Rusty Muck

Totally different circumstances and didn't occur under the spectre of a presidential election.

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.

The problem is young people watch shows on streaming. Young Sheldon actually had changing demos when reruns went to Netflix. From the New York Times: The show also struck a chord with viewers under the age of 34, according to Nielsen. Mr. Molaro, the show’s co-creator, said the Netflix bump became apparent to him when the crew was shooting a scene recently near a church in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. “Young Sheldon” had filmed in that location dozens of times without incident. But this time, roughly five months after the show began streaming on Netflix, it was a vastly different situation. “There were hundreds of kids at the fence screaming for Wallace Shawn,” he said, referring to the 80-year-old cast member. “We were like, ‘What is happening?’” So yeah, linear television is in a very bad state right now, and the last thing the affiliates need is for the networks to give up on them, because they have no Plan B. And contrary to the sentiments of a few people in this fandom, MOAR NEWS is not, I repeat NOT, an acceptable Plan B.

Shut up. I'm not magic wanding anything. You have no idea what in the hell you're talking about. This is not a speculation thread. You are clueless and have no idea how things work. They will buy these stations and you will be disappointed when reality slaps you across the face. I will only ask this once. Do not quote me and try to prolong this as your time here may be severly limited.

Totally irrelevant to the topic field. Disney won't be looking at these stations. Stop this magic wand wishcasting right now. I'm not "cheering" anything, I'm just not engaging in magic wand thinking and foolishly spouting off "Hearst! Graham! ABC!" when the facts state otherwise. They aren't buying a bunch of laggards, or anything else, for that matter. You are really getting on my nerves and I would strongly suggest refraining from making more posts like these.

Disney is, and has always been, wholly uninterested in buying any TV stations. It'll never happen. INSP and Coastal/Vision are the likeliest candidates for KATU. Who else wants it?

Please don't post walls of text irrelevant to the topic thread for the sake of posting walls of text. It's honestly deeply aggravating. This is a thread about Sinclair Broadcast Group, not an invitation to spout off verbal diarrhea about whatever the CBS stations are doing. Who freaking cares? Like Scott Fybush said in reply to you in RadioDiscussions: "Going forward, the discussion on this site needs to more than just 'lists of things.'"

With all do respect, the only purpose of commerical broadcasting is to make money. "Public good" is secondary, if it is even a factor.

Irrelevant to the topic at hand. They also have money and incentive. That's why EMF, Relevant Radio and Daystar have vacuumed up oodles of stations over the years. I'm not "beign jealous" of anything, I'm simply existing in the real world, not fantasy-driven wishcasting of groups buying a bunch of basketcase stations from a bush league owner. Have you ever heard of "return on investment"? Again, totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. With all due respect, do better.

Why? Because they are the only ones who would want to buy these stations that, for the most part, have no local news presence, little viewership or zero infrastructure. The spectrum hogging would matter more, and it does with a bottom-feeder like INSP. Well, I live in the real world, and these stations being sold are those the megachains or the networks would not want. Hearst is not going to spend money on a bunch of fixer-uppers or total rebuild projects, and neither would Gray, Graham, Scripps or Tegna.

INSP, Coastal and Daystar are the most likely buyers of these stations. Standard General is a company in limbo since they failed to get Tegna (with the current farce that is MediaCo, Standard clearly has no idea what their plans are in any aspect of mass media) and the stations they currently have are low-budget, low-rated dumps. Plus Apollo is not going to spend money on stations that sorely need investment in or need totally new infrastructures altogether.

Even without the links to Old Scotty's blog, it's fairly obvious that Byron Allen is overleveraged and likely is being crushed by debt. One could argue that his fruitless "bids" to buy ABC, Tegna and Paramount Global have been simple distractions to hide what is a much more serious problem.

Byron Allen is too badly overleveraged and has acquired a bad reputation for talking up deal after deal and failing to actually make them. He is not a credible candidate for anything.

Thank you for saying that. I don't know if it's a bug or a feature about the TV fandom in the present day but it has also irritated the moderators over there considerably.

Sinclair is what would have happened had a miserly 1980s-era owner like TVX Broadcast Group or Media Central somehow existed into the present day.

Serious question: why in the wide wide world of sports would any of those groups want basketcase stations that need a massive amount of investment just in order to be remotely competitive in a declining industry? Plus Apollo Global Management isn't buying anything and Byron Allen is too badly overleveraged. With all due respect, what makes anyone think Apollo is going to have the soulless husk of Cox Media Group buy anything or that Byron is going to do anything but make vacant empty promises he can't deliver?

It won't. While the company is looking over the Sony-Apollo bid, it is out of courtesy alone and will be rejected as soon as practicable. That being said, Apollo is more likely to sell off Cox Media Group than they are going to have them buy anything. Cox Media is stagnant, faltering and running on fumes.

That's been an industry problem for over 35 years. Everyone has tried to be a knockoff of WSVN and local news has been stuck in the same old, same old. It's why viewership is collapsing.

Private equity isn't going to want to bother with television station ownership after the FCC let the Standard/Apollo buyout of Tegna die on the vine. (Standard General, particularly their MediaCo subsidiary, is a ghastly basketcase right now, so count them out, too.) It is not outside the realm of possibility that Daystar buys all the stations and flips them immediately to godcasters. Also... it's 2024. Interest rates are not near zero like they were a decade ago. It is not financially productive or possible for a singular buyer to emerge for these stations. The investment banker advising Sinclair right now assuredly told them this hard truth.