Rusty Muck

Incredibly, Soo is yelling at the FCC to vote on the deal anyway instead of sending this to an ALJ. Because that’s exactly what you should do, said no one ever.

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"A decision delayed is a decision denied," Standard General’s Managing Partner Soo Kim said in the statement. "Our proposed transaction is consistent with all FCC regulations and precedent. It is bolstered by a voluntary commitment to invest in local news, preserve newsroom jobs, and address purported concerns related to consumer pricing. But rather than rule on the transaction’s merits, as the law requires, the Media Bureau is attempting to scuttle the deal by ordering a wholly unnecessary hearing process, that if left standing by the Commission, would kill the deal.”

Bullying the FCC chairperson to vote for your deal when she tacitly rejected it in the ALJ order might be THE ultimate galaxy brain move.

1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

I'll bet you 50 bucks the next sports push Nexstar makes for the CW is gambling-related!

Poker After Dark reruns from 2008 should be available on the DFS Program Exchange

41 minutes ago, TheRob said:

Looks like Greg Norman thought “Fool Us” was the CW’s slogan and not a show that actually airs on the CW.

8 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:

To be fair, if Gigi Sohn’s nomination to the FCC Commissioners’ Board hadn’t been held up in the Senate for the better part of two years, the deal probably would have been denied anyway based on the conflicts and the related intertwining of Apollo’s existing interests in Cox Media Group and its proposed interests in Tegna.

Here's the thing. This deal would have failed anyway with or without Gigi: a 2-2 deadlock still sinks the deal.

Standard General and Apollo had one full year to get this right. Either party could have offered to divest market conflicts in Atlanta, Seattle and Jacksonville. Apollo could have asked the deal be amended so they don't get WFAA, KHOU, etc. Standard could have offered Graham an olive branch and their pick of a station or offered them a stake in the company. Soo could have shown the bare minimum of humility and self-awareness instead of saying the same boilerplate talking points over and over again.

This is a textbook case of how NOT to conduct an M&A. Soo came off as a belligerent novice in the field of business that for some inexplicable reason previously managed to merge Young, LIN and MediaGeneral out of existence.

42 minutes ago, GoldenShine9 said:

It seems the points that killed the deal were the foreign influence and ignoring the needs to sell conflicting stations.

If this story is any indication, it would have failed in a 2-2 deadlock with both R commissioners voting for it, so Rosenworcel spared all parties the humiliation in advance.

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The FCC's Republican commissioners, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, were not supportive of the Media Bureau decision.

 

“Hundreds of local newspapers have shut down over the last few years alone. This trend is part of a broader decline in the investments necessary to sustain the journalists and reporters that are vital to communities across the country,” they said in a joint statement. “Many of the nation’s local TV stations are trying to step up and expand their newsgathering operations. At this moment, the FCC should be working to encourage more of the investment necessary for these local broadcasters to innovate and thrive. It does the opposite today. After a protracted, nearly yearlong review, the commission should be providing the parties with a decision on the merits — not an uncertain future.”

14 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

Well?........ 

 

Two days after it extended the cut off date, the FCC gave Soohyung Kim a real surprise tonight.

 

Hearing Designation Orders usually be the "death kneel" of any transaction. It's even more of a rarity if the parties to actually go to the hearing itself. Because that process could take up to a year to actually see the judge.

 

The craziest part about this is that a couple of days ago, Standard General was so confident that this deal would get to the finish line. The FCC waited until after trading day ended (4pm) to make this HDO announcement. Talk about Friday Night News Dump.

 

How does Mr. Desperado feel now?.....

 

 

I for one can’t wait to read how this all came down in Soo’s forthcoming memoir…

5 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

With the amount of time that has passed on this deal, Soo Kim should have found a new backer other than Apollo.  That alone would have made this deal closed by now.

 

But at this rate, he'll probably bring it to a hearing, plead his case all over again, and lose.  Tegna would probably spiral into bankruptcy and get auctioned off piecemeal to the highest bidders.

 

At some point, maybe we'd get a new company or two out of it.  Someone else to possibly bail out Sinclair, Gray and Nexstar down the road when they have to pay their debt down...

