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Posts posted by Rusty Muck
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14 hours ago, Georgie56 said:
Just think, in LA, there would be four 10pm newscasts if NBC does indeed go through with this in the future. KTLA, KCAL, KTTV, and KNBC.
They used to have four with KCOP in the mix, and KCOP struggled for years before Fox ultimately subsumed everything into KTTV.
Los Angeles is almost an anomaly with three 10pm English-language newscasts battling it out against each other. If such a thing were to be tried out in Memphis or Jacksonville or Omaha, the results would be beyond disastrous.
There is such a thing as too much local news in Anytown, USA. When you gripe at operators “cheapening out” on news and graphics and music, muse about off- and on-air talent resigning and getting out of the industry, or insist MMJs are a pejorative for Something Bad
, maybe it's because the economics of More Local News doesn't exactly add up the way you want it to.
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21 minutes ago, Nelson R. said:
Most would be airing 10pm news
Good luck if you’re in Billings, Montana or Alpena, Michigan or Wheeling, West Virginia, or any small market that can’t support one 10pm news, let alone two or more. Or in any market that is not in a political swing state (Wyoming, Mississippi, etc.) and won’t get that easy money.
The pending death of syndication and the presumed death of scripted primetime will inevitably result in the death of local news programming for television stations, many of which will simply become relay stations for large-market stations and/or O&Os. And those stations may be reduced to being nothing more than a turnkey diginet or rerun farm.
If the audience no longer exists for syndication or scripted primetime programming, how in the wide wide world of sports is it going to remain for local news???
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9 hours ago, Glimmer said:
Good. It doesn’t help the affiliates to be forced to program an extra hour of primetime in an environment where syndication is an endangered species.
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On 12/13/2022 at 3:56 PM, Adam MadMan said:
This would have been news 30 years ago. Or even 20.
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1 hour ago, C Block said:
It''s not that clear cut. There are a lot more resources, people, and space needed to support TV news production than just what you see on air. Morning Express probably only accounts for a fraction of the headcount still based at CNN Center. CNN Domestic weekends, a good chunk of CNNI shows, and CNN En Espanol are all still anchored out of CNN Center. And even though they've moved a lot of anchoring out of Atlanta, a lot of other important staff are still there.
As I understand it, a lot of the staff for the CNN Domestic dayside hours stayed in Atlanta even though those hours moved to New York. So a lot of the producers, writers, segment producers, editors, etc. for much of CNN Domestic are still in Atlanta even though the shows are anchored in New York. Not to mention CNN.com, Newsource, Image + Sound, and plenty of other teams. CNN Center may not be the bustling place it was a decade ago, but there are still a lot of people working there to support a major news organization.
Some other people also might have a better idea than me, but I also question whether there's enough space for everything at Techwood just yet. Even if they are going to move everything there and in a smaller footprint than what they have at CNN Center, there's still going to be a fair amount of work needed to move so many employees and have space for all of them. I'm sure they'll be able to do it, but it won't happen overnight, and it won't happen just because Morning Express got cancelled.
WarnerMedia sold the building in 2021 and even with a lease agreement, WBD has every incentive to move everything back to Techwood as quickly and efficiently as possible.
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16 minutes ago, Weeters said:
My understanding is the consolidation to Techwood is benefitting from the new age of Work from Home being normalized. A lot of those jobs don't necessarily need to be done from in the office. I would imagine a lot of the move to Techwood is going to involve reclaiming existing space that's been emptied by people in that campus going fully remote, vs. the expansion they originally talked about.
Huh, it's like the world changed in 2020 and no one noticed. Golly gee, imagine that, so baffling...
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3 hours ago, carolinanews4 said:
That’s simply not true. They haven’t been keeping an entire facility open for a little watched morning show and its staff. Yes, that team represented the only live news on HLN but they were hardly the only parts of the operation left in Atlanta. The main technical core of CNN in still housed at the CNN Center along with CNN International, CNN en Español, CNN Newsource, CNN.com, and more. In fact, many of CNN's producers are still based at the CNN Center. According to the AJC there are about 1,500 employees based in Atlanta.
It was the only remaining news program that originated from Atlanta. Without it they could proceed on moving everything back to Techwood and do all the stuff @Weeterstalked about just a few posts earlier. Which of course will result in quite a few of those 1,500 people losing their jobs, which sucks.
My point still stands.
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9 hours ago, kshow said:
Chris is on a mission. Ugh.
He’s not on a mission, he’s stuck in a bad position related entirely to the creation of Warner Bros. Discovery at the hands of AT&T. Plus a lot of this (especially CNN leaving Atlanta) had already been in place under Zucker. Robin Meade and her show’s staff were for years the only ones that justified the Atlanta facility remaining open this whole time.
Please, in the name of all that is all and holy and good, quit giving Chris Licht, David Zaslav and John Malone supervillain powers they don’t have and never will.
