T.L. Hughes

With the GrayONE rollout, KSLA has updated its logo, keeping elements of the basic design it has used since Ellis ownership, with the “KSLA NEWS” typeface similar in style to the updated WLBT logo.

4 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

This article puts things in a more complete context, especially for those of us who have no idea how this stuff works. Thanks for sharing it.

To quote one Waldo Geraldo Faldo, “no prob, Bob.”

10 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

I'd say she bowed to the pressure of Paramount Global to keep the show on the air in the first place in business as usual mode rather than the strikes.

 

The problem here was PG forcing the show back into production without writers and a limited guest pool (pretty much Broadway and unscripted, along with PGs deal of the day hucksters, the exact same as The View minus politicos). This is all on them and she's the front liner to take the blame while Bob Bakish would prefer she come back (and hired the goons to take away WGA buttons from audience members) and gets none of it.

Actually, there’s another reason; from Variety:

Quote

Syndicated TV shows have contractual obligations to deliver new episodes to their local station partners. Unlike network shows – like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” or “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” which have permanent real estate on a network’s schedule – nationally syndicated daytime talk shows like “The Drew Barrymore Show” are required to produce a certain amount of episodes to more than 200 local stations throughout each television season.

 

In other words, this was a business decision — and not one that Barrymore made alone. Hosts like Barrymore are under contract with major media production companies to perform their hosting duties, and like any regular job, they eventually have to show up to work. Syndicated talk shows are typically required to deliver 35 to 40 weeks of new episodes to their station partners. If they don’t, they can lose their show.

Meaning that there’s a risk that WGA writers working for syndicated shows may cost themselves (and their fellow crew members) their existing jobs if the shows can’t fulfill their contracts. It’s important that the writers get a fair deal, but there are other crew members working with them that are being impacted by the strike. That fear of losing their jobs is expressed by several staffers of struck talk shows also interviewed anonymously in the cited Variety article:

Quote

Staffers from other talk shows feel the same. “We have to come back, or else hundreds of people are out of work,” an employee on a current talk show tells Variety. “Stations will pull us right off the air — they’ll put us in the middle of the night, and we’ll stay in the middle of the night. That’s just how it works.”

 

An employee from a different daytime show echoes this sentiment: “If even one major station group pulls out and says they’re not going to run our show, even if they have repeats, that affects ratings and advertising. It affects everything. Why would we risk letting a show die and letting people lose their jobs permanently if we can do a show without violating rules?”

 

“The strike doesn’t look like it’s anywhere close to being settled. The two sides can’t even agree who owes who the next offer,” this individual adds, referring to the WGA and AMPTP. “Are we supposed to wait around forever?”

Making things more complicated:

Quote

But WGA members believe that any form of writing — even notes written by producers — are a violation, though when asked by Variety, a spokesperson for the union was not able to provide any specific language from the current WGA agreement to support this.

If it’s not cited in the current agreement, forcing shows to continue their production hiatuses when they may not be required to risks creating a wedge between the WGA members and their colleagues on their struck shows since said colleagues have to resume work at some point. (Several daytime shows resumed production during the 2007-08 WGA strike, though The Ellen DeGeneres Show—which had a larger writing staff due to its monologue and comedy segments—received the most heat from striking writers for its resumption.) There are people stuck in the middle with no way out, other than take jobs outside of the industry.

By the time the studios and writers do reach a deal (which at this rate, might not happen before the end of the year, don’t quote me on that, since the studios are just waiting out the writers basically rather than submit a satisfactory deal), the syndication business may not be the same. (Fox Television Stations programming EVP Frank Cicha said in the article, “More repeats would just be a quicker death march for syndication. […] It’s a critical time, and if there’s not a way to do original programming, then you can see the end of national syndication.”) That means, we may see stations glutting their lineups with even more news.

1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:

A trademark has been filed for the Rockets and Astros’ new RSN: Space City Home Network.

Space City Home Network doesn’t exactly convey a place to watch sports. The name’s giving… local version of HGTV.

At least rename it Space City SportsNet to drive home that the network is still the home of the Astros, the Rockets and other local teams.

1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Not the biggest fan of the new WLBT logo.  I have a feeling that many of the Gray stations are going for this "overlapping letters" look.

On the other hand, the new WIS logo looks great and really stands out with the new look.

