Rusty Muck

On 1/12/2023 at 6:52 AM, bmasters1 said:

Noticed that WSMV in Nashville (Music City NBC station) is now WSMV 4 News, whereas before it was News 4 Nashville. What would make WSMV change its news name yet again-- was the News 4 Nashville name unpopular?

It’s also trading on the legacy “WSM” name. After all, Gray has been collaborating with Ryman (owner of WSM) for Circle well before they bought Meredith.

On 1/11/2023 at 10:56 AM, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Elizabeth Vargas and Dan Abrams at the same ho-hum network. Oh joy! I bet she doesn't get 100K viewers on night 1. Maybe not even 75K. The time to start this network has definitely passed - like 20 years ago. It could have been more successful in the pre-streaming days.

In every aspect it’s an outright failure that has been both continually rejected by the marketplace AND bested by other broadcast chains with better now non-cable concepts… and yet it still makes money.

Only In America…

20 hours ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

I wonder if they've been considering getting Robin Meade?

Would Nexstar be able to accommodate her with an Atlanta facility?

tbh I wouldn’t be surprised Gray hired her for WANF-WPCH once her noncompete ends. She’d be ideal for an old-school lifestyle talk show that can be syndicated throughout the chain and they’d have the facilities for it.

12 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

Because that worked so well and perfect and awesome for the BBC–oh, they're replacing them with new models because their robocam system is comedic. 

CNN acquiring the Beeb’s rogue robot cams might just result in the UK’s most significant cultural export since the Beatles.

A retrospective on her life and career:

https://www.ideastream.org/npr-news/2022-12-30/trailblazing-journalist-barbara-walters-has-died-at-93

She was the product of an era in which many of us on here are so removed from and will never be able to fully understand (none of us were around to experience the Great Depression or WWII), which makes one appreciate her body of work even moreso when understanding the context. 93 years and a treasure trove of glass-ceiling-shattering accomplishments. Much respect.

Huh, it’s almost like Scotty’s starting to slowly admit that this merger attempt is in fact doomed to failure, if it hasn’t already.

Quote

It appears that a decision likely not being made until at least early February.

So Google Translate is ghosting for Scotty now?

On 12/28/2022 at 8:29 PM, mrschimpf said:

Personally, I wouldn't ever boast about beating taped programming on two nights the NFL buried anything with a (live and on-air and not involving home shopping) pulse, but for NN, I guess beating a taped show about the 'war on Christmas', on Christmas, in a very asterisk-heavy demographic manner, is an achievement in something, something enough to have your classic TV network being forced to acknowledge it on Facebook.

 

Ratings for cable talk channels in general deserve a massive asterisk. Yes, they (and Fox News in general) have a large audience, but when the bulk of it is over the age of 54, does it even matter? Maybe that’s why FNC only needs direct response ads, because they get hefty retrans fees from cable providers.

NewsNation’s continual failure remains on two points: the audience rejected the original intent of a generic prime—time newscast in resounding fashion, and the channel isn’t able to peel away any viewers from Fox News. Scott Jones may call it “Fox News Lite” and call Chris Cuomo “Fredo” (which isn’t even an original insult) but to be honest, no one really cares. Viewing patterns are difficult to break, which isn’t helped by not doing anything to differentiate from the competition.

On 12/22/2022 at 6:30 PM, WCAUTVNBC10 said:

They had the opens already to go for tonight: 

 

I have to say Charlie is sounding rough these days. I wonder if they have plans to move on from him in the future. Maybe to someone like Paul Turner.

I mean, WPVI kept Jefferson Kaye for far longer than necessary out of traditional alone. The last VOs he recorded for them were borderline tragic to hear.

12 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Paxson was especially destructive in both Akron and Canton in terms of putting their programming in the Cleveland television market. To do this, they pretty much destroyed the local television that was serving the Akron (WAKC) and Canton (WOAC) areas.  Paxson's first target was WOAC, a locally run indepdendent primarily targeting the Canton Area.  In 1993, they got carriage in Akron on Warner Cable (thanks to the new must-carry rules).  I believe the station was sold to another owner who LMA-ed the station to Paxson.  Entertainment programming and local operations (and all of the staff were fired) in the fall of 1995 and inTV began running infomercials 24-7.  While this was going on, Paxson was working on acquiring WAKC from ValueVision, who had acquired WAKC from the Berk Family only the year before.  The initial plans were to put home shopping on 24/7, but due to existing commitments to ABC until the end of 1996, was forced to run the station as is.

