Rusty Muck

With the logo that looked like it was made in PowerPoint? Cox never wanted to be in Boston in the first place, mismanaged the station to the point WHDH clobbers them routinely, and Apollo has disinvested in it even further. It's a lost cause.

MSNBC going after them would be enough to make Sinclair mass disaffiliate from NBC as retaliation. Which is exactly what a small-minded idiot like David Smith would do. Again, read the Times article above.

And MSNBC hosts are all over it. https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/right-wing-propaganda-infiltrates-local-news-stations-as-2024-election-ramps-up-212854853779 https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/misleading-attacks-on-biden-s-age-appear-in-local-newscasts-owned-by-sinclair-broadcast-group-212869701903 https://x.com/atrupar/status/1800883346337395062 https://x.com/atrupar/status/1800892152437932335 This is a big fucking deal and could potentially place NBC in hot water with Sinclair among their existing affiliates, something that they were trying to avoid: Either MSNBC is damming the torpedoes at the risk of Sinclair mass disaffiliating with NBC, or NBC has concluded that they no longer need the Sinclair stations and can simply move the affiliations to Peacock.

Rand Paul can propose all he wants but there's a good chance it doesn't see the light of day, particularly should the Senate remain in 50-50 Democrat hands. I don't think people appreciate just how much Sinclair permanently poisoned the well against further media consolidation among the left with their "dangerous to our democracy" stunt. This about-face by the FCC did not happen overnight.

Per Deadline, with some cozy revisionist history on the failed Standard General (and Apollo Global Management) takeover of Tegna to boot. I find it hard to have sympathy for groups like Nexstar, Sinclair and Tegna that bought stations for the sake of buying them with zero strategy or consideration. Just because you took advantage of companies that didn't want to exist anymore like Belo, McGraw Hill, Allbritton, LIN and Tribune didn't make the future any brighter. The problem facing local television is the same crisis facing newspapers and commercial radio and public radio, and no amount of deregulation the likes of Dave Lougee and Perry Sook are openly coveting right now won't be able to paper over it. All you'll get are larger dinosaurs with bigger, more oppressive debt loads.

And it still hasn't been announced. Supposedly Shari Redstone is still thinking it over, after all, she has the final say. That she hasn't indicated anything yet is enough to make one curious.

He'd have to actually be convicted of a felony or lie outright to the FCC and get nailed for it. Then the FCC would start a long process to strip him of the license. That's pretty much it.

September 1 cannot come soon enough.

Scripps punted the CW to KNXV's Antenna TV sub and Nexstar couldn't wait to get out of there. There is no reason why Graham would stick it in the middle of a plug-and-play national diginet, nor any reason why Nexstar would accept such an offer in a top 20 market. I am entitled to my opinion. And my opinion, BTW, is NOT that Nexstar is "the devil" (that I even have to explain this is utterly embarrassing). I view Nexstar as a cheap-as-hell company that bought out the competition because interest rates were non-existent. They still to this very day act like the small-market small-minded bush league operators of WYOU and WBRE in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Not an actual owner of a television network or of prestigious stations like KTLA or WGN. It might actually surprise you to find out that there exists no mandate for a network to have an affiliate in every market. That does not exist. If no station in Detroit wants to affiliate with the CW, that's totally on them and it's because they saw it as something not worth pursuing. Welcome to the free market. I am replying to correct the record on things you said about me that are heretofore untrue, and I have every right to do so.

Please explain to me how Graham is going to magically come up with 22 hours of programming a day when syndication in that market has been stretched insanely thin among all the stations. It doesn't take a MENSA member to see them taking a hard pass on creating another subchannel for the CW. And is this a bad thing?

This is a timely reminder that no one is obligated to affiliate with the CW in Detroit. WDIV has every right to say no if they do not see a return on investment for creating a brand new station (a WDIV sub) and spend a lot to buy bottom-barrel programming for the other 22 hours of the day. Nexstar is going to have no other choice but to hastily pipe in the CW+ in these cable systems, who have no obligation to do so. You forgot that Kevin Adell is fucking insane and willingly blew up a $75 million deal with Nexstar (Mission). If you think a reputable broadcaster is going to want to do business with someone who cannot write in proper English and torch all bridges with napalm, then go ahead and wave that magic wand, see where it gets you.

Why in the wide wide world of sports would Graham ever want to do business with that unprofessional, value destructive clown? Or anyone else?!? WADL is going to wind up sold by creditors in a bankruptcy auction to a Godcaster like Daystar or TCT. If they're lucky enough.

