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Rusty Muck

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Everything posted by Rusty Muck

  1. Rusty Muck
    Paramount Global owns the EWN trademarks, which Disney pays royalties to use for some of their O&Os.
  2. Rusty Muck
    Cox Media Group is Apollo Global Management wearing Groucho Marx glasses. It is no longer an Atlanta-based outfit. It is cheaply run out of New York with the Cox family having minimal input. Already Apollo is planning on dumping the radio stations for a mere pittance. With all due respect, Soo is using quotes from random strangers no one has ever heard from as "proof" of his track record. It's not helping him in any way and the deal is dying on the vine. I'd take a complaint which you conveniently dismiss as "a press release by Dish" with more seriousness than anything that comes out of Soo's mouth or his sycophants. Try dealing non-stop with people who coined the insipid phrase "Tegnaitis" and rooting for Apollo/Standard General to buy out Tegna because they have an irrational hatred of Dave Lougee... to hell with how many people will be canned as a result... and maybe, just maybe, for once you might be able to see why I'm a tad coarse.
  3. Rusty Muck
    It's made more complicated by Investigation Discovery having a much better brand and name awareness despite a smaller nationwide cable footprint. Plus—per Stelter—the simulcast of CNN This Morning is explicitly due to carriage contracts with cable companies that require HLN air a bare minimum of news programming. Stelter’s background working for CNN makes him very unlikely to simply make up an urban legend.
  4. Rusty Muck
    That montage all but encapsulated Stelter's piece in the Atlantic. The channel in it's original format was not only rendered obsolete, the truly ugly parts that came thereafter (Nancy Grace and her obsession with Casey Anthony) ultimately and irrevocably destroyed HLN's reputation en route to becoming a true crime rerun library channel. Meade's show felt increasingly out of place and to be blunt, I'm shocked it lasted as long as it did. Because HLN was already a zombie network and had been for years. Even with Meade, it had no identity, no direction, and honestly, no purpose to even exist as a cable channel.
  5. Rusty Muck
    As a good friend of mine is wont to say, "don't ask because they just might answer".
  6. Rusty Muck
    Sinclair gave an effort. Standard General and Apollo not only haven't, they've repeatedly insisted that they don't have to do a thing. If it was Sinclair buying Tegna, they'd pull the shell game, divest a minimum of stations, and it would have been approved by September. Because unlike Soo Kim, David Smith actually knows how to close a deal.
  7. Rusty Muck
    Brian was badly—and I mean BADLY—miscast in his on-air role at CNN, but his written reporting and nightly online newsletter were highly, highly respected, @HulkieD often referred to the newsletter as indispensable. Hopefully he has a recurring role at the Atlantic.
  8. Rusty Muck
    Sinclair at least tried to give an effort, even if it was disingenuous and back-handed (and in the case of WGN-TV, terminally fucking stupid). All Soo Kim has done is whine and cry and play the victim and make ridiculous and baseless accusations of racism among opponents of the deal. He's so brittle, it makes you wonder how in the wide wide world of sports he literally destroyed Media General and LIN and offloaded that unholy mess to Nexstar for a king's ransom.
  9. Rusty Muck
    It misses the point. Apollo Global Management (which is the real name for "Cox Media Group") is a private equity firm that is allegedly not supposed to be exerting any control in the business dealings of Tegna or Standard General; they are only supposed to be providing financing and nothing more. It's what Soo and Deb have been repeatedly bleating about for months and months to their apologists (or is that Apollogists?). Shit like this makes it obvious in the court of public opinion that Apollo merely wants to run "Standard General" or "Community News" (or whatever in the hell Soo wanted to call the byproduct of this failed transaction) as a puppet company, owning three stations in Atlanta and four in Jacksonville. It's unethical, grimy as fuck, and lends credibility to Graham's already legitimate protest of the deal. There's a reason why the FCC and DOJ are literally sitting on the deal at this point and letting the clock run out.
  10. Rusty Muck
    CNN+ never should have been launched in the first place. It was doomed when the architect and highest-profile backer (Zucker) was forced out, and felt like it was given the green light in spite of the incoming Discovery team. It didn’t really have much to distinguish itself from CNN, it wasn’t a redo of Headline News… just a bunch of wayward niche fare. Given the crippling debt load that AT&T inflicted on WBD, the shutdown of CNN+ in retrospect should have been a warning sign for us all.
  11. Rusty Muck
    If you want to remake and streamline the O&Os to be synonymous and harmonious with the network, it’s the way to go. As it stands, the CBS O&Os are a weird mix of totally different logos and branding conventions, with some legacy brands and call letters shared by unrelated radio stations. Only WCCO-TV at this point holds any promotional or marketing connection to it’s former sibling at AM 830. WBZ-TV has minimal to no relationship with AM 1030, an iHeart station. KYW-AM has an extensive news and weather partnership with WCAU, not KYW-TV.
