one of only two Big Four stations in its portfolio (along with Victoria’s CBS affiliate, KXTS-LD) that doesn’t air local news in any capacity. (In fact, even to this day, neither KMOL nor KXTS carries news simulcasts from parent station KAVU, unlike the local news setups in several other markets where one company operates two or all three Big Three stations like Lima and St. Joseph.)

Basically, that scheduling of Live… goes back to the final years of WJAR’s tenure as an NBC O&O, predating the launch of the fourth hour of Today, and possibly even tracing to the launch of the third hour (if not that of the short-lived predecessor Later Today).

According to the Post-Dispatch article, KSDK previously used “5 On Your Side Weather” as its weather branding.

An interesting tidbit from the linked article: “In 2006, Gray Media Group’s predecessor, Raycom Media Inc. registered a trademark for the phrase First Alert Weather.” The branding does predate Raycom’s trademarking of it, as many stations have used the “First Alert” brand dating to the late 1990s (e.g., KOCO has been using the brand since it adopted the Eyewitness News 5 moniker and second-generation Hearst “camera” graphics in 1998). This isn’t the first lawsuit between competing stations over a brand: in May 1990, as the format was being rolled out across the country, KOCO (then owned by Gannett) sued KFOR (then owned by Palmer Communications) over their use of the “24-Hour News Source” slogan; KOCO claimed it had held the exclusive rights to the moniker for the Oklahoma City market since 1980. Both KFOR (which adopted the “4 Strong” brand—itself a ripoff of KOCO’s then-longtime “5 Alive” brand—in April 1990, and “Your 24-Hour News and Information Station” slogan about three weeks later) and KOCO (which used the generic “24-Hour News Source” brand) began running hourly news updates and expanded their broadcast days to 24 hours (KOCO on weekdays only, KFOR seven days a week) only a couple of weeks before the suit was filed. While not much is known if they settled, by that Fall, KFOR changed its slogan to “Where the News Comes First, 24 Hours a Day” (Des Moines sister WHO would adopt that same slogan two years later), and KOCO discontinued hourly news updates and cut its overnight programming (which included a news block featuring content from its Gannett sister stations and programming from All News Channel, which bounced between each of Oklahoma City’s Big Three stations during its existence) soon after. (It wouldn’t revert to 24-hour programming until 1994, when it finally picked up World News Now, and began airing classic movies and Westerns on weekends.)

Several CBS stations—most of them O&Os (e.g., WCBS, KCBS, WFOR, KDKA, WBBM), but also about a dozen affiliates (e.g., KOIN, WKMG, WANF [then WGCL], WANE, WCSC)—actually ran Guiding Light in the 10:00/9:00 a.m. hour during the last few years of its run, with LMAD inheriting GL’s alternate timeslots.