This TV is winding down operations anyway, so it's not immediately reflective of anything. And there's zero guarantee that it'll wind up on a WDIV sub because that would imply that Graham is going to try to build a program inventory around it when there are no programs available. Has anyone seen how horrid WMYD's lineup is? Or WKBD's lineup? No options exist in either market. Sunbeam isn't going to create a new WSVN subchannel for it nor will WPLG (which is Berkshire Hathaway's only television station). Old Mother Hubbard doesn't have to tell you that the cupboards are bare this time. They won't. Any realistic analysis on the matter will tell you that Nexstar and the CW are incredibly screwed here and, like Nexstar assuredly set to lose WPIX for good thanks to their Mission chicanery, it is solely on themselves for poor past decisions and zero forward thinking.

Why would Nexstar want to do business with that moron? An LMA or TBA would be totally impossible for the same exact reason why the FCC killed off the SSA Nexstar tried to engineer with Mission ... before Kevin Adell acted like a petulant little child, of course. Let's face facts. The CW is going to wind up with no affiliates in Detroit, Miami and Tucson come September 1, and Miami in particular was because Perry Sook was greedy AND stupid and sold off markets he never should have just to keep triopolies or quadolopies in Little Rock and Youngstown or massive Vs like WJW. He deserves this.

They aren't and they won't. And it's why linear television is a dying industry, the so-called "golden goose" was killed off by the likes of Perry Sook, David Smith and Hilton Howell.

This exactly, and it's why I do disagree, to an extent, with @Weeters on having the elimination of all ownership limits being the solution to the problem. What good will it do when NexstarTegnaSinclairGrayScripps owns every channel when viewership for linear television across-the-board is vanishing and the networks will have already pulled stakes and fled OTA? What happens then? You'd wind up with another Penn Central, a massive conglomerate that merged in a survival attempt and yet went bankrupt within two years of the consummation in disastrous fashion. Is this a bad thing? You might as well get something for the spectrum if compensated accordingly by the FCC, especially if the transmitter land becomes more valuable than the station itself.

All the dead malls can merge together and you'd still wind up with a dead mall, just much larger and needing a bailout from the federal government when the entire system comes crashing down.

It's in a deep red market in a permanently uncompetitive state politically that almost got wiped off the face of the earth by a devastating hurricane. There is no way that it was worth $200 million, or even $100 million. It should have been $75 million, and I'm being awfully generous here. Yes, it absolutely was a waste of money. Yes, they foolishly overpaid for an asset that can only decline with time. And I have no problem saying any of this because I don't have this weird romanticized vision of Hearst the fandom inexplicably has.

All small market stations and the first two were simple divestitures from larger M&As. Try harder than that if you want to convince me that they should be anything more than a silly MacGuffin in this fandom. Hearst doesn't buy anything you want them to buy. End of story.

So they can spiral into total oblivion, fire everyone and get bailed out by the federal government because literally no one wants to buy a chain of television stations in 2024?

There is a very good chance that, because Nexstar is not interested in selling any stations because of simple greed and hubris, WPIX is ordered by the FCC to be sold to a chain hostile to the CW. Should that happen, the CW will be totally without a flagship station, and Nexstar will have only themselves to blame. Nexstar will not be shutting down WPIX. They will only lose control of it, and Uncle Perry's nepo baby who plays make-believe sportscaster will need to update his resume.

Scripps took WPPX, KPXM and KKPX off the market after they sold WPIX. Given the very soft national ad market right now, it might be a blessing in disguise to offload those three.

Scripps is only guilty of doing something the industry will emulate sooner than later. The current mode of newscast production in the industry is wholly unsustainable and due for a nasty reckoning. Which is why they got caught red-headed blatantly violating the rules in creating an LMA that wasn't needed so they have over 70% national coverage without the UHF Discount sham. Nexstar will not sell any stations because they refuse to do that, and they will lose control of WPIX outright. Simple as that. The only reason Scripps has a good likelihood to get WPIX is because they already own WPXN channel 31. They are already in the market, they've owned WPIX before as a caretaker, and they would spend the money to buy it. And Scripps is the only likely buyer because, again, there are no other options to speak of whatsoever. None.

That's wishful thinking given the ridiculous and unrealistic anti-Scripps sentiment that exists in this fandom, propped up by two-bit hack blogger Scott Jones and his obvious prejudice against the company. And you might be surprised to find out that even if they wanted to sell, there's no buyers available because the mass consolidation of the past decade literally wiped out whatever list of buyers existed. Absolutely not. Hearst doesn't buy stations unless they are wastes of money like WBBH in freaking Fort Myers, Florida, a totally inconsequential market of old people. Graham hasn't entered any new market since buying WSLS a decade ago as part of Media General's disappearing act. What is it with this fandom that just keeps wishcasting for Hearst or Graham to buy stations like this when they never do and never will?

Why does Matthew Keys even give Kevin Adell the time of day? This moron did just as much to torpedo this deal as the FCC did, he'll be lucky not to lose WADL in bankruptcy to a Godcaster.