Rusty Muck

Even if I were to go down that conspiracy theory rabbit hole, they're doing Colbert a favor by having him slowly give up an incredibly unprofitable time slot. James Corden's Late Late Show was bleeding money and viewers when it was cancelled two years ago. Seth Meyers had to give up his house band and it might not be enough to save Late Night. Lilly Singh's show was canned four years ago and never replaced. To be very blunt, CBS is allowing Colbert to bow out with as much gracefulness as possible. It makes the network and owned-stations much more attractive to Nexstar. No one is going to run CBS with any degree of lavishness from the Paley or Moonves eras.

Skydance didn't want CBS. They only wanted Paramount Pictures to exploit that studio's IP and only had CBS forced on them by Shari Redstone. Of course they're going to dump CBS at the first opportunity and Nexstar is the odds-on favorite to grab it. Yes, that means KCNC will soon be in common ownership with KUSA, KWGN, KTVD and KDVR.

Sad to report that there is no tangible way the court system saves us from this. And the Supreme Court is compromised enough being controlled by the Federalist Society that they'll carve out an exception because of course they can. A few hundred million is pocket change for a company the size and scale of Nexstar. I honestly don't think Perry even cares because he's convinced himself this is a fait accompli. Can't blame him; he's always gotten what he wants and that isn't going to change.

Sinclair is clearly hoping that Brendan Carr is physically unable to sign off on Tegna-Nexstar for some inexplicable reason. The deal has no opposition on the federal level and the FTC and DOJ are no longer functioning agencies, so they won't do or order anything. Sinclair's actions sound like a hail mary play by a company that is going to be tagged as takeover bait after Nexstar swallows up Tegna with ease. re: the Chevron decision... court decisions like those only apply to one political party. I would bet my next paycheck that Carr magically removes the cap or ignores the rules and no one in charge does anything to stop him. How many times has this regime and agencies in this regime ignored court rulings against them?

I could think of no better way to drive away viewers than through consolidating news departments and mass downsizing. People are creatures of habit and they're going to be upset seeing their favorite station dismantled, especially when it's the much stronger station Nexstar opts to kill off (KUSA, WBIR).

KDVR is a union shop (rather, it became one because of Nexstar) and AFAIK KUSA isn't. Likewise, parts of WJW are still union after all these years. The choice of what station to keep and what to dismantle may be wholly political and not determined by what operations has better ratings. If consolidation is allowed to continue, and the remaining viewers go to OTT or SVODs or elsewhere for their news, then good luck to that remaining station being able to turn a profit at all. When political parties and SuperPACs decide to spend money on platforms other than local television, then the last rites to the industry can be administered. Trump got the lemmings in Congress to fully dismantle public broadcasting with ghostwritten social media posts. When push comes to shove, they'll fall in line obediently like a housebroken puppy, like they always do. Since Nexstar is a "friendly" company to Trump — not being Disney or Skydance or Comcast — forcing dereg through congress will be a much easier sell.

And if anything, Sinclair is now in deep trouble. They're gonna have to buy another equally-sized chain (Cox Media? ) or they're going to be left behind in the economy of scale game and will be takeover bait. Their "offer" to Tegna only serves to expose how desperate they really are.

The textbook definition of a Pyrrhic Victory, becoming a "market leader" because the mass layoffs prompt the majority of people to never watch local television ever again. Which, btw, is exactly what Lance Venta is warning about in his analysis of the merger.

Let alone WBIR—a market dynamo for decades—being dismantled and becoming a rump of WATE.

I fully expect Brendan Carr to issue a statement in full support of this merger because Nexstar is a company he likes. Either he demands congress remove the cap to facilitate it, or he goes above the law and allows it anyway. Plus there's no pesky FTC or DOJ to demand any divestments. The end goal is to have Nexstar exert a monopoly on the industry so they can be the company we always feared Sinclair would be... shuttering newsrooms wholesale, undermining editorial independence, pushing political agendas... The only wildcard is if Fox seeks to repurchase the former LocalTV spin-offs, especially KTVI, WJW and KDVR. If they buy those stations while Nexstar keeps KPLR, WBNX and KWGN and folds them into KSDK, WKYC and WUSA, respectively, this becomes fairly academic.

