Rusty Muck

To piggyback on that, did Sinclair ever mandate a standard graphics switching system for their stations? I remember seeing that the lack of one was partially the reason why the Glass/Curves look had such an uneven and prolonged rollout.

Can you retroactively insert a morality clause in the event there was never one included?

Megyn has 69,000,000 reasons never to work again. She got more than the last laugh.

Forcing Megyn on MSNBC would have made things infinitely worse. Best to cut your losses.

And she keeps all that money. Literally laughing all the way to the bank. Played to perfection. Someone within the higher-ups at NBC has to be thrown overboard for this. If it's not Andy Lack, it's gonna be someone.

Life comes at you fast.

The funny thing is, those “bad men” that Megyn threw under the bus also were the same ones who stood by her and never gave into Trump’s demands for her removal (after she asked pointed questions at him as a debate moderator). And it’s pretty simple as to why; she got ratings and revenue for the network, the flap with Trump never put her show in danger of cancellation, and actually raised her profile enough for NBC to lure her away. And given the prime 25-54 demo fights between Fox and MSNBC in primetime, it’s not a stretch to see Fox welcoming back Megyn as if nothing had ever happened. Shore up all the star power you can get your hands on.

And because of her inartful nature, the cynic in me starts thinking that she's trying to sabotage her own show. She couldn't and can't be that tone-deaf, FFS.

Methinks Megyn and NBC are trying to figure out their exit strategy to get her off Today and out of her contract. If not this, it’s gonna be real soon. I’m not altogether worried for Megyn; Fox would hire her back in a heartbeat.

KUSI is basically what would have happened if Weird Al’s “U62” existed in the present day. A scrappy locally-owned indie with nothing to lose, headed by... eccentric... personalities all larger than life. Mark Malthus’ style fits KUSI perfectly and he has a loyal following; that’s why he was there and will likely remain after this. Are they the market leader? Hardly, but their newscasts have a loyal, devoted following and cable carriage helps a lot.

If you flipped the story around where Sinclair was doing this stuff to favor Democrat candidates and opinion within the local newscast produced by their stations, and hired Jon Favreau** to give mandatory nightly commentaries with no chance for a reply, there would be justifiable public indignation from Fox, Breitbart, et al, just like liberal groups and organizations are indignant at Sinclair right now. It’s inherently wrong and dishonest, regardless of the POV. **Nothing against Favreau, he’s the closest equivalent to Boris Epysteyn I could think of at the moment.

Ah, yes... “NXT on #HTownRush...” If I didn’t know any better, it looks like TEGNA is trying to save money by removing what they deem as unnecessary extra letters and spaces from words.

The Dallas Police department is in enough of a mess as it is.

Given how much WUAB has been treated as a doormat under Raycom, this is a very pleasant surprise. I didn't expect any acknowledgement of their 50th anniversary. Of course Ramona Robinson returned to 19/43 in 2012, Jack Marshall retired not long ago after a stint at WEWS, Sally Bernier does holiday relief duties at WJW alongside her husband Andre, Jeff Phelps is at WKRK 92.3 The Fan and Fox Sports Ohio, Ron Jantz left the business to work and teach at Lorain County Community College, Dan Deely is at WNWV The Wave, and RIP Gib Shanley.

That, and Russ Mitchell was given a lot of pull when he defected from CBS. WKYC has long effectively counter-programmed with Ellen and Dr. Phil, so much so there's absolutely no need for them to have local news at 4 and 5. Which is remarkable for a big four affiliate nowadays.

Most of the younger generation has grown up around the internet. YouTube, MP3 players, the iPhone, Netflix... all game changers that have shaken up the entertainment industry and journalism to their cores. Think about how radically different the world is today as opposed to 1998. There are options today that would have been unfathomable, even as Matt Drudge was shaking up the journalism world with his news aggregation site that also broke news. Fox News will survive, but in order to do so, will need to adapt. Yes, there will be an eventual audience drop, but every outlet will be experiencing that soon. It's not rocket science. Comcast, Disney, Viacom, CBS... and even Nexstar, TEGNA and (gasp!) Sinclair... will all have no choice but to change with the times. Some will be successful, some won't. It's the nature of the beast. What Fox News has done by dominating the ratings in an unprecedented scale can truly be considered as the final hurrah for traditional linear broadcasting, regardless of the content or political viewpoint. It is a rather extraordinary achievement that we will never see again.