 

After Paxson took control in February 1996 and let the ABC affiliation lapse at the end of the year, they added the same inTV programming WOAC was already running.  Somewhere along the line, WOAC was sold to Shop At Home, and they dropped the Paxson programming and went Home Shopping 24/7.  Scripps ended up buying WOAC several years later (with the Shop At Home network) when duopolies became legal.  Still, I don't think any operations were ever integrated with WEWS.  Scripps then got out of the Home Shopping business with the wind-down of SAH, and their SAH stations were sold to Multicultural Television, and infomercials came back.  WAKC morphed into WVPX and went with the full transition into a PAX station.  WEWS did weather cut-ins for them before the NBC (and WKYC) partnership began, leading to an Akron/Canton newscast that lasted about 3-4 years before PAX changed to "I".

 

Years later after WOAC morphed into  TCT-owned WRLM, TBN sold their spectrum of longtime O&O WDLI , merged their license onto WVPX's spectrum, and sold the WDLI license to Ion as well.  For some reason, both WDLI and WVPX were both sold to Inyo, and not to Scripps when they purchased Ion.  Likely, the dual license of WDLI and WVPX would be better to be kept to themselves, for must-carry purposes.

Not that I want to toot my own horn, but I redid the history of channel 23 on Wikipedia. @Samantha redid the history of WBPX in Boston (which as WQTV was an unprecedented financial failure for the Church of Christ, Scientist, and as WABU had a good amount of local programming attached to it; it just struggled to find viewership at any point in its existence).

WPXN and those two stations—and to a lesser extent WOAC, which indeed was sold to “Whitehead Media” and LMAed to Paxson—are the only ones in the Paxson chain that genuinely had history attached to them. The others were struggling or failed U indies which never had a chance in their respective markets, but were bought … mostly for the broadcast spectrum and must-carry on cable, which in 1996 hadn’t been upheld yet by SCOTUS.

Inyo is a shell operator that explicitly exists so Scripps can continue to operate at the 39% national ownership cap for OTA stations. Ion Media didn’t have to worry about an existing chain of network affiliates (having sold off WPBF in 1996) when they set up their chain that also corresponded to the 39% limit. It’s the only reason why WVPX-WDLI was “spun off”.

On 12/22/2022 at 9:03 PM, Yankees4life said:

My only memory of PAX was watching AFV reruns and maybe you get a replay of the WNBC news or some programming that was preempted on NBC. 

 

As Ion, it is just rerun city. There's nothing really special there and I'm surprised Paxton got someone to pay for that network for a lot of money.

Scripps spent all that money for the broadcast spectrum, not the content featured. Replacing Ion Life (nothing but CanCon drama reruns) Ion Plus (an infomercial farm) and Qubo (the only Pax diginet that had some bit of care to it but ultimately felt neglected and didn’t have a chance) with Scripps’ Katz diginets absolutely constituted an upgrade.

23 hours ago, DENDude said:

As much as I believe this deal is dead, it appears they have extended the deadline for FCC approval to February?

The FCC reset the 180-day “shot clock” but the DOJ—the agency that determines divestments and market revenue concentration in M&As—has been curiously absent. Usually they’ll come out with a finding and recommendations but they have literally said nothing at all.

Given the fact Apollo (through financing the Tegna deal) would have an ownership stake in four TV stations in Jacksonville and three TV stations in Atlanta (plus non-insignificant radio clusters in both markets) the DOJ’s complete radio silence is unprecedented and tbqh a deal-breaker.

18 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

I know why you say this, but you know that Tegna won't invest more. If the shareholders want to continue to earn dividends, the current structure is ideal. It continues to reduce debt and prioritizes the shareholders.

A company that can't sell itself because the economy is in a limbo and interest rates are no longer dirt cheap is not a good thing. That it’s a company which is also too big to fail makes it even worse. (That being said, it IS a better position than seeing Apollo de facto run the company and controlling Soo Kim and Deb McDermott like a marionette, gutting the stations from the inside out and selling the IPs for king’s ransoms.)

The so-called “M&A Rolling Thunder” cheered on in some places (cough Harry Jessel cough) was abject poison on the television industry, and now the consequences of that foolish mentality are coming home to roost.

On 12/23/2022 at 3:39 PM, Adam MadMan said:

Standard General has pledged not to instigate any layoffs in newsrooms for two years after the merger.

 

Like how the Redstones promised not to invoke a Viacom/CBS merger for two years after Les Moonves got MeToo'd; they merged on their own one year later. Just to give you an example of how much faith I have in this promise. I can easily imagine there's a loophole there, just like there was with Viacom/CBS.

The desperation is extremely palpable on Soo’s end. He knows the deal is doomed because the FCC and DOJ are outright sitting on it; therefore, he’s making promises he knows he and Apollo won’t keep.

12 hours ago, Weeters said:

Missing the point. "Action News" and "Eyewitness News" are extremely dated brands, and are more or less cliché at this point. It's nearly 2023, it's time to find new ways of branding local news outside of two 60's era news formats. The formats themselves are barely even used anymore. I sure don't notice any difference between an "Action" or "Eyewitness" newscast and... every other newscast out there.

