Rusty Muck

Well, it looks like Sinclair is setting its acquisition sights on cable now, as The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the company is in discussions to acquire the Tennis Channel.

In this environment where cord-cutting has reached record levels?

It makes absolutely no sense unless they want to use the channel space for their possible national news channel. But shouldn't they be buying OANN and NewsMaxTV instead?

Comcast kind of does the same thing with their idents on NBCSN and on the opening credits of Universal movies. I kind of think of this as different as Comcast init of itself offers it's own services and those aforementioned properties are different divisions. I also believe that Comcast does this to make their public image a bit better by reminding viewers that they do provide great products despite some issues with their cable quality and customer service.

Comcast is also taking a cue from when MCA slapped its name on a byline of the main Universal Pictures logo throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. MCA only was known for owning Universal Studios/Television and it's associated record label... and not for the talent agency it was forced to sell in order to buy Revue Studios, Decca Records and Universal International.

And yet, Comcast is such a sprawling conglomerate with inconsistent branding standards throughout its many divisions. Some entities like Universal Television are still "A Division of NBCUniversal," while Comcast now has the NBC peacock on their main logo, while NBCUniversal has nothing but a ghastly blocky typeface as their logo. And so on.

While TEGNA and Gannett slapping their names on everything is borderline silly, at least they are employing some sort of consistency.

Any word on what happened to the T.D. Jakes Show and whether it was successful or not?

Even if the test run was successful, the show wouldn't be entering regular production until the 2016-2017 TV season.

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, but are they actually considering putting you-know-who in the only known hole right up against his old program? Yes, I get that nothing's confirmed, but...

 

Well, they have to find some place to stick BriWi at, as just anchoring breaking news coverage won't be enough.

Joe Concha surmised the same thing a few days ago on Mediaite.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/source-diaz-balart-to-remain-on-msnbc-weekdays-but-loses-2nd-hour-of-the-rundown/

 

Update from Joe Concha... Looks like Tamron anchoring from 10am-12pm is false...He is saying the schedule will now look like this...

 

Morning Joe 6-10am

The Rundown with Jose Diaz Balart 10-11am

NewsNation with Tamron Hall 11am-12pm...and so on.

Wouldn't it make more sense to title Chuck Todd's hour as "The (Daily) Rundown" ... and have Jose Diaz-Balart and Tamron Hall anchor "MSNBC Live"-branded news hours?

So, WKYC was carrying NBC Kids on Sundays? There have been stations that have aired NBC's children's blocks on both Saturday and Sunday in the past (KFOR used to split the TNBC and Discovery Kids on NBC blocks in this manner, and occasionally still did this for the Qubo and NBC Kids blocks whenever there's free time on Sundays due to a late-morning sports event the day before), but how'd that work out what with them having to air their Sunday morning newscast, "Today" and "Meet the Press" as well?

This past TV season, WKYC stuck most of the E/I block at 12:30pm weekdays, with one show airing at the 11am Saturday hour to fulfil the three hour FCC requirement. Infomercials are now airing at the 12:30pm weekday timeslot as of this week.

Prior to WKYC's major news expansion last September, NBC Kids ran from 10:30-noon and 12:30-1pm on Saturday, and from 7a-8a on Sunday.

When does WEWS' Sun. Morning Newscast start? Next weekend?

Tomorrow morning.

And speaking of WEWS, they are adding local newscasts on Sunday morning... from 8am to 9am (following GMA) and from 10am to 11am (following This Week).

That would leave WOIO as the only Big 4 affiliate in Cleveland that doesn't have a morning newscast on both Saturday and Sunday.

Oh, and WKYC is bumping the start time for their Saturday morning news to 5am next week, along with the E/I block moving back to Saturday morning.

Just to let you know... KTVU 2 is not airing "FOX NFL Kickoff" next Sunday, moving it to KICU 36, in favor of KTVU Mornings on 2 and KTVU FOX 2 Sports Weekend while KPTV 12 is putting "FOX NFL Kickoff" on sister station KPDX 49, in favor of the 8:00 a.m. hour of Good Day Oregon.

 

I'm not sure if anybody else is doing something like this.

WJW isn't even clearing the program, instead opting for their 11am news and the weekly Howard Hanna real estate showcase at 11:30am. It wasn't even scooted onto 8.2 Antenna TV.

