T.L. Hughes

So, what graphics system does GrayONE run on (presuming it wasn't developed to be compatible with other systems) and what system does KSNB and KNOP run their graphics on?

WVVA has updated its logo, and is now using a secondary slogan, "Here for You", which is not referenced verbally in the opens (unlike the primary "Two Virginias' News Leader" slogan). The station has also replaced "The Rock" with "Stream". Note the error in the voice track, compared to the open used, and the text misalignment/overlap in the time/temp bug: KSNB and KNOP have also adopted new graphics, but, curiously, what they adopted isn't GrayONE, but what appear to be modifications to the graphics they introduced in August 2022, with new opens in tow. Both stations have also changed news themes (swapping one Warner-Chappell package for another): KNOP switched from Gari's "The NBC Collection" to 615's "Seize the Day", while KSNB switched from said Gari theme to 615's "Tower V.6".

Given that Fox has historically had more rigid branding conventions than the other major networks (the only ones to deviate from using network-centric branding including WSVN, KHON, WDRB and KVRR), I think culling network references from Gray’s Fox affiliates would be much harder to implement. ABC has apparently been requiring affiliates to include the “circle” logo into their station logos, making it also unclear whether they can pull network branding.

Veteran WICU-WSEE anchor/reporter Emily Matson has died at 42. She was killed after being hit by a train in her hometown of Fairview Township, PA, in an apparent suicide, as determined by the Erie County Coroner's Office.

So, what about weekend newscasts? KOKH only produces a 9:00 newscast on weekends (although the Saturday edition is usually delayed, often running past 10:00, due to Fox Sports event telecasts). Most TV listings still have KTUL airing early evening and 10:00 p.m. newscasts on weekends.

I’m not fully convinced it’ll be a fully cable/satellite-exclusive network. TBN’s various networks—Inspire, Smile, Enlace USA and Positiv—are available on its OTA stations (they are pay-TV-exclusive in markets where TBN doesn’t own or have an affiliation with an OTA station), so there’s a decent probability that Merit Street ends up getting a subchannel slot on its O&Os, either as a new subchannel or as a replacement for TBN Inspire or Positiv. Merit Street does plan to offer FAST channels, whether that includes the main network is the question.

WSFA may be the next to switch to GrayOne. A user on Logopedia uploaded what appears to be an updated version of their logo:

WPKD’s upcoming 8:00 p.m. newscast now has a premiere date and a title: Primetime News on KDKA+ will replace the interim 8:00 and 8:30 runs of Family Feud on January 8.

It should be noted, though, why it wasn’t clearing Days in pattern and only airing syndies in the early afternoon before NBC News Daily debuted. It’s believed that the show’s storylines involving the coming out of Will Horton (Sami and Lucas’ son) and his subsequent relationship with eventual husband Sonny Kiriakis didn’t sit well with KSL management (citing less-than-progressive attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community among sections of Utah’s Mormon community), prompting them to bust the show to the 1:05 a.m. slot—which it held for the rest of Days’ NBC run—in 2013. (KSL parent Bonneville International is owned by the LDS Church, and some of the church’s beliefs have seeped into the station’s programming decisions during its affiliations with CBS and NBC, contributing to certain network shows being preempted because of content that management deemed objectionable.) This continued after Will and Sonny left the canvas in 2020 (only making short-term return appearances thereafter); although the show had a similar same-sex relationship storyline involving Will’s younger half-sister Allie in the final year of the NBC run (that continued into the first year of the Peacock run, before the actress who played Allie left a few months ago). It is also theorized that KSL wanting to boost ad revenue by having more control over its daytime schedule, and the overnight slot making it easier for Days fans to record episodes without being subjected to breaking news preemptions that would often occur in the afternoon (supposedly reducing viewer complaints) were reasons for the move.

Thing is, season-to-date average viewership (1.15 million) runs pretty close to what Days was pulling in before it was shifted to Peacock, so that metric doesn’t seem to have changed much for NBC News Daily. The only ratings improvement that it has shown over Days is likely in the 25–54 demographic, and in viewer retention from lead-in local programming. Otherwise, NBC remains in third place among the Big Three networks during the afternoon, as it has been since c. the mid-1980s (when the network had four soaps—Days, Another World [which was then beginning its steady decline after showrunner Paul Rauch and head writer Harding Lemay left], Santa Barbara and Search for Tomorrow [which got cancelled for a second time in 1986]—plus game/talk shows in daytime).

So, I stumbled across this article in The Desk, from the same day the cease-and-desist was sent to Scripps, in which Adell explains his side of the story on WADL sale/CW affiliation dispute:

This got by. but Bloomberg reports that Byron Allen now wants to acquire some of Scripps’ stations (read: those in small and, possibly, some mid-sized markets).

BTW, it appears that Outlaw Network will likely take over the channel space of Circle, as Ryman Hospitality Properties announced on November 6 in its Q3 financial report that Circle and the company’s partnership with Gray to operate the network will “wind down” on December 31.

The filing cites other issues including past FCC violations (fines for violations of children's programming and non-disclosure of paid programming), evasions of local and national ownership caps (including through sidecar companies), the lack of diversity among Sinclair's Board of Directors, executives, and local station GMs, efforts to undermine union organizing among local employees, editorial bias, anti-competitive employment practices (restrictive non-compete clauses, nondisclosure agreements, and liquidated damage litigation against “employees who have pursued other career opportunities and as a way to limit criticism of its business practices”), contradictions of being unable to continue local news investment despite high executive compensation and profits that could be used to invest in the stations, the Bally Sports bankruptcy, the recent announcement of Univision’s removal from KUNS in favor of The CW, retrans disputes, and “moral terpitude” issues (the aforementioned prostitution arrest of Smith). None of this rises to the level of license revocation, either.