  12. Rusty Muck
    I declared this transaction completely and utterly doomed months ago in TNC and even then, I didn't expect for Apollo and Standard General to take their goddam masks off while the deal is (deservedly) languishing in the FCC and DOJ. https://www.nexttv.com/news/dish-says-cox-wants-deal-to-include-standard-media-tegna-stations-in-blackout-talks If you wanted a company - make it two companies! - that makes Sinclair look normal and ethical, may I present to you Apollo-Cox and Standard General. I call it... Apollostandarditis.
  13. Rusty Muck
    The “KCAL9 News” brand is clearly being retired. Obviously the station will still be KCAL9 outside of news, but the news operation is going to be renamed “CBS News Los Angeles” across both stations.
  14. Rusty Muck
    Maybe they’re doing all sorts of rehearsals and the like behind-the-scenes. Assuredly a lengthy series of mock newscasts to try to iron out any bugs and glitches and make sure everyone knows what they are doing. You can’t just flip a switch and instantly have a round-the-clock news service right off the bat.
  15. Rusty Muck
    Pretty much this, it’ll likely be a mishmash of things until something permanent can finally be rolled out. WWJ is going to be the interesting one here, given they never really used the 2016 pack to any sort of degree prior.
  16. Rusty Muck
    WSB is owned by a New York private equity firm (to call it a "hometown company" is extremely generous bordering on Truthiness, Cox Media ceased being "an Atlanta company" when the Cox family sold out due the Theranos scandal), which doesn't care about investing into it and ultimately wants to sell it to the highest bidder. Private equity is the worst type of ownership because they want to make back their money, everything else be damned. The only thing WSB has going for it is Rusted Dial Syndrome.
  17. Rusty Muck
    Who’d buy them? Nexstar is grossly over the cap that, even if they tried to play the Mission route, it wouldn’t exactly work like they would want it to. The charade of selling WPIX to Scripps was set up in a way that Mission could buy them, this OTOH would be grossly flagrant and highly visible (as opposed to Mission shadow buying a station for Nexstar to create a duop in the middle of nowhere in market #179). Plus this is no longer an environment receptive to M&As as the Federal Reserve keeps hiking the prime interest rate. If anything, CBS can use KSTW and WTOG to force Apollo to sell them KIRO and Tegna to sell them WTSP.
  18. Rusty Muck
    Once the deal closes, WUPA is no longer a CW O&O, regardless of how much a stake they might still have in the CW for now. The network could sign to remain on stations like WKBD and WPCW (or even KBHK) but does Paramount have much of any real desire to be involved with the network beyond the 2024–25 season? Plus WSBK and WBFS disaffiliated from MyTV a few weeks ago and now function as indies.
  19. Rusty Muck
    CBS sold WUPA to Viacom the First in 1994 after it was no longer needed. The station became a UPN O&O, then a CW O&O under CBS Corp. control. Now that CBS is giving up their ownership stake in the CW, they have zero incentive to have WUPA be an affiliate of a network they will have no stake or involvement in and every incentive to take the affiliation in-house.
  20. Rusty Muck
    Looks more like a transitional phase upon which the "WCCO" name is slowly retired in favor of "CBS News Minnesota". I dare say even the name "The 4 on WCCO" is transitional. KCNC may be getting the "CBS News NOW" graphics next week out of necessity alone. It's not like that station is stuck with running on the 2016 look when they rebrand.
  21. Rusty Muck
    Technically the first EWN station was what is now WKYC and they dropped it in 1965 when the FCC ordered the asset swap reversal between NBC and Westinghouse. I know common interpretation has KYW “moving” back to Philadelphia but that was borne out of Westinghouse wanting to erase any connection to NBC ownership of 3 and 1060 as soon as possible. By stark contrast, NBC tried to play off the “KY” name with WKYC and acknowledged Westinghouse’s prior ownership in Cleveland.
  22. Rusty Muck
    And WWJ-TV has gone all-in as "CBS Detroit" (h/t @DetroitTVNews)
  23. Rusty Muck
    That’s the point. One company is controlled by private equity. The other is not. They still have the offices but Cox ceased being a “local company” with the Apollo buyout, it merely became the equivalent of a subsidiary.
  24. Rusty Muck
    KYW in Cleveland (now WKYC) was the first station to use the EWN name in 1959, so Westinghouse had the first-use service mark. To keep it active, they might bury it in KYW station promos not unlike what WAGA has done for decades under Fox ownership. (“Be an Eyewitness to News on CBS News Philadelphia!”)
  25. Rusty Muck
    Channel 46 doesn’t need to have “46” in their branding, either, and why would they? They could easily brand outside of news as “WANF CBS”, “ANF CBS” or … hear me out … “WANF”. It’s intentional and I love it. Cox ceased being a local company when Apollo bought them out (blame the Cox family losing hundreds of millions on Theranos).
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