Not that I really mind. Between "Tailgate 19" on WOIO (a de facto local lead-in to the Browns games at 1pm) and the Browns-produced house organ programming on WEWS, it probably wouldn't be missed that much.

Looking at WKBW's schedule, they are picking up "The List" at 7pm weeknights, with "Extra" moving to 4pm. They've also added "Comics Unleashed," "America's Court" and "Justice for All with Christine Perez" in overnight. Weekends look like they are slowly rebuilding their weekend programming inventory, with a cutback in infomercials.

No sign that they will be producing "The Now" anytime soon, but KB reporter Jason Gruenauer was tapped to be a national correspondent for "The Now" awhile back.

Hubbard selling out... not yet. Their radio division has been slowly growing over the past few years (most notably with their purchase of Sandusky Radio) and they own WTOP-FM, radio's 800-pound billing monster.

They will probably hold onto their TV stations for a few more years. Just my opinion...

It's another possibility. WJW absorbing WBNX would bring another CW affiliation into Tribune's fold and would give the largest independently owned & operated CW station to the largest operator. Doing so would prevent competition to their 10pm show. They could even take the KPLR approach if they had to for an 8pm SHOW!

Back in late 1995, WBNX (which was finally starting to find footing in the Cleveland market) actually aired WJW's 10pm newscast seven nights a week in a one-hour tape delay. That ended shortly after Fox completed its purchase of WJW in September 1996.

I believe the Indians going away from WUAB was mainly a result of the Dolan Family (who owns the Indians AND Cablevision) wanting an exclusive cable deal with Fox Sports Ohio at the time. Dennis Kucinich (then a congressman) even lobbied for legislation requiring teams that had facilities funded with tax dollars to broadcast their games on "free tv". It went nowhere and the Indians packed up for cable, snapping 21 years of ratings success for WUAB. WUAB once had the highest MLB ratings of any station that carried games, and was a large factor in the station being carried out-of-market in such places as Erie, Columbus, Youngstown, and even Portsmouth!

I don't really fault Raycom for losing the Indians rights for WUAB. It was going to happen regardless of who owned the station, mainly because Larry Dolan overpaid for the team (Dick Jacobs was one lucky SOB; he sold the team at peak value with a massive payroll that couldn't be sustained in the long run). Moving solely to Fox Sports Ohio was a fait accompli.

And as it went, the Dolan family eventually wanted to cut the middleman and operate their own regional sports network akin to YES, NESN and SNY, so they left Fox Sports Ohio and launched their own RSN in collaboration with Time Warner and WKYC/Gannett. (Extra trivia note: Larry's brother Charles Dolan vis-a-vis Cablevision bought and launched the original SportsRadio 1220 WKNR in 1991, making it a rather faithful clone of WFAN, and acquired the Indians' radio PBP rights. Cablevision sold WKNR to Jacor Communications as the era of radio consolidation began to rear its ugly head.)

Thing is, the Yankees, Red Sox and Mets can get away with running an RSN, but a mid-major market team like the Indians really cannot... SportsTime Ohio was often hard-pressed to find any additional programming that wasn't Indians-related, not to mention that the RSN revenue pie was already cut thin with Fox Sports Ohio's continued existence (and they still had Cavaliers PBP rights in the midst of LeBron's first stint with the team). When the Dolans sold SportsTime Ohio to Fox, it was hardly a surprise to anyone.

As for WKYC, they did air several games per year that were billed as from "Channel 3 Sports" for the first few years of STO's life. Jim Donovan was the lead PBP announcer for those games, which STO would simulcast. That arrangement was flipped during the 2010 season, around the same time Donovan had to relinquish the PBP role while in treatment for leukemia.

The call letters WGCL have ties to Cleveland , as it was the longtime call letters for 98.5 until the mid 80s. It's been WNCX ever since.

Fun fact: that iteration of WGCL (again, the current WNCX/98.5) and WZGC/92.9 in Atlanta were sister stations, owned for many years by General Cinemas. Hence, the "GC" calls.

Nevermind the leaps of faith some have about a theoretical sale of WBNX (personally, if it gets sold, my money would be on Nexstar for a standalone market-entry not unlike KASW)...

If Tribune buys WBNX they could simply change the call letters to WGNX (a nod to the old WGNX which is now WGCL) ...

...and it's possible they could get the Indians telecast on WGNX.