Regarding the WLBT logo, I noticed the arm of the “3” was shortened to match the weight of the callsign font. Ironically, the revised design otherwise is closer to the original 1985–2009 layout (the version used with the standardized Raycom/Gray packages from 2009 until the GrayONE debut had the middle leg extending slightly closer to the top of the “3”’s open loop).

The WIS logo is decent; the kerning of the call letters could have been spaced a little closer than it is, and the “I” and “S” made a bit thicker, so it fully matches the weight of the “W” (it can be hard to tell if the weights of all three letters match in certain depictions).

36 minutes ago, CoopInTheHouse said:

Seeing from the video here: Looks like they forgot to play the theme (for a few seconds) during the cold open. Not a good way to use Aerial too, with those NBC chimes in front.

The NBC chimes aren’t really a problem, they were synced OK with the start of the cut… granted, if the timing of each chime was spaced a little bit, it would mesh better. However, the theme wasn’t recut very well; for some reason, they also used that recut in the tease (you can hear it start over from the beginning during the weather tease).

5 hours ago, CoopInTheHouse said:

Here’s some syndicated shows that you haven’t heard about but have/will premiere(d) today/this weekend.

 

In the Reality genre: Storm of Suspicion (from the people who make 48 Hours). Will air weekends.

Uh, actually… Storm of Suspicion (which is a Weather Channel original; to summarize, it’s a true crime show dealing with forensic meteorology and how weather factors into the profiled cases) has been in syndication for a couple of years now.

5 hours ago, WheelWarrior said:

Also, speaking of weekend syndication, it happened at some point last season -- The Good Doctor, which debuted last season, originally had two feeds, one for single run markets and one for double run. At first, double run markets just got the next two episodes each weekend, while single runs just got one, to not mess with the show's heavy continuity in either case. At some point, they changed this so that for double run markets, the "A" episode is a repeat of last weekend's episode, and the "B" is the same episode that single run markets get. I'm guessing they did this either to keep both single and double run markets in sync with each other so the doubles don't get "ahead" (plus they would have looped back to S1 by now since the single run is currently on late S3), or because of how double run markets that might put one of the two runs in an undesirable slot would essentially rob viewers of alternating episodes.

Disney Media Distribution, which also syndicates The Good Doctor (due to it being an ABC Signature co-production), did this when Castle was still available in weekend syndication. They switched to this exact airing format c. 2017-18.

3 hours ago, Action Newsroom said:

Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed is

expanding from CBS local (and the rest of first-run syndication) to CBS proper for a limited time only, starting September 18.

 

https://deadline.com/2023/09/comics-unleashed-with-byron-allen-cbs-late-night-1235543726/

I’m guessing that since CBS has a content deal with The Weather Channel, and their plan to have the @midnight reboot replace The Late Late Show got stalled by the Writer’s Strike, someone in the network’s programming department thought, "I know of a great show we can put on at 12:35, instead of rerunning Corden into oblivion"?

5 hours ago, TVNewsLover said:

Maybe if the changing newscast blog was still a thing, people wouldn’t be getting things wrong, and you wouldn’t have to shame them for doing so. 

Actually, Roly is restarting the blog, moving it from WordPress to Substack.

3 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Another inaccuracy here. Your Life Arizona goes back to an hour at 10am, two episodes of Last Man Standing at 11am, and the newly expanded hour-long Arizona's Family News at Noon.

I’m guessing the arrangement is KTVK and KPHO will both simulcast the first half-hour of the newscast, and then KTVK carries it exclusively at 12:30?

48 minutes ago, Superdude said:

I didn't realize Miss USA was off network television for so long, I assumed it aired on Fox after they picked up Miss Universe from NBC.  Apparently not.

Backstory: After NBC terminated its contract to air Miss USA and Miss Universe because of Trump’s infamous comments about Mexicans in his speech announcing his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Reelz carried the 2015 telecast. It was included as part of Fox’s deal to broadcast Miss Universe starting in 2016, but moved back to a cable-exclusive telecast in 2020, when A+E Networks picked up the rights to carry Miss USA on FYI.

Miss Teen USA (which will be livestreamed on The CW’s app and website on September 29, the same night as Miss USA) has been off linear TV much longer, having been on streaming exclusively since 2008 and last seen on TV for its 2007 edition on NBC. (NBC was apparently unable to broadcast it in 2008 because of a scheduling conflict with the Summer Olympics.) Given that most of the contestants in that pageant are underage (the age cutoff to be eligible to compete is 19), there are understandable reasons why the Miss Universe Organization has forgone a traditional Miss Teen USA telecast for 15 years.