The content delivery landscape will be totally different by then. Fox News is already starting to seriously ramp up their streaming platform Fox Nation. CBS already has CBSN. NBC and ABC are starting to get into the game, too. The only thing that won't change is AM conservative talk radio, they're still stuck in 1988... and that will never change.

Oooh ahhh **clap clap** Seriously, though, it could be worse. I'd say it's a few steps above soul-crushing generic.

Roger Ailes set up Fox as a network that carved out a definitive niche and imaged themselves as THE news outlet for conservatives, regardless of the age demo. And it worked... so much so that there any competition in the conservative TV news field (OANN, NewsMaxTV) cannot logically compete. It just so happens that the majority of Fox's audience skews old, but at the same time, the vast majority of people with conservative viewpoints will be predisposed to watch Fox or access their digital properties. It's all about brand loyalty and cumulative audience.

Only because Friends was the top-rated sitcom (and, for that matter, the top-rated show) on broadcast television at the time. It was totally unnecessary and a cheap marketing ploy that no other broadcast network has tried since. Who is in the White House right now? A 72-year old attention whore. Who runs CNN? An attention whore. Come on now. MSNBC and Fox are also guilty of overcoverage, for the obvious reasons... MSNBC is seen as having taken the anti-Trump bent (despite having quite a few conservatives as pundits and hosts, their prime-time lineup is still decidedly liberal). Fox has always taken a mostly pro-Trump bent, and water is wet. What really has CNN done but make a mockery of that polemic coverage? Consistently having six talking heads arguing back and forth and talking over each other is an outright parody and a train wreck of the worst sort. And that's just one facet of their overall coverage that is an embarrassment to the industry. Anyone can see that CNN has a big-time credibility problem. Thing is, it's totally overshadowed by Trump supporters mocking the network out of this perception that CNN "isn't fair" to Trump.

Trump and Zucker are kindred spirits. They both failed their way upward, both specialize in outrageous stunts for attention (Zucker with "supersized" episodes of Friends, doubling the length of Today, making a mockery of NBC's late night lineup, and just being at CNN ... and Trump simply by his very existing. I really wouldn't be surprised if Zucker and Trump have been collaborating on Trump's anti-CNN schtick. For someone with Zucker's mentality, he has to be relishing the free pub CNN gets every time. Who cares if Trump's supporters threaten the life of Jim Acosta when Acosta can milk that pub on Colbert, furthering CNN's brand awareness? If we're talking about when CNN "committed suicide," it was with the Malaysian Air fiasco. That was a deliberate admission that they no longer wanted to be the credible news outlet they long promoted themselves as, but as a goddam circus instead. And judging by the ratings, people aren't falling for it. Good.

For supposed "ombudsmans," Brian Stelter and Howard Kurtz fail spectacularly at those job positions. Kurtz gets ratings simply because of inertia: Fox could put in that timeslot a tap-dancing seal and a poodle riding a unicycle with a carnival music loop playing throughout ... and the ratings would still trounce CNN. They should be promoted and identified as who they really are: opinion hosts.

For some reason his show bombed on WEWS, to the point they flipped timeslots with it and a double run of Right this Minute (!). Oz has done well at WJW since they added him, however.

To be fair, WEWS has struggled in some way or form since the late 90s, right around the time WKYC managed to free themselves of the negative connotation of “NBC’s farm team station” and being “the third station” in the market. But that’s part of the story. WEWS has had a litany of general managers and news directors since the late 1990s. Their new news director is the second straight one to come from KMGH. It took them a year to find a replacement for longtime anchor Ted Henry, and that replacement - Chris Flanagan - didn’t pan out. Then the station lost Oprah, Dr. Oz bombed badly and WoF/J! were lost due to corporate meddling. Meanwhile, WJW took the clear and decisive lead in mornings - ground that WEWS had to cede completely when they were forced to move the groundbreaking “Morning Exchange” out of morning drive. WEWS has blown up their morning show roster at least half a dozen times over the past five years, and that’s not hyperbole. A badly generic logo is the least of Lotto 5’s troubles.

I regret I can only like this just once lol