T.L. Hughes

DirecTV is suing Nexstar, along with Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting, over the carriage dispute with the two sidecars that has been going on since last October, accusing the companies of price fixing and “engaging in an illegal conspiracy” to manipulate negotiations on retrans fee rates through Nexstar’s SSA/JSAs with the Mission and White Knight stations.

Just for an example, and given how that could affect if KAUT takes over the affiliation, at what point during that timeframe does KOCB’s CW contract expire?

I think this would mark the first time that MyNetworkTV stations not owned by Fox would be available on YTTV, and it fills a major gap in CW affiliate carriage on the service (many are already available on YouTube TV, with CBS and Sinclair being the largest affiliate groups prior to this deal that have carriage agreements for their CW affiliates). In some markets, it means the majority of the major local stations - commercial and public television - will be available on YTTV’s lineup. For example, in Oklahoma City (my home market), it means KAUT will join sister station KFOR (NBC), Hearst’s KOCO (ABC), Griffin’s KWTV (CBS), Sinclair’s KOKH (Fox) and KOCB (CW), Tyler Media’s KTUZ (Telemundo) and KUOK (Univision, which was added this past Fall alongside the existing national Univision feed), and OETA (Oklahoma’s PBS member network). (This leaves KSBI, KWTV’s sister station and the local MyNetworkTV outlet, as the only notable commercial station missing from the lineup.) And subscribers in New York, L.A. and Chicago will get access to WPIX, KTLA and WGN, respectively. CORRECTION: Sinclair’s MNTV affiliates and CW affiliates owned by a handful of other groups including Tegna, Scripps, Sunbeam, Griffin, Bahakel and Graham are apparently also carried on YTTV.

I’m not sure why Fox Weather doesn’t provide local weather segments myself; though, they’d have to make the national automated forecast segments that are run periodically during weekend afternoon and evening programming (as well as during overnight and weekend severe weather coverage, unless there’s a high-impact event worthy of full coverage) a regular part of the schedule to even be able to allow pre-taped local segments produced by each O&O to be inserted over the national feed. As an aside, The Weather Channel doesn’t run localized LOT8s segments or Lower Display Line data on vMVPD providers, even though YouTube TV, Sling, Frndly and FuboTV all offer its sister service, Local Now (which distributes all of its 200+ localized feeds on those platforms, with the feed available to a subscriber being determined by their ZIP Code). I’m surprised TWC, at least, hasn’t developed technology to insert local weather information over the national feed on its vMVPD carriers, such as a version of its IntelliStar or Local Now-style feeds for each DMA. (I receive TWC and Fox Weather via YTTV, and actually suggested such an idea to TWC in an email a few months back.) Either FWX or TWC should look into developing some method of inserting localized weather data on vMVPDs as well as, in Fox Weather’s case, AVOD streamers (i.e., Tubi, Xumo, Roku Channel).

Ironic that they weren’t added to the KSTP and KSTC editions of Eyewitness News Morning as well, where having weather segments at the top of each half-hour would be most useful.

Last time I streamed multiple KSTP newscasts in the same day (which was during the George Floyd protests), they were only doing “Forecast First” segments during 5 Eyewitness News Nightcast. When did it expand the segments to other newscasts?

According to reports, it wasn’t CBS executives that fired Y&R’s breakdown writing staff, it was head writer Josh Griffith, who recently replaced Anthony Morina as executive producer/showrunner… and on top of that, he’s taking over the five-person breakdown staff’s duties (even though some of those duties could’ve been split between both him and the show’s associate head writer, Amanda Beall).

The CW claims the network’s first LIV tournament broadcast averaged more than 3.2 million viewers across linear and digital during the period from February 24-26. (Note that the data cited used info from iSpotTV and internal results by both The CW and LIV.)

I think you mean KCNC.

My point, exactly. Either way, the numbers weren’t there to get the FCC to agree to the deal. The Republican members were going to overlook the glaring issues with the deal, and the Democratic commissioners wouldn’t have in both scenarios. Standard General should’ve known that aligning with Apollo, but not rectifying the conflicts between Tegna and Cox in a palatable manner was going to end in the deal’s failure. Sinclair’s deal to buy Tribune ended in an ALJ referral and Tribune subsequently cutting bait because of a similar “wanting to have your cake and eat it too” mentality when it came to market conflicts. At least Apollo didn’t attempt to transfer the Cox stations into shell companies and enter them into SSA/JSAs with the Tegna stations, like Sinclair tried to do with many of the Tribune stations… although the intertwining interests would have made Cox a pseudo shell for the conflicts.

To be fair, if Gigi Sohn’s nomination to the FCC Commissioners’ Board hadn’t been held up in the Senate for the better part of two years, the deal probably would have been denied anyway based on the conflicts and the related intertwining of Apollo’s existing interests in Cox Media Group and its proposed interests in Tegna.

The preemptions by the Tegna stations don’t extend, though, to its two CW Plus outlets (KYTX-DT2 and WMAZ-DT2). In addition, while Weigel declined clearance of the tournaments on WCIU, its South Bend sister station, WCWW, apparently is going to air tthem.