31 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

New scuffle. Hearst stations are blacked out on Dish Network.

Because of this, in the few markets where both groups have stations, Dish customers now don’t have access to Nexstar and Hearst stations, given the provider’s ongoing dispute with Nexstar. (For example, in the Oklahoma City DMA, that means Dish customers don’t have access to programming from two major networks and one mid-major network as Nexstar owns KFOR [NBC] and KAUT [CW], and Hearst owns KOCO [ABC]. God forbid Sinclair and Griffin get into retrans disputes with Dish.)

9 hours ago, ttvn2000 said:

Not to solution it here - but they could have leaned into the “3 as a B” thing and done something like this…

Basically, an homage to their 1978–83 logo:

Nexstar has renewed affiliation agreements for the company’s 41 Fox-affiliated stations (encompassing the 29 that Nexstar owns directly and 12 other stations owned by partner licensees like Mission and White Knight).

As far as Oklahoma City goes:
KFOR:

* On weekdays, the only change will be Dateline (the syndicated run moving over from KSBI) replacing Rachael Ray at 11:00 a.m.

* On weekends, S.W.A.T. and The Good Doctor each move up a half-hour (at 12:03 and 1:03 a.m., respectively) and Raw Travel gets bumped two hours later to 2:04 a.m. on Saturday/early Sundays, while The Equalizer takes over Magnum, P.I.'s timeslot on Sundays at 10:35. (The Equalizer will air after the Dallas Cowboys Post-Game Show, instead of immediately after the 10:00 news, during the NFL season.)
KOCO: No changes
KWTV:

* On weekdays, no changes (notably, Dr. Phil reruns will stay put at 3:00 p.m.).

* On weekends, Fast: Home Rescue (the Weather Channel home renovation series that TWC parent Allen Media Group has sold into syndication this year) replaces Entertainment Tonight Weekend at 12:30 a.m. Saturday/early Sundays. (ET Weekend will now only air Sunday/early Mondays at midnight.)
KOKH:

* On weekdays, the only change will be a day-behind rerun of TMZ Live replacing the local lifestyle program Living Oklahoma (which the station has cancelled after an eight-year run) at 10:00 a.m. (Notably, even though other Nexstar stations are adding The Big Bang Theory this season, KAUT won’t be one of them as it will continue to air it in the 6:00 p.m. hour weekdays on KOKH and Saturdays on KOCB; KAUT not taking TBBT wastes a possible opportunity for KOKH to finally add a 6:00 p.m. newscast, but I digress.)

* On weekends, Judge Judy reruns and Modern Family will replace a syndicated movie package from 3:00-5:00 a.m. Saturday/early Sundays, while Film Flickers with Kimberly and Esteban and Good Taste with Tanji Patton (both from San Antonio sister station KABB, and which will still both be carried by KOCB on Saturday nights) will be added to KOKH's schedule at 3:00 and 3:30 a.m. Sunday/early Mondays.
KOCB: Several changes are being made to its schedule, especially in timeslots previously occupied by CW programming (having lost the network to KAUT):
* On weekdays, an additional run of Divorce Court replaces Judge Jerry reruns at 9:00 a.m. (expanding the former to a one-hour block), and Person, Place or Thing replaces You Bet Your Life at 5:00 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. (curiously, promos for PPT that KOCB has aired since late August have not included any timeslot or station references). Replacing the CW primetime lineup will be an extra half-hour of The National Desk at 7:00 p.m., iCRIME at 7:30 p.m. and an additional hour of Family Feud at 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. (Oddly, the station's first night as an independent, 9/1, saw The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob's Burgers air in those slots, apparently that was a one-time thing.)
* On Saturdays, One Magnificent Morning has been replaced with syndicated E/I shows (DragonFlyTV [moved from KAUT] at 7:00, Missing [moved from KWTV-DT2] at 7:30, Elizabeth Stanton's Great Big World [last syndicated locally on KAUT a few years ago] at 8:00, Animal Science [formerly an Xploration Station series] at 8:30, and Xploration Earth 2050 at 9:00 a.m.), while Family Feud (at 7:00 and 7:30 p.m.) and TMZ Weekend (at 8:00 p.m.) replace CW primetime shows. (KOCB will also be carrying HBCUGo college football games beginning 9/9, meaning the schedule will vary depending on the start time of that week's telecast.)

