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Rusty Muck

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Everything posted by Rusty Muck

  1. Rusty Muck
    WFXT is the sixth-place station in a five-station town and where WHDH kicks their butts in all the time slots that matter. This isn't about retrans, it's a practical joke Apollo is making to Soo Kim.
  2. Rusty Muck
    Soo Kim couldn't afford Tegna on his own so he had to sell two of their prime Texas stations just to cover the balance, and they give him a turd in WFXT. Tell me how that's a good deal.
  3. Rusty Muck
    Some stuff could not be more obvious, like the fact Soo Kim couldn’t afford Tegna in his own right so he needed another private equity vulture who already owns a significant station group just to pay the balance, plus the obvious footsy action with WFAA, KHOU and WFXT. I’m capable of making inferences and can already say this deal is putrid with no benefit to anyone but Soo Kim’s lavish bank account and should be rejected. I don’t even need to see the filing.
  4. Rusty Muck
    That Harry Jessell can see how bad of a deal this is and Scott Jones lets his personal hatred for Dave Youngee cloud his inner judgment is stunning. Jessell is pro-consolidation but he at least cares about the industry and its future. Meanwhile, Scott is stuck in a tunnel vision that newscasts from the early 2000s still work and that you shouldn’t even bother trying to reach younger audiences. News flash for Scott: it’s not 2002. It’s 2022. Harry Jessell won my respect today, and I never thought I’d ever say those words.
  5. Rusty Muck
    pictures always tell a thousand words...
  6. Rusty Muck
    Assuming this deal actually goes through, and I have a sneaking suspicion it won't ... just saying ... Soo will break up the company piecemeal in 1-3 years. And really, the only buyers left are the networks. Hearst, Graham and Hubbard are most likely to cash out, Scripps is tapped out, Griffin, Bahakel and Capitol are committed to their stations and nothing else, and Weigel is more interested in stations for their diginets. That leaves ONLY the networks as buyers.
  7. Rusty Muck
    Well I certainly didn't expect Harry Jessell to effectively reject this deal like he just did. If Jessell, one of the most business-friendly writers/analysts in the industry, is saying this, then it may be more doomed than you might think.
  8. Rusty Muck
    Not much of a factor, but it's that WHDH cleans WFXT's clock in all the time slots that matter most... especially in morning and 10pm.
  9. Rusty Muck
    This interview of CBS News and Station's Wendy McMahon reads not only as a direct indictment against CBS's prior management team, but a direct indictment on Soo Kim's short-sighted attacks on Dave Lougee and Tegna's attempts to modernize their newscasts. The second Soo throws Dave overboard, CBS will hire him in a heartbeat. And you watch as the former Tegna stations forced to adopt the formula perfected by WFXT, the sixth-place station in a five-station market, are subsequently crippled and stifled by a greedy private equity overlord who only wants to cash out in 1-3 years max. CBS's choice of KXTA as their central "news innovation" hub now looks more and more like the shrewdest move of all time. They're going to take advantage of WFAA's inevitable collapse under Apollo and might have seen this one coming.
  10. Rusty Muck
    lmfao WFXT, the "anchor of a new station group." I think it's be called the S.S. Titanic.
  11. Rusty Muck
    Easiest solution is to let Apollo talk full control of Tegna. If this FCC doesn't bat an eye then the ownership cap is worthless.
  12. Rusty Muck
    It would go away because Soo Kim doesn't care about broadcasting and has it in for Dave Lougee. Expect a massive disinvestment and abandonment of all digital aspects. It'll be an utter shame.
  13. Rusty Muck
    Not when they're operated by private equity vultures who seek to cash out for maximum profits. Soo Kim utterly ruined MediaGeneral and made a killing offloading it to Nexstar. They have to prove they aren't any more than a silent partner in this deal, which I don't think Apollo has the capability to do. I don't trust them for a second even if they eliminated the entirety of their stake in this dumpster fire of a purchase. As @Weeterssaid on the Discord, "If this goes through, the (39%) cap is proven to be entirely pointless". And he's right.
  14. Rusty Muck
    Apollo and Standard General will only be paying for the KPVI look, because KPVI News at 5 is News That Works For You
  15. Rusty Muck
    to be fair, there were two WBKBs in Chicago and the first ultimately wound up on channel 2 lmao Graham, Hearst and Hubbard have not participated in this M&A mayhem because they are diversified entities. I do believe that within 1-3 years, all three will be selling their TV chains outright.
  16. Rusty Muck
    Apollo needs to not have ANY stake in the new iteration of Tegna, and if that needs to be accomplished with further trades of Tegna stations to Apollo to recoup the balance of Apollo's planned stake, then so be it. Otherwise it'll be rejected on its face. For perspective, the Dumont Network died in part because the FCC considered them and KTLA and WBKB/2 Chicago to be co-owned because Paramount Studios (which owned both, neither of which were ever Dumont affiliates!) had a minority stake in Dumont. Thus, Dumont couldn't purchase any more O&Os when they desperately needed to.
  17. Rusty Muck
    The claim made in this filing is that both companies are going to be independent of each other and that Apollo's stake in Tegna is not of importance because they'll not be holding any voting stock. I don't believe it for a second.
  18. Rusty Muck
    The DOJ and FCC should be rejecting this deal outright. It's an atrociously structured deal that benefits no one but the stockholders at Apollo and Standard General. It will cripple local news in a way we haven't seen in a long time. It's also the logical end result of the M&A mania of the past few years, where there's no one left to buy stations but private equity vultures. (BTW, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates today, so this was filed right at the deadline.)
  19. Rusty Muck
    Standard General can't afford to buy Tegna on their own, so Apollo is allegedly a silent partner with no voting stock (*SNERK*). These station trades are proof of this; Apollo and Standard are simply picking the company apart just to buy it. Nevermind that Byron Allen offered significantly more for Tegna and was rejected.
  20. Rusty Muck
    I can absolutely see Hilton Howell hiring Dave Lougee the second Soo throws him overboard.
  21. Rusty Muck
    The marketplace has clearly collapsed when two private equity vultures are attempting to pick apart a company too big to fail like this. It's an atrocious deal that'll set back local news in a time when they can't afford to. Soo Kim and Apollo are buying Tegna merely to gut it, starve it, then break it up.
  22. Rusty Muck
    Channel 62 not only was a hastily purchased station while the network was under extreme duress (the infamy of purchasing the first Black-owned television station in the mainland notwithstanding), CBS, Inc. ceased to exist two years later as Westinghouse became CBS Corp. And then the original Viacom, Les Moonves and Dunn—Friend simply didn’t give a damn. WDJT has been nurtured and supported by Weigel since day one. Something channel 62 didn’t have… until now.
  23. Rusty Muck
    They definitely have a building. It just needs new equipment. Especially ditching all those old CRTs. I told @Samanthalast night that I wish I could see the purchase orders on this project.
  24. Rusty Muck
    It'd be an amusing way for Gray to backdoor purchase NewsNet, that's for sure.
  25. Rusty Muck
    One thing people forget is that, for the headlines WKYC had with their makeover, WEWS did similarly with Scripps getting their stations to veer away from flashy crime-heavy headlines in favor of “meat and potatoes” news… and WEWS didn’t ballyhoo it at all.
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