Many CW affiliates (the one in my home market, KOCB, being one of them) are available on YouTube TV… The ones Nexstar runs just aren’t among them. CW programming is only available on demand in areas where YTTV doesn’t carry the affiliate.

They’ve actually begun phasing out the Entertainment Studios name and vanity card on Allen’s programs, in favor of the Allen Media Group brand. I noticed this on a recent episode of Funny You Should Ask (which resumed airing new episodes after a three-year, likely pandemic-caused production hiatus last Fall).

Yeah, I noticed that typo.

Could you clue me in? ‘Cause my only conclusion with the Flagstaff purchase was in the same vein of KNAZ’s relationship with KPNX: to act as a satellite of either KTVK or KPHO. Same with the Winnemucca purchase in relation to KOLO, since what is now KWNV was once a KRNV satellite.

If you count bi-state markets, Macon is one of three serving the state where Gray doesn’t have a station; it’s also absent in the spillover markets of Jacksonville (which includes far southeast Georgia) and Chattanooga (which covers the northwestern counties not in the Atlanta market). The only path into Chattanooga is a trade with Sinclair for either WTVC and/or WDSI/WFLI or with Morris for WDEF, or if Sarkes-Tarzian eventually decides to offload WRCB. It could enter Jacksonville by snagging either WTLV/WJXX or WFOX/WJAX, but only if the FCC ever rules on Apollo’s purchase of Tegna and decides that its interests in Tegna and Cox create ownership conflicts meriting spinoffs.

Unless Gray plans to snare the ABC or Fox affiliations from WGXA (assuming Sinclair’s contracts with those networks for that station are set to expire in the near future), it seems like an open question what they plan to do with WPGA. (Incidentally, WPGA replaced WGXA as Macon’s ABC affiliate in 1996; its previous owners, Register Communications, dropped the network in 2009, because of objections to the content of some programs and ABC’s request that its affiliates pay $500,000 in annual reverse compensation fees to carry its programming.) As for KNIN, that’s an open question as to whether Marquee continues the SSA with KIVI or turns it into a standalone station with its own studio, staff and news department, like what it did when it bought WSWG from Gray a few years ago. (Boise used to have four news departments until KNIN replaced KTRV as the Fox affiliate in 2011, which resulted in Block, which later sold the station to Ion Media, shutting down KTRV’s newsroom.)

It never made sense to me that TMC and Flix haven’t been made available as livestreams within Showtime’s streaming add-ons, especially when you consider that they (along with Starz’s Movieplex channels) are the only premium channels whose feeds are not available on streaming in some capacity. WBD sells Cinemax and MGM/Amazon sells ScreenPix as standalone vMVPD and channel store add-ons (despite some library content redundancies with those of their sister premium channels, HBO and MGM+ [the network formerly known as Epix]), and Lionsgate includes live feeds of the Starz Encore channels on Starz’s streaming add-ons.

The Movie Channel and Flix have been the Meg Griffins of the Showtime Networks family since shortly before the 2005 CBS-Viacom split. Neither TMC, TMC Xtra nor Flix are even available as live feeds on the Showtime streaming service, or on the Showtime add-ons sold through channel stores (Apple TV, YouTube Primetime Channels, Roku and Prime Video) and live TV streaming services (Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo, etc.); this is likely also true on the Paramount+ Showtime tier. TMC and Flix barely get any promotion aside from references by pay TV providers that sell the Showtime channel package, haven’t even been given a full slate of multiplex channels (The Movie Channel just has TMC Xtra and Flix has no additional networks), and haven’t updated their branding since the former debuted its current logo and graphic scheme in 2006.

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

The binge blocks will continue post-relaunch, but they’ll be known as “The Catchy Binge”.

It would make sense not to rebrand Showtime at all, considering it’s an established brand, plus the “Paramount+ with Showtime” naming scheme is very unwieldy for a linear network, even moreso when applying it to Showtime’s multiplex channels or its sports and documentary units… and don’t get me started with branding the network’s boxing and Bellator MMA broadcasts using that name. (Showtime underwent a brand refresh in August of last year, anyway, with a minimalistic black/red/white graphical look that replaced the shattered glass graphic scheme used since January 2011.) The “Paramount+ with Showtime” branding would only work in application to the linear channels in the way HBO co-brands its seven-channel linear tier with HBO Max on most pay TV providers, by only conveying that Paramount+’s ad-free Showtime tier is accessible via provider login as a complimentary offering to Showtime linear subscribers. If anything, Bakish and company should have thought of co-branding Paramount+ and Showtime as ParamountShowtime (a la the SkyShowtime streaming partnership with Sky plc in Europe).

NewsNation correspondent Evan Lambert was arrested on disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing charges after conducting a live report on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio while Gov. Mike DeWine was conducting a press conference on the derailment. DeWine later disclosed he did not authorize the arrest, which if true, would suggest officers acted (and overreacted) on their own.

TitanTV identifies the vast majority of major network stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW and MyNetworkTV, as well as many Univision, Telemundo and UniMás stations) using the station’s logo, not the logo of the network they carry (like what TV Guide, Zap2It and other TV listings sites do). This is also true of most independent stations listed on the site. Most of the time, the network logo is only used as the identifier if the station or a subchannel carries a diginet, or a religious or public television network.