Fox owns and operates SportsTime Ohio, not Tribune. Master control is still run out of WKYC's facility (dating back to when the Dolan family - vis-a-vis the Cleveland Indians Baseball Company - owned the network, and WKYC operated it).

And in any event, WKYC's contract to simulcast 10-15 STO games per year runs for several more years.

Is WKYC still airing Indians telecasts or did they completely migrate over to SportsTime Ohio?

WKYC still simulcasts about 10-15 STO games per year. And they are complete simulcasts with zero "channel 3" branding.

WUAB will be making some major programming changes beyond the "CLE43" rebrand.

Current lineup:

Upcoming lineup:

Yes, for the first time ever, Cleveland will have a 9pm newscast. And WUAB has apparently conceded defeat after competing with WJW in the 10pm timeslot for 21 years.

Earlier, my thoughts about WOIO's new color scheme were that the colors were similar to Kent State.

 

But WOIO may have made an even bigger fail with their color scheme...

ESPECIALLY since the old colors (red and white) were similar to the Scarlet and Grey of Ohio State....

That was worth the laugh.

If anything, WOIO's new logo should have been in a blue and silver color scheme instead of blue and gold. I think 'dated...' because WJW's short-lived "Fox 8 Is NEWS" logo (for less than three weeks in September 1996... no proof of it exists on YouTube anywhere) had the same exact color scheme.

The (SC)UofM and the Golden State Warriors are the LAST things that came to my mind.

Here's a better picture of Cleveland's CBS 19 News logo on their Facebook page.

Couldn't they at least have tried to make it look a little bit more like the logos for the legacy Ellis stations? (WMC, WECT, KFVS)

I'm glad that they've based the new logo off of the non-news 19, but those colors look bad. I know they're trying to move away from the "Action News" era as much as possible, but at least come up with a more dignified logo.

As far as WUAB, that logo kind looks more like one for a streaming site than a TV station.

At least WOIO and WUAB aren't sharing the same logos (ie, "Hometeam 19" and "Hometeam 43").

Over/under on WOIO morphing from "Cleveland 19 News" to "CBS 19 News?" I say six months.

Cleveland 19 News is go. Monday at noon.

The $1,000,000 question. Will they finally use their 19 station logo, or keep their blah 19 news logo?

This Dan Deroos tweet should answer that question.

It will be more like this:

4p: Nolan/Dufala

4:30p: Wittman/Serino or Tucker

5p: Robinson/Dufala

5:30p: Wittman/Serino or Tucker

6p: Nolan/Robinson

10p: Wittman/Tucker

11p: Robinson/Dufala

I thought it was great to have Robinson and Dufala on the 6/11 news. One could wonder if Wittman and Dufala would anchor 5/10pm news? Again there probably no need for Nolan on the newscast just use Wittman/Robinson/Dufala on CBS 19 & have Tucker and Wittman on the 10pm on WUAB.

4pm: Nolan/Robinson

4:30pm: Tucker

5pm: Whitman/Dufala

5:30pm: Tucker

6pm: Nolan/Robinson

10pm: Whitman/Tucker

11pm: Dufala/Robinson

Former WKYC chief meteorologist/morning anchor Mark Nolan is joining WOIO as their 4pm and 6pm anchor. Denise Dufala is remaining at 11pm and probably is being assigned to the other early-evening newscast blocks.

This as WOIO's rebrand as "Cleveland 19" is imminent.

Nolan will remain as the morning host at WMJI "Majic 105.7," a role he's held since shock jock mega-icon John Lanigan retired last April.

It's almost always a good thing when a station dumps the MyTV branding, but 22 the Point! sounds more like a radio station to me.

Like "43 The Block?" (WUAB's on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again branding)

WAGA-TV will expand its late news by 30 minutes, going all the way to midnight.

 

http://radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/03/fox-5-expanding-news-to-midnight/

With CBS being in cost-cutting mode as of late, I don't see them investing in a TV news department for WWJ/WKBD anytime soon.

Heck, WWJ 950 is now voice-tracking their overnight newscasts after the recent bloodletting at the all-newser.

Also Tegna will be airing a talk show with TD Jakes as the host of it with WFAA, KARE 11, WKYC, and 11Alive as the test subjects and then to the rest of Tegna's stations if it proves successful.

http://deadline.com/2015/07/debmar-mercury-tests-td-jakes-talk-show-tegna-media-stations-1201472735/

In any event, the show wouldn't even be ready for a national roll-out until the 2016-2017 season.