Even in the 1980s there was minimal difference between the two brands. Look at Bill Bonds at WXYZ with Action News, and it was basically all centered around Bill Bonds and his on-air presence. Ditto with Irv Weinstein at WKBW; they used the EWN name but it wasn't anywhere close to the Al Primo EWN. The brands were never uniformly applied and mean different things to different people. @HulkieD has brought up how CapCities slowly (even if unintentionally) morphed WABC into... if not a Xerox of WPVI, then obviously a station with WPVI's Action News in its' blood. It still used the EWN name, but it wasn't the EWN pre-1986.

WOIO's usage of Action News is mostly associated with the "last-place, last-chance news" uber-populist format that Bill Applegate---the same person who presided over WABC's late-80s changes---put in, almost out of desperation by Raycom, having admitted to overpaying for WOIO/WUAB when they bought out Malrite. It is a tainted brand in the market. EWN means nothing in Cleveland and hasn't meant anything since WEWS gave it up in 1990, and even then, NewsChannel 5 meant nothing when they gave it up a few years ago, aside from people likely confusing WEWS with WPTV on social media. If WOIO used EWN, it would feel tacked on and meaningless. (Yes, channel 3, then KYW-TV, originated EWN from 1959 to 1965 but it predated Al Primo or even Westinghouse's full treatment of the brand. Because of the passage of time, few are alive to actually remember when it debuted in Cleveland.)

It actually says a lot that none of the stations in Cleveland have a so-called "brand" for their newscasts: 3 News, News 5, Fox 8 News and 19 News. But does it matter? I'm from Cleveland and I can tell the four news operations apart fairly easily.

On 12/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, tjt24 said:

I get where you're coming from, but some station logos should never be changed. Ever.

I am not trying to be snarky in asking this, but what makes a station logo “unchangeable”? And why should we hold a television station to unrealistic standards when practically every other business in existence either refreshes or redesigns their logos or branding every X years?

Stations logos and network logos are meant to be changed and to adapt with the times. NBC and ABC did what they did for practical and functional reasons. CBS **finally** adopted a design standard among the network and O&Os for the same reason. WKYC debuted their current logo—which is above and beyond the garbled mess that their prior logo became—for the same reason. Change can hold promise and potential.

When WOIO rebranded as “19 News” in 2019, then-GM Erik Schrader said, "we have to stand out. Action News was an effective brand for its time, but time moved on and we had to move on, too. And tastes will change. As much as I like this brand (19 News), it probably will eventually change."

4 hours ago, The Frog said:

A former ION employee predicts that Scripps will rebrand and change the network's programming strategy ahead of sports acquistions.

inb4 ION rebrands as “Scripps Sports” and ION Mystery casually drops “Mystery”…

9 minutes ago, 24994J said:

 

Thank for saying this in a much more polite, eloquent way than I wanted to. The "NEW GOOD, OLD BAD" attitude of said poster in this and another thread has rubbed me the wrong way, for some reason, but painting this community with such a belittlingly broad brush struck a nerve.

The way I see it, Briella isn't wrong, but neither is nycnewsjunkie, and neither are you.

It's the old adage of "perception is reality"... or more accurately, perception can become a person's reality.

50 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

Considering that you’ve got 10 people liking your post, and that a sizable number of people in this particular thread have offered nothing but uncritical praise for what CBS is doing, your perception is mistaken. Yes, there are people who don’t like it, and prefer stations to have individual characteristics, but that’s their prerogative. They’re allowed to have an opinion too.

The thing about nostalgia-driven posters is that they’re usually the loudest people in the room. It’s easy to see how the perception takes root.

Said posters can have their opinions on CBS going for unified branding and music not Enforcer being A Bad Thing but CBS is doing this because they see it in the best interests of the network and their station group. The execs in charge have determined that The Old Way Of Doing Things is no longer going to work.

2 hours ago, Briella said:

This forum is very nostalgia heavy, and most here have an extreme attachment to graphics and their local stations (see the argument about Pittsburgh needing everything to be black and yellow) Nothing new will ever be ok unless it keeps the same colors, names, numbers, style, anchors, sets, bumpers, idents, while also being new, fresh, exciting, up to date, and representing their area with little call backs and touches that bring a tear to your eye and you can say "That's my station". 

 

It's pretty funny when you look at it objectively. Times are changing, get over it.

Its almost like everything that happened between 1985 and 1995–Chris Crane dissonant chord music, sets with corrugated metal panels and video walls, flashy flying graphics, crime-crime-crime-all-the-time—needs to be ensconced in amber and abided by for all eternity, and any deviation from this by a station or owner is Somehow Very Bad. cough cough Tegna cough cough

To be honest, WSVN (the station that is seemingly subject to the most nostalgia) is still its old flashy self because Miami is an outlier of a market. An aberration. WFOR under this CBS revamp would be taking a position unlike any other station in town, which I’d prefer over having them be Another WSVN Knockoff or Another Generic Newscast (as took place with Dunn-Friend) and languishing in obscurity.

