Rusty Muck

KMSG did the impossible. They made WSVI look like WSVN. I can understand a budget of nothing and a staff of just Austin and a producer, but Ed Agre was a news department of one and KXGN put out a far more competent product on-air.

"The Spirit of Akron! On W - N - I - R" is without a doubt the closest thing to an anthem here in Northeast Ohio. Change my mind. And oh god, is that WGN ripoff of "Nothing But Class" painful to listen to.

Easiest move to make is using 19.2 as a full-power SD simulcast of WTCL 6.1.

And you’ve made it known you’re an absolutely pompous jerk and insufferable, I could say what I really want to but why bother feeding the troll not named Bill Tullis any further?

And with all due respect, I know your stance, too. I vehemently disagree with all of it.

Correcting a obvious historical inaccuracy and stating the plain truth against all this Pollyanna garbage is “WAY too invested”. Uh huh. bradybunchsurejan.gif

LMAO GE freaking ESTABLISHED RCA. They launched KOA-TV and WRGB back in the 1940s. They were heritage broadcasters and knew the industry. Uh huh. Deb McDermott and Soo Kim took MediaGeneral on a massive buying spree, tried to merge it into Meredith of all things, then offloaded it all to Nexstar. She’s churn-and-burn garbage and the worst of the lot. Let’s be clear here. INSP is buying the stations via a holding company. This is again some Grade A Pollyanna stuff assuming they’ll be Just Another Broadcaster or That We Should Not Be Skeptical when, as @Weeters stated, Occam’s Razor needs to be invoked.

Cox Media ceased to exist when Apollo took over the group. This iteration of Cox is an abomination and will cease to exist in 1–3 years as Apollo sells off bits and pieces for scrap.

That is not a ringing endorsement for a company that will supposedly own conventional network affiliates that don’t overtly program to the 65–dead demo.

It’s like Quibi, but without the cache of Jeff Katzenberg and Meg Whitman behind it. Or a purpose. Or a direction.

KSL is an aberration, they are technically autonomous of Bonneville but have been News Specialists for decades and have operated KSL radio for a century. They have cache INSP will never have.

You NEED a mechanism to make streaming a viable option. Anyone who bothers to look at the structure of ATSC 3.0 can automatically tell you that it provides WiFi so it can work. Otherwise you’re paying through the nose with Comcast, Charter/Spectrum, Verizon… the usual suspects. It’s not my fault that people can’t grasp this. The technology is by definition complex and heavily prone to technobabble, which is why I defer to @Samantha or @channel2 to explain it. Depriving local television service so 12 full-power stations in predominantly small (and in the case of the Mississippi Delta, heavily Black) markets can carry INSP turnkey with no local programming whatsoever and make money with a shell of a station with no overhead at all is not “fresh blood”. It’s a nail in the coffin that is the US-centric network-affiliate model that deserved to be pounded in back on May 23, 1994. Scott Jones is fucking fooling himself in thinking nothing will change at those stations.

Oh come on. This might just be the shortest-sighted, Pollyannaish, most ridiculous take I’ve ever seen because you and the rest of the M&A advocates who want to go back to the “good ol’ days” of TV news are going to be caught with your pants down on this deal. It’s the biggest technological advancement in decades. How in the hell can you be so thoroughly out of touch with the medium‘s future and host a podcast supposedly about the future of the medium?

I’m gonna be blunt. This whole “give INSP a chance!” is what me and @Weetersfeel is a yearning for some on here and in the Discord to “undo” what has been called “Tegnaitis” which is seen as “bad” because it DARED to not be the same old garbage newscast stuck in the same old goddam presentation of 1991 that only caters to old people. You’re not going to get that with INSP. You’re not going to get anything. You know better than to say that to A Stubborn Raccoon.

INSP is a religious-tinged western cable channel. THEY ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF OPERATING CONVENTIONAL NETWORK AFFILIATES. You want another ValueVision embarrassing themselves operating an ABC affiliate that they had no business doing so?? How bizarre is it that someone so chronically negative and dour on stuff is telling me to give a fucking Godcaster twice-removed a chance? This deal is outright poisonous and I feel badly for the staffers. You also should feel badly for the staffers at the rest of the Cox chain and WFAA and KHOU as Apollo doesn’t give a shit about who or what they sell their stations to as they carve that company up and sell it for scrap, Toys R Us-style.

That’s a very … dubious … strategy. Hell, standing pat and letting other groups buy up their affiliates which then cash out to private equity vultures who offload them to Godcasters is itself a dubious strategy.

Jim, with all due respect, INSP has no track record running a conventional network affiliate and they bought a bunch of stations from a private equity vulture wanting to cash out. They bought the stations solely for the spectrum and nothing else. They have only one fish to fry, and it’s INSP.

I remember when ValueVision—a freaking home shopping channel that had no business running a conventional TV station—tried to operate WAKC 23 Akron as an ABC affiliate because ABC extended their contract. It was UGLY. INSP didn’t buy these stations to run them as conventional network affiliates.

Apollo was never going to be a long-term owner. This is a breakup that will take 1–2 years to complete as Apollo cashes out. Make no mistake, INSP bought these licenses solely for the 3.0 spectrum. The station operations and news departments are all either going to be shut down or sold to existing groups. If I’m at ABC, I’m fucking terrified. Disney’s long-standing “we won’t buy our affiliates” strategy is going to bite them in the butt when WSOC, WSB, WFTV and WFAA are offloaded to a spectrum hog and/or a Godcaster because no other buyers exist beyond the networks.

It’ll be “CBS News Pittsburgh” for three reasons: 1) It ties in the O&Os as part of a major rebuild of CBS News (which, quite frankly, needs to happen) as the O&Os completely power the network news division. 2) Improved online SEO. @Samanthais better at elaborating on this. 3) Audacy pays Paramount Global money to use the KDKA calls as a brand with AM 1020/FM 100.1 and FM 93.7, those two stations have little in common with channel 2 outside of past history and some current marketing tie-ins. Same situation exists in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston (let alone the KCBS calls in both San Francisco and Los Angeles).

Sinclair was absurdly blatant trying to “offload” WPIX to Cunningham and WGN-TV to a freaking car dealership not named Big Bill Hells. That’s the equivalent of trying to rob a bank holding a bowling ball with a glued-on string “fuse”. It was so outrageous that Ajit Pai couldn’t even defend it.

Correct, low-power stations don’t count. KRDK is another “voice” in the market even though it is nothing more than a glorified diginet tree.

Yeah, and KMOX remained co-located with channel 4 until a few years ago.

I’ve mentioned it on the Discord server but with the “5,500 journalists” and hundreds of TV stations behind them, you’d think that NewsNation would have an inventory of documentaries to run as filler on the weekends instead of a marathon of Last Man Standing reruns.

I was also mocking the press release billing the lineup changes as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I actually like the moves but they are totally overselling it. (For those not on the server, NewsNation is referred to meme-wise as “Matlock” because 1) Matlock doesn’t actually air on the channel, 2) the channel’s highest rated programming is the rerun block of JAG and Blue Bloods and 3) the alternative is either crying or continually being very frustrated at something that never lived up to expectations.)