Tegna stock fell by 25% in after hours trading after the FCC dropped this on them. Even if the board wanted to continue, the investors are bailing.

8 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

That's only if the current leaders of Tegna don't walk away from the deal once it reaches the Outside Date.

 

I wouldn't give Soo any breakup fee before then. This was his mess. He wanted Tegna so bad.

 

@Samanthaand I were considering the likelihood that Tegna terminates the deal and sues Standard General (and possibly Apollo?) for breach of contract. Which is what Tribune did to Sinclair after terminating that deal.

If they go that route, it might not be for a few weeks.

The FCC is asking for an ALJ to weigh in on the deal. Lance Venta has the details.

It’s utterly dead now despite all of Soo’s huffing and puffing.

2 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

And yet this somehow looks much better.

 

Because, as @Weetersexplained, the “KCAL” box is the only box meant to be a brand that could kinda-sorta last in the long term. So that streaming bug accommodates both brands and will do so OTA very soon. The “CBS 11” box is blatantly temporary and once it’s dumped, they’ll adjust the proportions.

THE. CBS. 11. BOX. IS. GOING. AWAY. VERY. SOON. CHANNEL. NUMBERS. ARE. BEING. PHASED. OUT.

13 hours ago, MyNewsArchive said:

Eventually. Question is when? Will be interesting once they launch the new look, given this preview in the background with the black/gold look... 

I really don’t think that in-house look (which is incredibly chintzy) is apropos of anything.

On 2/10/2023 at 8:28 PM, 24994J said:

 

Unlike the good old days, when they didn't care about money.

You’re talking about the late 1910s, when people were actively experimenting on radio transmissions before AT&T realized you could make money off of it.

4 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Sure, if you want a ton of dead space.

It’s literally the same dimensions for every other station using the package. If “Texas” was smaller in size y’all would be grousing over that.

2 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

CBS didn't develop this strategy. One of their local stations did.

 

 

Could that bug look any more disproportional?

 

Well, if you get rid of the obviously tacked-on-at-last-minute "CBS 11" transitional box, the "CBS News Texas" box aligns perfectly.

The “CBS 11” box literally feels like it was added at the last minute and will be tossed in a matter of weeks.

19 hours ago, NewEgg00 said:

NewsNation has TV apps for Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Samsung. 

 

The app is the first to be developed using Haystack Technology. It's based on the Haystack news app that offers live, and playlist-based videos. It has the weather, stocks, news and more in a cable news styled ticker at the bottom of the screen. But NewsNation didn't want to use that portion of the features. 

 

A thing to note is that NewsNation videos are on the Haystack app itself. And both UIs are literally the same, minus the colors, splash screen, etc. So why would NN partner with Haystack instead of developing it themselves? Maybe they were too lazy in getting developers themselves. 

The fact that they went on Roku etc. in the first place is a sign that even Nexstar knows the gravy train of cable retrans revenue isn’t going to last for too much longer.

14 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

I'll say it once, I'll say it again.  Once the affiliation contracts are up with the CW with other groups, I think Nexstar is ready to take things in house where they can.  Even if it means starting up their own subchannel.

 

It seems a foregone conclusion where there is a spare (or MNTV) Nexstar station where a CBS O&O has the CW.

I can see it now... Cleveland's Own, NewsNation CW8.

On 2/19/2023 at 11:09 PM, Megatron81 said:

TV Passport has LIV for WUAB in Cleveland. CW7 in West Michigan is airing LIV as well saw a promo for it last night during WWMT News at 6PM.

That might be news to WUAB as they use TitanTV, and LIV is MIA

1 hour ago, mre29 said:

"NewsNation Billings".... "NewsNation Elmira".... "NewsNation Escanaba"... "NewsNation Podunk"....

 

I can see their competitors having a field day. "Would you trust news for Escanaba that's coming from CHIGAGO?"

Until the competition copies what Nexstar does. Which is that extra layer of hell Dante forgot to write about.

Paul Fahri of the WaPo—one of the last true classic media critics around—did a review of NewsNation for the paper last week.

He wasn’t impressed.
 

