DirtyHarry

Rumored for a long time, maybe they let him know what was going on and they got him to stay out of loyalty to the Wolfes? I always liked Jerry, even back to his radio days on WBNS. Good looking guy, delivers on an even keel. Not the most exciting guy in the world, but not boring either. My only knock against him was the poor chemistry he had with Kristyn Hartmann. For that matter, suspicious that Maureen Kocot and Shelby Croft left just before the sale was announced. Think they also got a heads up? Lots of back and forth between WTVN/WSYX and WBNS over the years, going back to the 1960's even with Gene D'Angelo as VP (from WTVN to WBNS). Sally Flowers and Gene Fullen first developed a following on WBNS Radio (originally a bandleader from Kansas, I think) and Gene Fullen was WTVN-TV's go-to personality for the longest time until he died from heart problems. Also ... Carol Costello, Janet Watkins, Lou Forrest, Tom Ryan ... and others. Now Tony D'Angelo is in charge of WSYX. I always wondered if the Tafts and the Wolfes were buddies since they were both in the same business and both traveled in Republican circles. These historical connections are meaningless, I know. Just interesting to me.

About as surprising as the stations being sold.

I think The Dispatch already does prints those Gannett papers along with The Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today as well. I always thought they were setting things up for The Dispatch to go to Gannett, but GateHouse must have offered significantly more money. What's interesting is that they print the Dayton paper in Indy. Makes more sense to flip things around and print The Dayton Daily News (and the Springfield paper) in Columbus and Cincinnati Enquirer in Indy. You save trucking cost to Dayton, but it's the same distance to Cincinnati from both Columbus and Indy. But then again, perhaps there are dropoffs somewhere north of Cincy which would be farther if you have to take I-74. (Not that they care about benefitting Cox, but it still might make more sense to keep the presses going.) WBIR was a Multimedia station so it is with Tegna. The fact that that Delia guy from WTHR has been promoted and gets to continue to oversee the stations means they are cognizant about not screwing things up.

That newsroom they have pictured in the article looks very similar to the setup WBNS and WTHR are using, with that round center pod. is that something that is an industry trend, or did they design their newsrooms that way in anticipation of selling out to Tegna?

I was watching a little bit of the El Paso local coverage on the Nexstar station there (Channel 9). A prank caller called into the station claiming she was in the movie theater at the mall and her aunt was shopping in the mall and they put her on the air. She was dropping references to 8-chan, white supremacy and how they were ushered out of the movie theater and scared because of the rumors that African migrants were raping people at the mall. She was basically mocking all conventional talking points before she called the reporter a dumb f*** for believing her and hung up the phone. Edit: I found it but the volume is low:

snip

More like, "Give us a successful media property and we'll figure out how to destroy it."

Re: Your new Avatar. I always liked that logo.

You're right, I forgot about that. They should do that with cable boxes. Incidentally, the power company changed my meter to a new electronic one. They gave me this Gizmo that allows me to monitor energy usage on my phone. I was playing around with it and I didn't realize how much juice those cable boxes use. Mine is pulling 500 watts (w/o a DVR) while the 58" plasma TV only pulls about a hundred. More incentive to hook up an antenna to the TV.

$100 million is basically like losing one network affiliate station in a place like Charleston, WV maybe?

At least you don't have to pay that local broadcast fee that way. Easy solution to all this: Cable boxes should have a place to plug in an antenna. Have the OTA signals listed in the cable guide right along with the rest of the channels--hit the channel number just like all the rest of the cable channels and it tunes to an OTA channel without having to hit an A/B switch or without picking up programming from the cable company.

https://abc6onyourside.com/station/people Somehow I ended up on the WSYX talent page. I count 35 people. I know at least one of them is a Sinclair reporter, but is their news department really this large?

How about TEGHA since WTHR and WBNS are going to be related to GateHouse? (GH for GateHouse instead of GN for Gannett.)

Looks cramped in there. Do they have the same problem with studio space that their former sister station WCMH had?