Bold of you to say that when you've managed to yeet yourself from multiple platforms over the past four years with inflammatory language and threats against others, Shawn.

You tell me since apparently with that hostile attitude you must know all and see all. Versant is screwed if a nondescript rerun farm is allegedly their "flagship brand".

Given the channel's left-leaning lineup and viewership and the obvious current political climate, "USA News" feels like a rather awful, tone-deaf choice. And no, USA Network is not the "flagship brand". It's a cable channel whose only regularly scheduled attraction is WWE Smackdown. Nothing else. Start me up!

Of all the replacement names MSNBC could have picked, this is one of them. Versant (just like Discovery 2.0) is being set up as a viking funeral company and the way they're trying to spin it otherwise is super cringe.

Local news equals more political ad revenue (at least until the political parties and SuperPACs realize spending endless amounts of advertising time on linear television is not an effective strategy). It's why WUPA is doing news so soon and why Gray's bar for success at WANF will be set impossibly low.

I guess Scripps doesn't want to continue paying royalties to Cox-Apollo for use of the "Action News" trademark.

Comparing WPLG to KTVK c. 1994 is deeply flawed. KTVK at least tried to do unique things besides shovelware news when they lost ABC. They actually tried to do things. WPLG isn't trying by adding unsustainable levels of local news and doing a cheap xerox of WNT, and that's because of lazy programming and being owned (for now) by a faceless holding company. WANF isn't even giving the illusion of trying, they're just dumping hours and hours of low-rated news in hopes that a dozen people watch at 2pm or 3am. It won't work. Again, lazy programming is what is causing this, not because of viewer demand.

Yes, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's written into the group deal with Sinclair that Nexstar has the right to yank the affiliation on any stations. WUAB was bundled into Gray's groupwide CW contract and it didn't prevent them from losing the CW to WBNX.

This merger goes through as-is, and Nexstar not only gets duops in Seattle and Atlanta, but the junior station (KONG and WATL, respectively) will become CW owned-stations. That's not really good news for Gray, which unless something drastic happens (like a purchase of Cox Media), will potentially wind up with a full-power duop of independent stations in their home market.

Which KTVK will also lose next year. Sony is pulling both shows from OTA when they go to streaming. It's the equivalent of waving a white flag and Ned Flanders' parents whining, "we've tried nothing and run out of ideas!" Just because excessive news worked for WHDH—which largely capitalized on Cox's neutering of WFXT and NBC Boston's newscasts struggling to get off the ground—does not guarantee the same success anywhere else. WPLG will inevitably suffer from diminishing returns (again, being in a billingual market) and WANF is headed down an unsustainable path because they've never been competitive. If Gray gets Cox before Sinclair can and merges WANF into WSB, problem solved!

They assuredly want to be a buyer, but probably don't have many options available. Apollo-Cox is the easiest one of larger scale and gives them some needed capital if it is structured in a way where Apollo can finance. Sinclair knows its window of opportunity is closing, and fast. They need to buy something now or will wind up being ripe for a takeover.

Cox could be the "surviving entity", but David Smith and Chris Ripley would be running the show.

And who would be willing to watch? Would there be enough viewes to make it anything but a money incinerator?

If I'm David Smith, I'm on the phone with Apollo Global Management to do a merger of equals with Cox Media. It's literally there for the taking.

To say WPLG did it better than WANF is like saying the flu is better than measles. Both have excessive amounts of local news output the marketplace cannot support and typify the laziness that has caused local television in be in this terminally sclerotic state. In any event, PLG will inevitably lose Live to WSVN .2 and WoF/J! goes away entirely next year. So by 2026 it'll be all shovelware news with diminishing returns for ratings.