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19 hours ago, CircleSeven said:
That's IndyCar racing not NASCAR.
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On 12/5/2022 at 7:55 PM, johnintx said:
apologies for taking over the Tegna thread for non-Tegna stations...
KOCO was a Combined-Gannett station (5 Alive) until the trade to Hearst in 1997, so this wasn’t exactly derailing anything here.
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On 9/21/2022 at 4:29 PM, iron_lion said:
Eyewitness News would have been the perfect branding for CBS O&Os had ABC not taken it.
Paramount Global owns the EWN trademarks, which Disney pays royalties to use for some of their O&Os.
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6 hours ago, carolinanews4 said:
First off, the real name for Cox Media Group is Cox Media Group. 71% of CMG is owned by Apollo Global while 29% is owned by Cox Enterprises. I understand that Apollo has claimed it won't be involved in day-to-day business decisions should the TEGNA/Standard General deal go through. My point is that you can't use a press release by Dish as evidence. It was a press release in a negotiation. You appear to be taking the Dish claim as fact to use against a deal you don't like. Don't like the deal? Fine. There are plenty of reasons to object to this deal. But a press release by Dish isn't a legit reason.
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.
6 hours ago, carolinanews4 said:I understand that Apollo has claimed it won't be involved in day-to-day business decisions should the TEGNA/Standard General deal go through. My point is that you can't use a press release by Dish as evidence. It was a press release in a negotiation. You appear to be taking the Dish claim as fact to use against a deal you don't like. Don't like the deal? Fine. There are plenty of reasons to object to this deal. But a press release by Dish isn't a legit reason.
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.
6 hours ago, carolinanews4 said:Also, why is it that you repeatedly use foul language in your posts? Posts are supposed to meet a "work safe" standard. Yet the post I quoted above and your original post on this Dish/CMG topic each contained language that I couldn't use in a work email.
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.
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2 minutes ago, RetroCirqII said:
Exactly. WBD doesn't know what to to with HLN now? Investigation Discovery reruns? Anything to keep costs low?
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.
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1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:
Final sign off:
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.
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7 hours ago, Bananaman said:
If I were try to look past the spin Dish is doing, I would assume that Apollo is trying to negotiate for the stations they’re supposed to receive from Tegna and Standard once the transaction is through. Still really really weird and totally not shady, but they can’t be that stupid.
As a good friend of mine is wont to say, "don't ask because they just might answer".
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5 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:
You guys really need to get off this whole Sinclair thing like it was some kind of biblical sin. What they did was good lawyering--nothing more, nothing less. They tried to stretch the boundaries of the law which happens all the time. (That's why people hire lawyers.) That time they went too far and it failed. There's nothing wrong with what they tried to do.
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.
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17 hours ago, Geoffrey said:
That's not what irony is, and Stelter is a student of cable news so he was a perfect person to write about this. And he mentioned that he previously worked at CNN.
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.
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1 minute ago, GoldenShine9 said:
They have also done nothing to solve any of the issues, particularly how it will essentially be one company. The clock is likely to run out on this one.
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.
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1 hour ago, carolinanews4 said:
They didn't "take their masks off" as you say. In the article says Dish claims, "that Cox, controlled by Apollo Global Management, has delayed “meaningful discussions” because it wants stations currently owned by Standard General and Tegna to be included because of connections to Apollo." So, Dish is claiming that Cox is delaying the negotiations because it wants to include the Tegna stations. That's Dish's opinion. Might be true, might not. But the point is, to date there is no actual proof of this. Just one company making up a narrative about the other.
And Cox is hardly innocent. They put out a statement saying Dish was "employing their well-worn anti-consumer drop tactic" by "unilaterally choosing to black out all Cox Media Group TV stations across the country."
Both statements are full of hyperbole to make themselves look like the injured party.
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.
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6 hours ago, CLETVFan said:
They were in such a rush to get rid of CNN+, but don't seem to mind the zombie channels. WBD is becoming a bigger joke every day.
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.
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16 hours ago, CircleWXYZ said:
WWJ got rid of the CBS62 branding three months ago, in favor of ‘CBS Detroit.’
i think the CBS ‘name city’ branding is going to be across the board.
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.
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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.
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.
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On 11/28/2022 at 1:41 PM, alaskanews said:
What is this absolute nightmare of a brand? Where are your eyes supposed to look? How much of this mouthful is going to be used on air? "You're watching CBS News Los Angeles This Morning on KCAL." "KCAL CBS News Los Angeles This Morning starts now." WUT.
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.
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On 11/16/2022 at 4:39 PM, CircleWXYZ said:
Figured!! This is obviously a corporate issue. CBS Detroit is also still hiring. Any other reason for the delay??
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.
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NBC Considering Giving 10pm/9pm Back To Affiliates
in General TV
Posted
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.
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.