Adam MadMan

Probably not shutting down - they've been adding new shows to the cable feed - but rather leaving OTA for cable (and streaming?) only. This TV, on the other hand, is likely doomed. They've been losing even more affiliates since the (then-)Tribune stations dropped it for Court TV, and the loss of carriage on ABC's O&Os to Charge may be the final straw.

♪ Boot salad yummy yummy ♪ At least some of the commenters are calling him out on his BS.

And Kevin Adell's chance of consummating his deal to sell WADL has gone from jack squat to jack...y'know.

I'm sorry, all I can hear is the sound of a tongues scraping across the soles of boots. All joking aside, how is allowing far off corporations to control the country supposed to promote localism? For that matter, how the hell is any of the consolidation that's happened over the past several years done anything but screw over the little guy? I'm no fan of big government myself, but this recent change is one of the few I've completely agreed with, and before you point to "market realities" (I don't think you know what that word means), let's not kid ourselves; a lot of the wounds the broadcast industry has suffered over the years have been entirely their own fault (iHeartMedia and Sinclair say hi), and things like retransmission consent and reverse compensation have served little purpose than to further alienate the consumers they supposedly speak for.

And here comes the crybabying defense squad. Hilarious that they think that allowing local monopolies would make them "compete better", rather than, y'know, just making the situation worse. How's iHeartMedia doing right now?

The FCC may be about to cut the low power and multicast loopholes regarding Big Four ownership.

Tegna's taking their Twist diginet behind the shed, gun in hand, at the end of this month.

The Advocate is reporting that WVUE is talking with the New Orleans Pelicans to air a small selection of games. This is apparently a result of a one-year deal Diamond Sports signed with the NBA to allow teams to offer up to ten games on over the air stations in exchange for staying with Bally Sports for the season. Basically testing the waters that the Suns and Jazz are already swimming in (along with the NHL's Golden Knights and Coyotes).

I suppose he explained this so people would see his point of view. In reality, he just looks like more of a moron than ever. Especially since he flat out admitted that he wanted nothing to do with The CW in the first place, and only let WADL affiliate with it because he was planning to sell. Then why the hell is he whining about WMYD taking the affiliation he specifically said he didn't want in the first place????? EDIT 11/27/2023: And he's got Jesse Jackson and the families of the original African-American investors to back him. Somehow.

The FCC is considering an incentive to boost local programming, specifically news.

I've already got the answer. NGL, I Kevin kinda blew it here. I get that the FCC wasn't eager to greenlight the sale to Mission, but demanding more money from Nexstar in the age of reverse compensation cost WADL dearly. On the other hand, the fact that Scripps was willing to sacrifice what might have been eventual prime time space for the Tigers/Pistons/Red Wings if/when DSG goes belly-up suggests they can be talked into keeping The CW on at least some their stations.

The link's down for whatever reason, but looking ahead on the website's schedule, which uses TitanTV, does support this. I clearly saw The CW programming running in prime time from 11/13 onwards; it also shows MyNetworkTV programming moving to 11 pm, after the news.

I already knew they were airing Seattle Kraken preseason games on KONG-TV and select San Antonio Spurs games on KENS, so this honestly doesn't surprise me. Oh, and the Mets on WCCT, but that was grandfathered in from the former Tribune ownership. Most of what they list are either NFL teams they have preseason rights to or teams with limited coverage that doesn't include live games, but with DSG in deep doo-doo and the Colorado Rockies presently homeless due to AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountains going belly up, it's obvious that Tegna's keeping their eyes peeled.

I wouldn't be shocked to see that design appear in more markets. Scripps has publicly stated that they plan to pounce on more regional sports rights should Diamond Sports Group reneg on anymore deals.

Not entirely surprising, given those subchannels are airing Vegas Golden Knights games as part of Scripps' contract.

Probably depends on who is able to get more stations on board to air the games. After all, the footprints of MLB teams are generally much larger than those of the NBA and MLB; they might even decide to stick to the ad hoc cable channel they set up after DSG dumped them, though with the Suns and Coyotes on OTA and the Cardinals generally airing cable games on OTA anyway per NFL rules, they'd be the only Big Four sports team to keep most of their games exclusive to pay TV if they went that route.

I think the only reason NBC shunted Days of our Lives to Peacock was to boost that service, anyway. Paramount+ isn't perfect, but it seems to not really need an aging soap opera to boost it up. That's what they took over Showtime for.

Not great for The CW, since it leaves the rest of Montana unaccounted for AFAIK, but I think I know what Scripps' endgame is. They recently bought the broadcast rights to the NHL's Vegas Golden Knights, and with The CW gone, I noticed they've turned those subchannels into independents. Since Montana is in the Golden Knights' territory, they're probably going to run the games on those channels.

According to the Seattle Times, they're still running Comet during non-CW hours. Either that's a sign of the syndication market's inexorable decline, all the other stations taking all the decent programming, talks being really down to the wire, or just weapon's grade laziness on Sinclair's part.

I guess talks with Tegna fell apart. If I had to guess, it was because of the Atlanta situation. While Tegna did have KONG as leverage, Nexstar's relationship with Gray took precedence, hence WPCH being chosen over WATL, which probably led Tegna to take KONG off the market.

Well, prime time used to start at 7:30 before it was moved to 8 by the FCC over concerns that the Big 3 had too much power. They later got the 7 pm hour back on Sundays, but by the time the law was repealed for good, syndication companies had been making a mint on that real estate for two decades, and have kept the networks from taking that time back (outside of the few OTA networks that program more or less 24/7 like Ion). TL;DR, it's kinda prime time, but only officially on Sundays, because that's the only day of the week the networks program that hour.

It's certainly been theorized by a few outlets, given the Diamond Sports bankruptcy. I think their best bet for sports rights at the moment would be Pittsburgh. With Warner Bros. Discovery closing shop on their RSNs, the Pirates and Penguins need a new home. While it's been theorized that, since the Penguins are owned by the same guys as the Red Sox, they might move it to NESN, one of the few RSNs still doing reasonably well, but with several other teams going OTA, anything can happen.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up all of these URLs. At the moment, only boston38.com is currently active; it redirects to the Paramount Streaming division page on the Paramount Global website. The rest just send me to a page saying they're registered and protected.

Comet, Charge, Tennis Channel, and T2 will be added to Hulu in January 2024.

How long until RNN goes bankrupt itself?