* On Sundays, Last Man Standing replaces The Big Bang Theory in the 6:00 p.m. hour, while movies (presumably the same package being dropped from KOKH's Saturday overnight schedule) will air from 7:00-(approximately) 9:00 p.m. (The schedule for 9/17 has Jack Van Impe Presents at 6:30 p.m. Sundays, which if true would be the first time KOCB has aired religious programming on Sunday evenings since the early 1990s, during the tail end of its first run as an independent).

* In addition, Full Measure with Sheryl Atkisson will air at 11:00 a.m. Saturdays, and at 11:00 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
KAUT: In addition to taking over the CW affiliation, there's quite a few lineup changes:
* On weekdays, several shows have moved timeslots: Pictionary (to 10:00-11:00 a.m., from 4:00-5:00 p.m.), Law & Order: SVU (from a two-hour 10:00 a.m.-noon block into two separate blocks at 5:00 a.m. and 11:30 p.m.), The Neighborhood (to 4:00-5:00 p.m., from 12:30-1:30 a.m.) and American Housewife (to 5:00-6:00 p.m., from 7:00-8:00 p.m.), Mom (to 12:30-1:30 a.m., from 6:00-7:00 p.m.). People Puzzler replaces SVU from 11:00 a.m.-noon, Court Cam replaces Storage Wars and Pawn Stars from 1:00-2:00 p.m. (the latter two will continue airing at 6:00 and 6:30 a.m., respectively), 48 Hours replaces the departing Black-ish at 1:30 a.m., and Dateline replaces an early-morning run of Maury at 4:00 a.m.
* On Saturdays, the station's comedy block will be split up by CW programming and start earlier in the day, with The Neighborhood (4:00-5:00 p.m.), American Housewife (5:00-6:00 p.m.), Young Sheldon (6:00-7:00 p.m. and 9:00-10:00 p.m., the latter block replacing Black-ish). (The three shows will start a half-hour earlier during weeks when KFOR offloads Discover Oklahoma to KAUT because of commitments to sports events that NBC may air in Saturday prime time.) The late night lineup will now feature Chicago Fire (the weekend run moving from KWTV/KSBI, and replacing a syndicated movie package) from 10:00-midnight, Law & Order: SVU from midnight-2:00 a.m. (replacing Storm of Suspicion and Weather Gone Viral, which both move to 3:00 and 2:00 a.m., respectively, to replace the departing Impractical Jokers and Carbanaro Effect).
* On Sundays, U.S. Farm Report (which already airs Saturdays in that hour on KFOR) will be added at 5:00 a.m., Mom will air from 3:00-4:00 p.m. (replacing Impractical Jokers), Friends will air from 4:00-5:00 p.m. (relegating it exclusively to Sundays, replacing Storage Wars) and Heartland moves from its ill-fitting 11:00 p.m. slot to 5:00 p.m. (replacing Pawn Stars). Sunday nights after the CW lineup will feature The Good Doctor at 9:00 p.m., The Equalizer (taking over for Magnum, P.I.) at 10:00 p.m., S.W.A.T. at 11:00 p.m., SEAL Team at midnight, The Listener at 1:00 a.m. and Chicago P.D. from 2:00-4:00 a.m.
KSBI:

* On weekdays, Equal Justice will replace Personal Injury Court from 9:00-10:00 a.m. and Highway to Hell from 5:00-6:00 p.m., an additional run of The Liquidator replaces the departing Law & Crime Daily at 12:30 p.m., Mathis Court replaces Relative Justice from 1:00-2:00 p.m. and a second run of Highway to Hell from 2:00-3:00 a.m., Justice for the People with Judge Milian replaces Dateline at 3:00 p.m., Cutlers Court replacing Chicago Fire at 4:00 p.m., and Chicago Fire replacing a same-day Dr. Phil rebroadcast at 6:00 p.m. and Dateline at 9:00 p.m.

* On weekends, Law & Order: SVU replaces Forensic Files and Designing Spaces at 6:00 p.m. Saturdays; while on Sundays, Chicago Fire replaces Bloodline Detectives at 6:00 p.m., Bloodline Detectives replaces Dateline at 9:00 p.m., SOS: How to Survive replaces Chicago Fire at 10:00 p.m., Fast: Home Rescue replaces SOS at 11:00 p.m., Moviefone TV and Designing Spaces replace Entertainers in the midnight hour, and Real Green replaces Designing Spaces at 1:00 a.m.

