DirtyHarry

I think most people do. When was the last time you saw an All in the Family or Maude rerun? Sanford and son was the least political, not to mention the most funny. You see that one a lot more than the former two. Green Acres is one of the best shows of all time. Some political stuff sneaks in there, but it's usually to poke people in the eye and make fun of life. Beverly Hillbillies speaks for itself. It's everywhere. Petticoat Junction was lame though.

Two things screwed everything up: 1) the death of all the vaudeville people; 2) Norman Lear. Before Lear, everything was just entertainment. Norman Lear with all his shows where he tried to make a social statements influenced too many others who seem to want to push their politics on everybody else. (Not to mention that many of us think that Archie Bunker has been partially vindicated after all these years.) But more importantly we've lost all those vaudeville people. Those people knew how to tell jokes and entertain and TV and radio reflected that. They're gone and I don't think the people producing TV today have the well-honed skills that those old timers had.

It would be nice if you could use a channel number online or through streaming though. I don't know why they haven't included that on the streams that use a menu like Pluto. Or maybe you can do this and I just don't know about it since I go through a Roku box? I'll probably get in trouble for posting this, but I was amused by the ad at the top of the screen, so I screen capped it for you all.

I don't understand BBC America either. I see virtually nothing British there that differentiates it from any other channel. It seems like the same movies that run on AMC are then passed on to IFC, then Sundance and sometimes then to BBC.

Imagine if they move this to Columbus, putting VHF 4 on Ohio State's 1200 foot tower in Westerville (which is already on high ground, I beleive). That signal would travel a long way. Columbus stations should be proactive in these outlying areas if they want to protect their turf. They need to fire up LPTV's in Athens, Cambridge and places like that.

Maybe they're going to try to move it to Zanesville so they can add CBS and ABC. (Or maybe even Columbus.) The geek side of me would love this. I've never tried to tune in a low VHF before and I'd love to see if it's as bad as people say. Petition the FCC for a move to UHF? Maybe there's room for that in Zanesville. Might be able to eat away at the Columbus Market with all four Network affiliates. Places like Athens don't get Columbus signals anyway. Columbus could drop down a few pegs if Zanesville ends up taking counties away. Will the powers that be let that happen?

I'd pay for a TCM only subscription, if that's possible, without bundling it with other channels. I can't say I miss too many other things on cable since I cut the cord a few years ago. Actually, the cable channels, for now, come through my TV because I still have internet through them. And I still don't watch it. But supposedly they are changing over to IPTV so that's not going to last much longer.

I don't understand why, however. What is the conflict / elimination of competition issue there? Not to mention that Forum is a quality company. Reminds me of when WBNS and WTHR got approved in 60 days. Maybe my theory that Tegna has some pull with the federal government might not be that far off.

South Bend and Sioux Falls are both similar sized, South Bend just isn't isolated like Sioux Falls is. They could do what Weigel does there. They've got live staff, but some things like weather are done in Milwaukee. Or that's what I read before. WDAY is a quality outfit so if they could snag the Fox affiliation, I think they could carve out a niche. Since mostly the same weather patterns are affecting Fargo and Sioux Falls, I could see the weather being produced in Fargo without skipping a beat. After all, KDNL morning weather comes from Columbus and that seems to work. Aren't they buying some other Fox station in the region? I think in Minnesota somewhere?

If I remember correctly, Pluto uses Vevo for music videos. I don't mind a reasonable amount of commercials. I realize people have to pay their bills and make some money. The problem is when they keep layering them and the commercials never seem to end. The other thing I hate is when they push low quality borderline scam products on us. If they're so great at pinpointing potential customers, they should know who is stupid enough to buy those things and who isn't. I personally believe that all stale content should be free, when it comes to music, print and video. Forget the copy protection and all this other crap, just encode them in a way so that a reasonable amount of commercials get inserted from the internet. If you want to watch commercial free, then you can watch them through a service. (I understand that you should pay for first-run and newer content however.)

Given the crap on TV these days, I just don't see much of a future for the business until they can figure out a way to provide something unique. I just don't see who would watch most of those shows other than low income, less than intellectual types. At least the fighting on Jerry Springer and Richard Bey was funny. There's nothing funny or entertaining about any of these shows.

This was the closest I could find on the fly. They painted the background blue at some point, but it started out as a beige color.

Two comments a little off topic. 1) Surprised I didn't hear the "Nationwide is on Your Side" tones at the beginning or end of the newscast. It was part of the WNCI top of the hour ID for many years. 2) That news set looks very similar to the one WTVN/WSYX had. WSYX had a more streamlined version, though.

I always wondered why one of the local stations didn't format itself as an all movies Channel. Do it like they used to do with a local host, somebody entertaining or witty, maybe have viewrs call in to rag on the movie or have a sidebar where people can make comments like a lot of the YouTube podcast type shows. I know there are movies only diginets, but that live factor is missing. Watching movies with a local host has to be better than what's on most independent stations these days which seems mostly to be Court shows and Oprah clones. I think that's kind of what I'm getting at. The entire broadcast industry used to have plenty of fun. Now that it's all corporate, I don't know if they even have it in them to be able to give us fun. That seems more like something that would come naturally to the local owner, but not to some corporate suit.