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At a time when the cable news industry is struggling to retain viewers, it may be a problematic business plan. Launched in 2020, NewsNation still draws rounding-error ratings, despite a small boost from the CNN veteran, who joined the network in October. It averaged about 63,000 viewers per night during 2022, ranking it 107th among national networks. By comparison, even ratings-challenged CNN — which has fallen behind Fox News and MSNBC — regularly attracts more than 10 times as many viewers per night.

 

At the moment, news isn’t even the leading draw on NewsNation. Its highest-rated program last year was daytime reruns of “Blue Bloods,” the Tom Selleck cop drama that is a holdover from WGN America, the cable channel NewsNation used to be.

… hosts from the Ghosts of Cable News Past …

“It’s just hard to fathom the old model on another network will flourish,” says Carol Costello, a former CNN anchor who now teaches journalism at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “People are not watching news the way they used to. I don’t see anything on NewsNation [that is] particularly new.”

She added, “I applaud NewsNation for trying. It is a challenge to teach [and] explain what journalism actually is today and why it’s important. That makes me achingly sad.”

I wonder sometimes if this current iteration of NewsNation is nothing more than a front for the eventual endgame of merging all newsrooms under their control under the “NewsNation” aegis. Just keep running the channel with the Ghosts of Cable News Past—as the quick money grab it is, thanks to retrans fees—as nothing more than an interregnum.

By 2025, you’ll see “NewsNation New York”, “NewsNation Chicago”, “NewsNation Los Angeles”, “NewsNation Cleveland”, etc., fully replacing local brands as the cable channel evolves into a cheap program supplier for the local stations.

5 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

 

I could not disagree more. Fox certainly tries to disguise itself as a news channel. But there is a huge difference between talking about the news and making up the news. And making up the news is called lying, and these texts prove once again that Fox knows they're lying. And it's bad for the country. (See: January 6th and other attacks since then.)

Fox’s lowest rated dayparts are when they play pretend news. Old angry white people watch it to be lectured to and indoctrinated, they don’t watch for the news or “news”.

5 hours ago, TexasTVNews said:

Judges Milian and Mathis will probably have new court shows in the near future... maybe in 2024.

Oh, I agree. But they’ll probably do a show on an OTT like Judge Judy (“Judy Justice”) now does for Freevee.

1 hour ago, Geoffrey said:

False equivalence. This isn't simply about bias. It's about knowingly spreading baseless and dangerous lies. Fox doesn't believe the disinformation they are peddling. That means they are lying.

Doesn't change what I'm saying. None of them are actual "news" channels in the common sense (heck, NewsNation spends more time airing Blue Bloods reruns than they do running actual newscasts). MSNBC is a talk channel with decent amounts of news in the daytime, but they are largely opinion in primetime. CNN is still trying to clean up from the Zucker Era of Disaster and may very well not please anyone in the end.

Fox merely is just flat-out blatant about not being a news channel, they don't care. They don't need any advertisers because of lucrative retransmission fees they reap the rewards from on a continuous basis. Contrary to what others have suggested elsewhere in the thread, there's really no redeeming part of that channel whatsoever. It attracts no one but old people for a reason.

Cable talk as a whole needs to be thrown into obsolescence where it belongs.

42 minutes ago, PhillyWatch said:

News branding aside, it'd be incredibly shocking if they were to completely dissolve KCAL's identity. Look at all the FOX duopolies- the sister stations each took the name of (all together now...) the more dominant brand.

None of the news departments at the Chris-Craft stations were going to survive because Fox’s intent was to eliminate competitors in their existing O&O markets, the lone exception being KMSP, and they flipped that station from UPN to Fox. Those stations became little more than shells and wastes of spectrum.

“Cable news” is a oxymoron. They all peddle talk and opinion programming to some degree or other. (I count the pointless and vapid talking head interviews and mini-debate segments, but yes, Fox is extremely explicit in showing bias on-air.)

They also attract audiences way out of the money demo. The median age range for a Fox and MSNBC viewer is 69. CNN’s median age range is 66.

I would put into question the actual relevance of the entire genre. Sure, Fox may be #1, but if their demos are that embarrassing, does it even matter?

1 minute ago, bostonmediaguy said:

 

CBS and Paramount+

NBC and Peacock

Fox and Tubi

That’s comparing apples to a jar of mayonnaise.