Note regarding the KOCB schedule (in relation to @justin2kx and @MD TV’s posts): Between the newly added blocks mentioned plus the show’s existing timeslots (weekdays 2:00-3:00 and 5:30-7:00 p.m., Saturdays 3:00-3:30 p.m. and Sundays 3:00-4:00 and 5:00-6:00 p.m.), this season, Family Feud will occupy 20 hours [or approximately 12%] of KOCB’s weekly schedule! On weekdays alone, KOCB now matches WDCA in the number of daily Feud airings it runs.

57 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

KOCB may be dropped unless Sinclair elects to keep them on.  It would be their only independent station on YouTube TV.

I believe YTTV carries some (if not all) of Sinclair’s MyNetworkTV affiliates. Someone CMIIW, but I think WPNT was among those that it carried even before the station switched to The CW. So, it’s very possible nothing changes as far as KOCB’s carriage goes.

On 8/31/2023 at 9:09 PM, gsrecaps said:

YouTube TV has already changed both KAUT's and WPHL's logos ahead of time to their CW logos.

Oddly enough, YTTV wasn’t provided with KOCB’s new logo yet, resulting in two CW affiliate logos on the guide (I screenshotted this only a few minutes before this post):

As an aside, YTTV is a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to updating channel logos: it has updated those of NBC, HLN, BBC News and NBC LX Home (the latter switched from a youth-skewing news format to a lifestyle format in early August) in recent months, but somehow still hasn’t changed the logos for TCM (although, awkwardly, both the current and former logos are shown on its channel tab), UniMás, SundanceTV, BBC America and ABC.

The CW’s VOD library was also moved to KAUT’s channel tab hours ahead of the switch becoming official. (I presume KRON, WPHL and WTTA added the network’s VOD content ahead of time as well.)

Update (9/4): KOCB’s YTTV channel ID has switched to the new logo:

10 minutes ago, mrschimpf said:

The other thing...are we just all allergic to "TV" branding now? "TV-50" is a lot more remembered than "Detroit 50", along with "KSTWashington".

TBH, I was surprised CBSNS didn’t choose to rebrand KSTW as “Northwest 11” (resurrecting the moniker that station used in the early 1990s under Gaylord ownership), instead of “Seattle 11”.

12 minutes ago, atlnews2 said:

 What I find interesting is that there will be no prime time news on KTSW, WTOG, or WKBD

 

yet there will be 8pm news on WUPA 

The lack of prime time news on WKBD is odd, for obvious reasons. We can forgive KSTW and WTOG for not having news on their new prime time schedules, since they haven’t had news departments since Paramount Stations Group shut their existing ones down in the late ‘90s, aren’t connected to a co-owned CBS News Local operation (unlike WKBD and the other newly minted indies, save for WUPA), and Now is no longer a thing (outside of WUPA, apparently).

1 hour ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

I mean, that “SuperStation” died in 2007, so this isn’t much of a change. They’re going from an independent that aired news and reruns to airing 2 hours of the CW per day (along with said news and reruns). Nbd imo, although it really shouldn’t have taken this long to announce this.

Not to mention, sports.

Also, WPCH is technically still a superstation in Canada… and considering that The CW is now running Canadian imports like Son of a Critch and Children Ruin Everything, this means those shows will join the network’s past and present American-produced originals in being subjected to simsubbing over WPCH’s signal on cable and satellite providers there (since the aforementioned imports are produced as originals for domestic networks like CTV).

29 minutes ago, atlnews2 said:

Probably the end of production for those local shows that WPCH was airing at 8pm 

Or they’ll be undergoing a musical chairs situation, moving them to other timeslots. 

16 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

Nexstar website says its WPCH.

Seems odd they weren’t able to cut a deal with Tegna to put The CW on WATL; that makes it an open question whether KONG will join the network as a replacement for KSTW hasn’t been confirmed.

This also would mean WPCH will not be an independent for the first time in its 56-year history. (It has been an indie since the station signed on as WJRJ, pre-Turner, in 1967.)

4 hours ago, The Frog said:

According to WGN's schedule, they will be airing CW's ACC football games instead of WCIU.

Question: When does WCIU’s CW affiliation agreement expire? (I tried to look that up, but couldn’t find any documents containing that info.)

For Nexstar, Chicago would be a key piece of the puzzle in bringing the network in-house where feasible, though it can’t really compensate Weigel for losing The CW by giving it the affiliation in another market (a la what it did in its apparent deal with Sinclair that added WPNT to compensate for losing the KOCB affiliation) as Weigel’s stations outside of Chicago, South Bend (home to Weigel’s only other CW station, WCWW) and Milwaukee function as turnkey operations for its diginets.