Those squiggly lines on the backdrop are reminiscent of a Media General set. But I thought their set was done in-house. Was it ever upgraded after that? Or is this a new Sinclair set?

Yes, many use hair straightener/relaxer depending on the hairstyle. Rob needs gallons and gallons of it and a good tutor. I'm too old and too sick and tired of the PC police to change my vocabulary anymore. For me it's black, but I changed it to "black colleagues" because it reads better.

I can't say I've watched them all that much, but here is my take on things from somebody who used to be in Cincinnati fairly frequently. Dierking is dry, but she's got the MILF thing going on. You have to be impressed with somebody who is almost 60 and keeps themselves in shape like that. As much charisma as Rob Braun's dad used to have, I'm surprised he is so dry. Bob Braun was a genuinely funny, funny guy. Rob may be a riot in person, but on TV he is pretty boring. Plus there is that hair. One of his black colleagues at the station need to teach him how to use some hair straightener. I say that as a person with curly hair myself, but it just doesn't look right on the guy! Okay, enough for the superficiality. Spare me the sanctimony about the Sinclair spot. It was just a locally tailored promotion. Every chain store does that and TV stations are no different than chain stores these days in my opinion. A Sears in Cincinnati has Bengals jerseys they advertise. A Sears in Detroit has Lions jerseys and they probably use the same ad, too. Same difference if Cincinnati anchors and Columbus anchors and Dayton anchors are all cutting a promo reading the same script.

Rob Braun is okay, but he's no Nick Clooney. If he were that level of talent, he might have been able to get a gig in one of the cities where The Bob Braun Show used to air. That would create some buzz. He could have been Columbus' next Doug Adair. But like I said, he's no Nick Clooney (or Doug Adair). Does he end up at one of the other stations in town or is he too old for another gig?

Now this is a situation where collusion might actually be illegal. Companies can't collude together to force business terms down AT&T throats. They better watch it.

They could call it "columbus4.com" (since CMH is the Columbus airport code for those who don't know), but you'd be surprised how many people will botch the spelling of Columbus. NBC4i is easy and if you have an easy domain name, you keep it.

According to Wikipedia, Tegna made $698.4 million in operating profit. According to one of the Articles yesterday, the purchase price for WTHR and WBNS was 7.9 times earnings. Doing some quick math, that backs out to about $68 million dollars in profit. Can two mid-market stations really account for 10% of the profit of a 50 station chain? Will Tegna management be able to keep these stations as profitable as they are?

If you can find it, dig up the Doug Adair tribute from Virgil Dominic. He said the most amazing thing about Doug Adair was that back in the day when they didn't have teleprompters, news people would memorize their scripts. Doug wouldn't do that, he ad-libbed everything. Although this was before my time, that's what they said Chet Long used to do. I've also found that public speakers who ad-lib tend to give more interesting presentations than people who read a speech. (Kasich is a good example of this and, dare I say Trump?) This was back in the 1970's (?) when I was still in high school. Mona Scott (in her WLWC days), Vicki Grant, Angela Pace, among others, all caught my attention and I don't typically have crushes on black chicks. Maybe it was those teenage hormones, but she was very good looking when she first started.

Never liked Kaylor ... all I remember him was those goofy glasses he always wore and that undercover story where he dressed up as a hobo to report on what it's like to be homeless. He was mocked mercilessly for that. I had a crush on Angela Pace when she first started at Channel 4, but I liked her less and less as she got older.

Never liked many of the local guys. I strictly look at "performance" skills: Great voice, interesting manner of presentation, ability to make a witty crack every now and then. Doug Adair was my ideal, but those guys don't come up that often. I think Finnerty was also at WJW or WEWS.

Depends how you judge. I judge by presentation skills and all the people I listed were pretty good, with Doug Adair being the best by far. I thought Jim Finnerty was pretty good, but his hair looked weird. He never caught on. I thought Doug Adair was put out to pasture and that's how he ended up in Columbus. Anyway, I thought all those people had good presentation skills. Never was a fan of Colleen. Good looking lady, but annoying voice.