DirtyHarry

The conspiratorialist side of me says that this is all set up in advance as a way for the Saudis to get to buy into the PGA. The PGA, I believe, is a non-profit. No way to buy into a non-profit except maybe through a backdoor merger like this. Monahan and a bunch of key executives probably got payoffs and retention bonuses as well. That's what happens with all these mutual insurance companies that get gobbled up by another company, especially for profit companies. You were all played.

You know this is a dying industry when all of these companies are being scooped up by banksters and bottom fisher low rent broadcasters like Byron Allen.

It isn't dirty money for every place else they spend it. It isn't dirty for Tiffany's, it isn't dirty when some sheik has have his cancer cured at the Mayo Clinic, it isn't dirty when they buy F16's from us, but it's dirty for something as insignificant as golf? The people who allowed themselves to get sucked into the propaganda that Saudi involvement was somehow dirty were just basically puppets and used by the PGA and the networks. That's the bottom line.

I still laugh at the people who were trying to turn this into this being about Saudi involvement. Like nobody would ever dream of taking dirty money in this country. (Not saying Saudi money is dirty, but that's what they were trying to make it sound like.) All this time it was about squashing a competitor, which is what I said in the first place. I want you all to remember how you were used and now apply this lesson to everything else you hear in the media, especially when it comes from Washington.

Brad Underwood leaves WKRC. https://www.wvxu.org/media/2023-06-01/brad-underwood-leaves-wkrc-news-tvkiese

Yes, Susie Gilbert, which I believe is her real name, and Shawn Ireland, which is not her real name (I believe it's Pam Gilbert), are sisters. Which begs the question, what did they call Shawn Ireland at work? Did they call her Shawn or did they call her Pam? Calling her by her stage name in real life is kind of weird, but if they call her by her real name, they might screw up on the air. Incidentally, I've seen signed checks from the actor Eddie Albert signed Eddie Albert, even though his real name was Edward Albert Heimberger. There's a Heimberger Road in Fairfield County and it's named after his dad's side of the family. Even though Eddie Albert wasn't from here, his dad was.

Sinclair always had a fetish for leveraging content. It makes sense if they use three stations' resources to do something one station couldn't do on its own, but if you're going to take the same cheap product and just eliminate duplication by doing it once, I don't know if that benefits you much. Here's an example of something from the 1980s when they tried to do a kids show called "Take 1" for all three stations they owned.

The seedy underbelly of sports is out in the open. It didn't really occur to me that gambling was driving much of the interest in sports until the internet came around and gambling became more omnipresent.

Stadium is garbage. The only thing I ever see on there are these lesser universities nobody has ever heard of. Like who's going to watch a University of Akron basketball game?

Wouldn't it be better to just lease time on one of these sidecar stations? Or does the FCC not allow that?

Inyo, though not a sidecar, is operated by parties friendly to Scripps if I remember correctly. It's not like they have a lot invested in identity that they couldn't give up those call letters. Like CBS using WWJ in Detroit, just a way to get attention.

Likewise in Indianapolis. I would put the WLWI call letters on the ion station there, which I think they own but I'm too lazy to look up. Then I'd start running all kinds of old Avco things maybe once a month. Not that anybody would watch them (I doubt many would), but people do have fond memories of those shows. You could still build a great marketing campaign around those shows to build awareness of your station. David Letterman doing the TOH announcement, "That's right kids, I used to do the weather on WLWI, Indianapolis, now Channel 63."

It's corporate malpractice not to bring the WLWC call letters to Columbus. You can design an entire marketing campaign around that to give your station some recognition instead of just some station on autopilot. They're based in Cincinnati so you'd think they'd have some kind of an appreciation of the way you could market using that heritage, but they don't have a very good track record. They seem to always screw up their businesses.

How does anybody sit through QVC now that you can just go to the computer and search for things yourself?

They're not going to show you their cards yet. It would be different if one of the big channels had the CBS affiliation, but I wouldn't think twice about taking it for myself in this situation.

Jacksonville, Boston, Indianapolis, Johnson City, Wisconsin, San Francisco They won't think twice about pulling the plug.

CBS isn't afraid to pull the trigger.

Most things on those independent stations is junk these days. I would love to go back to them showing live sports.

Besides, ratings are so pathetic these days. What are we talking about, ratings in the "3's"? If they go Indy and get ratings in the "1's", but get to keep all the profit, I bet they still come out ahead.

The big thing here is pro football. There is a lot of money to be made by owning both the local and national sides of that programming. And with CBS now being able to show more NFC games, they would be crazy to leave that affiliation with somebody else. Those two stations are going to be CBS. Why put money in other people's pockets? Tampa too! They were doing 3-year affiliation agreements, so my read on this is that they expire in early 2024.

If that's true, then you would be correct.

They won't get anywhere as it is my understanding that their deal expired. Unless Diamond Sports has any options to renew the deal in their current contract, they're screwed. Bankruptcy courts will protect your position in current contracts that are in force, but they can't protect you in contracts that have expired.

Phoenix Suns dumping Bally and going back to OTA. https://arizonasports.com/story/3522489/bally-sports-arizona-owner-diamond-sues-suns-mercury/

Sounds like Bally couldn't come to terms with the Phoenix Suns and they are going back to OTA, which I think is going to be great for all sports. Independent TV stations are a wasteland of crappy syndicated programming. Back in the old days sports was one of their prime focuses. It'll be nice to return to that again. https://arizonasports.com/story/3522489/bally-sports-arizona-owner-diamond-sues-suns-mercury/

It's only an anchor on paper. It's a separate entity owned by Sinclair and others. I doubt that Sinclair was either pulling much money out of the RSNs (because they didn't have much money to distribute) or putting much money into them. The banks and people who bought the bonds are the ones eating the debt, or at least that's my educated guess.