20 hours ago, TexasTVNews said:

 

I second that. But I give it a year and then they'll reverse it back to CBS Mandate.

There was never a “CBS Mandate”. In every aspect, the station group was a total mess design-wise, with inconsistent branding, inconsistent logos, a music package (Enforcer) that kept getting worse with each passing generation, an okay-ish graphics pack by WCBS forced on everyone because past leadership was too miserly and didn’t care. And that’s not counting WJZ and the garish mess they deteriorated into.

What is happening now is a TRUE CBS Mandate. Every station is on board… even KCNC, and they’re one of the few bright spots in the entire chain.

This is not only here to stay, I expect that ramifications for branding conventions to occur at the affiliate level before too long.

(PS: be sure to click the link )

6 hours ago, kshow said:

I don't know how I feel about this open. Did they always call their 11PM show - 'Late News'?

 

 

I’m getting WCCO vibes seeing that...

The KPIX box screams “tacked on for a few weeks so the ‘KPIX 5’ brand can be retired completely”.

I’ve seen this before…

19 hours ago, tjt24 said:

Yeah for WTOV, it would be easy for them. Just simulcast their 10pm news on both TOV and FOX9.2, and you're done.

 

But as for WFMJ, I agree that they should start a 10pm newscast on WBCB, but it took them over 20 years to start a 5pm newscast, if that's any indication on whether or not they actually will. 

The Maag family is just trying to stay afloat in a market that's had its' population halved over 50 years. There's far too many radio stations in Youngstown and 1-2 too many TV stations. Even the Maags gave up on the city's lone daily newspaper. WFMJ's biggest weakness is the fact it remains locally owned; thanks to the M&A mania, WKBN-WYTV have the bigger advantage of economy of scale. WFMJ doesn't have the resources to compete with those two long-term, and even launching a 5pm news felt like their resources were being strained.

The better question to ask is when do the Maags throw in the towel with WFMJ and sell the NBC affiliation and station IP to Nexstar.

12 hours ago, Nelson R. said:

WBTV News at 10 on WCCB is sounding better and better 

I’d put my money on WCCB moving MeTV to 18.1 and selling off their program inventory to Nexstar.

1 hour ago, carolinanews4 said:

 

LA is hardly an anomaly with three English-language newscasts at 10P. Charlotte (much smaller than LA) has had three 10P newscasts for years (WJZY/WAXN/WCCB). Heck, down the road in the Greenville/Spartanburg market (smaller than Charlotte) they have also had three news broadcasts competing at 10 (WHNS/WYCW/WMYA). Nothing "beyond disastrous" occurred in those markets.

 

Also, why is 10 o'clock so special that you can't have multiple stations competing with news? In recent years, some FOX stations have been adding 11 p.m. newscasts that compete with NBC, ABC, and CBS affiliates. And what about 6 a.m.? Many markets have four stations airing news. The Charlotte market has five. No disasters to report during those hours.

It might be out of sheer ego and resentment towards Fox that WCCB still trudges along under Bakahel but they aren’t exactly in the best shape. WJZY flopped so badly under Fox ownership that Nexstar completely blew up the station’s identity in a bid to be competitive. WAXN is owned by a private equity firm so the obvious outcome is them doing it all on the cheap with no investment, extending already strained resources at WSOC. When you add in WBTV doing More Local News under Gray (and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try a 10pm news again somehow), something is bound to give.

If WCCB and/or WJZY were to throw up the white flag and concede a battle for ratings that amounts to diminishing returns, no one should be surprised in the least.
 

1 hour ago, carolinanews4 said:

 

I totally agree with your point about too much news. Stations have gone to the well a lot with news expansion. Part of that is driven by budget restraints while some of it comes to a lack of creativity. But to say that three stations fronting news at 10 p.m. would be beyond disastrous is a bit over the top. 

This is not 1993 or 2003 or 2013. The landscape today is not the same as in the past and people have every incentive to abandon OTA TV if the content they want no longer exists. Having nothing but cheaply-run local news with practically no distinction between them is a recipe for trouble, especially with a finite audience that risks shrinking—even ever so subtly—regardless of the market size. Why would I want to watch the “attack of the clones” that is the same late-evening local news on a plethora of stations, with the same music from SAM or Gari, the same format with emphasis on Bad Things with minimal Actual Local News of Relevance, the same minimal sportscast and the same 10-day Super Doppler Googleplex Extended Outlook?

Am I saying the audience for OTA is dying? No. At least not for a few decades. But it’s absolutely eroding; even if it is a small erosion, it is still a needlessly self-inflicted wound for the industry.