So much of TV news is just political propaganda. It comes from either party operatives or their deep state sources. Maybe it was always this way, but it has never been more obvious that most of it is propaganda. I've completely tuned it out, which I probably shouldn't be doing, but what's the point of watching right-wing, deep state or left-wing Pravda on the tube anymore? It's just talking points repeated over and over again doing the whole Joseph Goebbels thing of repeating lies over and over again.

I don't know how much this article has merit and how much of it is political slant, but there is no question that network TV is losing viewership. There's very little I find on that's interesting and unlike the TV shows of the olden days, it's just too much effort to follow anything anymore. I liked the way old TV shows were better. It was down and dirty and entertaining at the same time. Plus, you knew who all the actors were, even the character actors who would step out of Hollywood on occasion to be guest stars on the shows. Anyway, just thought I'd pass this along. https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2023/01/tvs-awful-year.html

I hope his bosses have a sense of humor. Most corporate suits don't. But then again, Byron Allen owns the station, so he might not mind the comedy.

I had a feeling she was going to Detroit at first, but then she started talking like she was going to be staying in Columbus, so that threw me off. Always go with your first instinct.

Scripps should get ahold of the WLWC call letters for WSFJ. If they really want to be creative they can drop in some Avco nostalgia, which I'm sure they can get a hold of easily from their crosstown rival in Cincinnati. Maybe they can even run some of those tribute shows WLWT runs periodically. The WLWC call letters are on a station in Providence they had to offload. But they are friendly with that company so it should be easy to get them back. The call letters won't mean anything in the long run, but they can get some cheap marketing attention for an otherwise forgotten station sharing a low power frequency. (Kind of like the WWJ call letters in Detroit.)

I just don't understand who watches TV today. It seems like there are a multitude of 1.0 rating shows, of no interest really to anybody. It's a miracle that can make all the numbers work and make a profit.

There are cities in this market too far away for an over-the-air signal, Cambridge and Athens being among them. I don't know why the Columbus stations don't put up lptv translators and then feed some special content to those distant areas.

Three things going on here: 1. These retransmission fees are indeed causing people to cut the cord. I was like the proverbial frog in slow boiling water. We went from $80, to $110, to $130 and I kept toying with the idea of cutting the cable with each increase. But when it hit almost $170 with all the other fees at the end of the bill, including retransmission fees, that's when I had enough. I think $30 was added on top of the cable bill for retransmission fees and for sports fees. No thanks. (Medium package only plus 100 gig internet, no phone, no bells and whistles, only one cable box, no DVR. Now I only pay 40 bucks for the internet.) 2. Cable companies should design their tuner boxes like satellite companies were doing before. Keep the local stations in your lineup so it is seamless, but have that signal come in through an over-the-air antenna instead of through the cable box to give people the opportunity to avoid those fees. If TV stations balk, then just pull them off the system. I don't think anybody will miss them at this point. 3. My cable company, before they sold out to another cable company, was actively pushing you to drop tv. They wanted you only as an Internet customer and they wanted you to stream. If you wanted cable, they wanted you to go through YouTube TV. Internet they say generates 80% of their profits, with very little effort spent on service calls and that sort of thing compared to TV which generates only 20% profit, but gives them all sorts of grief administratively.

I wish people would better be able to make the distinction between the city proper and the metro area / market. The population of Youngstown has been cut in half, maybe even more, but not the metro area. In 1970, the population of Metro Youngstown was 396,000; as of 2020, the metro area population is 357,000. So the population is down, but nowhere near drastic levels. (The population was actually up a little bit by 1990.) Don't you think Tegna would be a better fit, given WFMJ's newspaper heritage? There are also economies of scale to be had that way. Hopefully the banksters will be shooed away and it can be back to business as usual.

It's very common to be running with the old logo these days and not go through the trouble of updating them. Kmart, Kroger, Sears, Macy's, Marathon, Exxon and many others do the same thing. I know that's retail, but that's where logos get a lot of exposure like tv.

I think they should do it like radio. Maybe 5 minutes of serious news at the top of the hour, the rest being like the Morning Zoo or a talk show. Talk, banter, in studio guests, whatever act is having a concert down at the local theater or arena, Jack Hanna with his animals, maybe a band. I'd also hire a bunch of interns, give them iPhones and every time there's a car accident I would send them out to film all the gore. People love that stuff. Let the other channels do boring news, I'd do Action News 19 on if I we're running a station. Totally entertaining and sensational. There was an article in the Dispatch this morning about some guy who got mad that Giant Eagle closed at 10:00 p.m. and rammed his stolen car through the front entrance. I'd put that on some kind of a carousel and loop it the entire day. Now that's good TV. LOL