It would likely face the same fate as the petitions to revoke Fox Television Stations’ license for WTXF, it’s not gonna happen. In both instances, it would take either company being proven of engaging in something closer to RKO General levels of business misconduct to warrant the revocation of their broadcast licenses. The issues with Sinclair’s newsroom operations aren’t really fraud (as the filing states) as it is corporate incompetence. As noted in the filing, Sinclair’s newsroom cutbacks are mainly the result of its “ill-advised” purchase of Bally Sports, however Sinclair was already dealing with substantial debt predating that purchase, which its post-2011 purchases only contributed to. (Sinclair nearly went bankrupt itself only a few years before its buying spree began.) Side note: The ex-news director who filed the complaint, when citing stations affected by the news cuts (a list that included stations that dropped newscasts but still have an in-house or partially outsourced news operation), left out WPMI from the list; its morning and noon newscasts were canned in favor of the morning edition of The National Desk and a run of Family Feud this Spring. Then there’s one nugget I noticed towards the end: According to the Baltimore Sun, Smith was once arrested in August 1996, for “committing a perverted sex act in a company-owned Mercedes.” First time I’ve heard about this.

Here’s an excerpt from the Awful Announcing article cited in the CCN piece (which includes a minor caveat): It notes that the recent deal Diamond Sports Group had cut with the NBA–which it presumes it has made with the NHL–“trades rights fee cuts for returning the media rights to the leagues after the current season.” But the fact that Bally Sports’s current NBA television contract was shortened by a year indicates that the possibility of the RSNs ceasing to exist is very much on the table.

This kinda sounds reminiscent of the rules that the CRTC has long applied to Canadian broadcast stations.

KOKI/KMYT couldn’t be considered “legacy” Cox stations since they were offloaded to the company in 2012, along with WFOX/WJAX (then WAWS/WTEV). Stations like WSB, WSOC and WFTV can be considered legacy stations since Cox has owned them for much longer (KTVU also can be called one, even as it’s now owned by Fox, given Cox owned it for the better part of five decades). It was WHBQ that was sold to Imagicomm along with KOKI/KMYT (and several small-market stations, most of them being former Northwest/Brady stations), and that station was sold to Cox as part of the 2013 swap that gave Fox ownership of KTVU/KICU; WLMT (and WATN, both now owned by Tegna) was sold to Nexstar/Mission as part of the Newport breakup… and Tulsa is still served by Cox Communications (as is Oklahoma City).

FTVLive’s Scott Jones, who once worked at KTUL, had some choice words about the gutting of its news department. The headline of his article on it says it all.

This basically further buttresses the theory that the company’s debt (exacerbated by Sinclair’s mismanagement of Diamond Sports into bankruptcy) is having an effect on the bottom line enough that it’s choosing not only to cut back on news operations at lower-rated stations in sub-65 markets, but now cut those in (somewhat) larger markets where their newscasts perform well. It would have been easier for Sinclair to sell off stations to help pay off its debt (setting aside their plans to expand into other non-broadcast businesses until things get stable with their media arms), but their unwillingness to do so means employees at the affected stations suffer the consequences.

The irony is Katz is literally launching his new venture with copycats of the very networks he helped launch: The365 is basically a rehash of Bounce (interestingly and kind of fittingly, the name harkens McDonald’s old 365Black campaign), and Outlaw is basically Grit. Also, Gray already carries the “original recipe” networks on several of its stations (including in some Scripps markets), so they’re basically swapping two identical networks for the ones Katz is copying.

I’d buy that it could be a TBN Inspire replacement over the idea of Merit being a replacement for the main network. In the past decade, TBN has: * launched TBN Salsa (a bilingual network aimed at Latinos, otherwise redundant in target audience with the Spanish-language Enlace USA), only to drop it three years later; * combined the OTA schedules of JUCE TV and Smile (a la Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim) into one subchannel to make room for Salsa, only to restore their separate 24-hour feeds after Salsa disappeared; * turned JUCE into an online-only channel, and launched Positiv (which carries both faith-based and secular family movies, including some mainstream theatrical films) to fill JUCE’s former linear channel space; * and relaunched The Church Channel as Hillsong Channel and then Inspire (after the Hillsong scandals came to light). But the fact that it’s being advertised as a cable network (in the cord-cutting era), suggests otherwise. We’d need more details to confirm, especially as Merit being a replacement for a TBN network would require a channel-lease deal. (TBN has owned all of its networks, including Inspire during its existence as Hillsong Channel, which was at that time a co-venture with Hillsong Church.)

I’m not entirely sure Glendive CW still exists. A “Find My Station” ZIP code search on The CW’s website currently doesn’t turn up an affiliate for Glendive. Mid-Rivers Communications, the city’s cable provider, had apparently been piping in KBZK-DT2 out of Bozeman to provide CW Plus programming to the area until it became an independent. (Adding to the confusion, Zap2It has both KBZK-DT2 listed on Mid-Rivers’ ”Choice” channel lineup and a generic CW Plus feed—which may actually be the KBZK subchannel as it appears to track with the OTA station positions on both packages—listed on its basic lineup.)

Nexstar took over the CW Plus affiliations in Billings and Butte for the DT2 subchannels of ABC affiliate KSVI and Butte translator K23LW-D2. The decision by Scripps’ Montana Television Network to drop The CW from its DT2s and convert them into independents cost the network distribution in the Great Falls/Helena, Glendive and Missoula markets, where Nexstar could’ve moved The CW Plus to other stations since KSVI/KHMT are the only stations they run in that state.

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.