Ironically, WGN dropped The CW in the first place so it wouldn’t have to continually reschedule CW programming to other timeslots as “makegoods” in order to air Cubs, White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks games in prime time (as the station had been doing since it became a WB affiliate in 1995). Only 3½ years later, all four of the station’s legacy teams moved their games exclusively to cable—the Cubs through the launch of Marquee Sports Network (in partnership with Sinclair), and the White Sox, the Bulls and the Blackhawks each giving their existing cable partner, NBC Sports Chicago, the proportion of locally televised games they had let WGN carry annually—effectively mooting that reasoning, with WGN picking up Chicago Fire FC soccer games to (in a way) make up for the losses of the other teams. So, it’s funny that the station is now carrying The CW’s national sports telecasts, since it also picked up LIV Golf tournament broadcasts that WCIU had also declined to air.

The CW has effectively confirmed KAUT will join its Nexstar sisters, KRON, WTTA and WPHL, in switching to The CW on September 1:

Promos promoting the switches have also recently begun airing on the other three stations; essentially the promos are a generic template with visual and verbal references to the current station branding differentiating between them. (KRON and, presumably, WPHL are the sure bets to keep their existing branding, while KAUT and WTTA could go either way—existing branding or the network/channel number route.)

On 8/23/2023 at 2:50 PM, T.L. Hughes said:

Especially, when one considers that Nexstar and Sinclair overlap in several markets, resulting in them having to negotiate whether to let Nexstar pick off CW affiliations from Sinclair in markets where the former has a MyNetworkTV or independent station and let Sinclair keep the network in other markets (for example, my home market has Sinclair’s KOCB [an existing CW affiliate] and Nexstar’s KAUT [an indie], making KOCB vulnerable to losing The CW).

My earlier observation carries even more weight now, ‘cause (like with listings for WPNT showing it as the replacement CW outlet in Pittsburgh) listings for both KOCB and KAUT are now showing The CW moving to KAUT and KOCB reverting to an independent (for the first time since it became OKC’s original UPN affiliate in January 1995) on the 1st.

If the case, Family Law would be the first CW show to air on KAUT, while KOCB will fill prime time with syndicated shows Monday–Saturday (The Simpsons (double run), Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers weeknights, and Family Feud (double run) and TMZ Weekend Saturdays) and movies on Sundays.

KOCB has also changed its Facebook profile pic (and changed the handle from @CWOKC to @KOCBOKC)… Before:

After:

So, Sinclair will lose some CW affiliations to Nexstar-run stations in markets where they each operate non-Big Four stations under the yet-announced agreement, but be given the affiliation on WPNT to compensate.

15 hours ago, Nelson R. said:

And in Raleigh-Durham it could move from WLFL to a subchannel of WNCN.

Ehh, probably not; the likely outcomes in relation to Sinclair/Nexstar would be:

* 1) Nexstar cutting a deal that allows it to take over CW affiliations from Sinclair in overlap markets where Nexstar operates a MyNetworkTV or independent station (either directly or via an SSA/LMA/JSA with a third-party like Mission or White Knight, excluding the few markets [such as Little Rock] where it runs a CW affiliate and a MNTV/independent), while letting Sinclair keep its existing CW affiliations elsewhere (avoiding resorting to subchannel-only affiliations on its own stations in other overlap markets, similar to what happened in Sacramento, when Nexstar opted to tack KQCA onto its CW affiliation renewal with Hearst, rather than shift the network to a sub of KTXL; WPNT would play into this scenario by adding it as compensation for losing certain affiliations);

* 2) Nexstar reups contracts with all or most of Sinclair’s CW stations (possibly limiting CW affiliation transfers between the two companies to a handful of overlap markets), while adding WPNT under the renewed agreement;

* 3) The least-likely scenario (but not entirely out of the question): Nexstar is unable to reach a deal with Sinclair to renew its CW affiliations, forcing the network to move to all company-run stations in overlap markets (including subchannel-only affiliations on Big Four stations in certain areas, the main scenario where a shoehorned D2 affiliation with WNCN would come into play) and having to strike deals with other MNTV/independents or settle for subchannel affiliations in markets where either Nexstar has no properties or another operator runs a separately licensed MNTV/independent.