Adam MadMan

1 hour ago, CoopInTheHouse said:

In the midst of almost last week, KIVI switched their 2nd digital sub-channel to an independent sub-channel, moving Laff (the channel previously occupying the .2 sub-channel) to the .5 subchannel, replacing getTV. Its semi-satellite, KSAW-LD, did the same.

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

4 hours ago, Megatron81 said:

I wonder who will be airing the D-Back next season in The Valley Of Sun Gray or Scripps?

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.

35 minutes ago, Abraham J. Simpson said:

That would suggest they find an opportunity to profit from it. Not everything goes over to a streaming service. Some series just die. For every “show X moves to streaming” you can list many more that don’t, even in the streaming era.
 

What I suggested was there is no automatic reason to expect such a scenario to play out. Different platforms, different parent companies. Different strategic priorities. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. 

 

 

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.

9 hours ago, The Frog said:

An affiliation switch flew under the radar. The CW departed Scripps' MTN group of stations for Nexstar's KSVI.

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.

The CW is airing the Miss USA pageant later this month.

Speaking of scheduling changes, they're swapping FBoy Island and the comedy night so that FBoy Island isn't competing with The Golden Bachelor.

So instead, they're competing with Monday Night Football and Dancing with the Stars. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire...

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.

1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:

KOMO will take over the CW affiliation in Seattle (presumably on a subchannel).

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.

10 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

Well isn't 7pm (6pm C/M) is called "Primetime Access"? I don't see that much difference.

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.

12 hours ago, atlnews2 said:

Any word on if CBS will make a play for local sports rights for their newly independent stations? 
 

 

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.

CBS changed its fall schedule to add various streaming series, as well as the linear return of SEAL Team and reruns of Yellowstone.

3 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

The inevitable has happened; RNN Associates, which turned several major market stations into zombies carrying ShopHQ programming, has purchased ShopHQ's parent company out of (duh) Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They're probably going to keep their viewer-hostile 'only appeal to 50+ers until they're in the grave' strategy going.

 

Great job, FCC; your spectrum auction turned a broadcaster into a shopping network-owning literal waste of electricity for a channel that should've died decades ago but hangs on because of must-carry. Really great for that 'diversity of voices' thing you used to judge licensees on in the old days.

How long until RNN goes bankrupt itself?

Here's an odd bit of irony: iSpot says that while prime time is in the gutter, daytime TV, including syndication, is actually growing in terms of ad impressions and share of linear impressions.

Harry Jessel whines about the deal's death (can you tell I'm sick of reading this crap?).

8 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

So, for those wondering, at last check, here are the times WSNN's newscasts are on (sorry for creating a list but excuse me on this one to make a point), at least on weekdays...

• 06:00-09:00AM
• 10:00-11:00AM
• 11:30AM-12:00PM
• 01:00-03:00PM
• 03:30-04:00PM
• 05:00-07:00PM
• 08:00-09:00PM (08:30-09:00PM on Fridays because of Music and The Spoken Word at 08:00PM)
• 10:00-11:30PM
• 03:00-05:30AM (The overnight repeat block I believe)

So you got the first block competing entirely against WTTA/WFLA (plus the 6:00AM hour against WWSB), then the next hour at 10:00AM is all alone, 11:30AM is up against WFLA's hour-long midday news at 11:00AM, the afternoon block from 1:00-4:00PM (sans 3:00PM) is all to themselves, 5:00-6:30PM against WFLA (and WWSB), 6:30PM is alone to themselves, 8:00PM is against WTTA, 10:00PM is alone to themselves, and 11:00PM against WFLA (and WWSB). The overnight block doesn't matter because its repeats but still...

 

So there's a lot of consolidation and possible cutting that WFLA may have to think about once this channel is entirely under their/Nexstar's control.

Considering the sorry state of the Bally Sports networks, which air the Tampa Bay Rays and Lightning, I can imagine Nexstar hovering around like vultures hoping to get those rights if/when Diamond is forced to drop those, assuming CBS and WTOG don't beat them to it.

8 hours ago, TVNewsLover said:

KYW plays this or a similar video every morning before their newscast, and they’ve been doing so for a while. 

I think he was referring to the logo at the end. A pretty generic logo IMO, but that's apparently what they're going for this September. I expect the logos for the other seven stations to look more or less the same.

45 minutes ago, RaleighTVBOI1 said:

Yes they remake it was a total flop. 

That aired on ABC, though.

And here comes the defense squad (a little too late, aren't we?).

4 minutes ago, kfc513 said:

**Also, what happened to the NASCAR docuseries?

Actually, that's an IndyCar docuseries, 100 Days to Indy. It was ordered as a miniseries to coincide with the buildup to the Indy 500, as the title suggest, and given the godawful ratings it's been getting, even for The CW, it might not even be here as part of the buildup for next year's Indy 500.

Kathy Feng of Common Cause has written a guest article about why the deal is a horrible thing for the industry.

9 hours ago, Megatron81 said:

In Detroit WJBK when it was CBS didn't air the soaps they were airing syndication before they became a FOX O&O in 94. WADL was dub the defacto CBS as they aired the soaps why didn't WADL sell to CBS? I know WADL made demands and CBS balked and bought channel 62.

If I had to guess, CBS wanted WADL to be run like an O&O, which Adell balked at. NBC tried a similar thing with KRON when Young Broadcasting bought it a few years later, and all that accomplished was costing NBC its longtime Bay Area affiliate, forcing them to buy KNTV, a longtime alternative ABC affiliate that was at this point sharing The WB with what was then KBWB (now KOFY).

The only reason CBS bought WGPR in the first place was because, after Adell said no, they had literally no other options. WKBD, the lame duck Fox affiliate, was owned by Paramount, who wanted to reserve that station for UPN. They tried to get WXON to affiliate, but they demanded $200 million for a buyout, which CBS said no to; they ended up with The WB. WBSX, the eventual Pax/Ion station, was an HSN affiliate. And the remaining Big 3 affiliates, WXYZ and WDIV, were happy just as they were, the former in particular led to a deal with owner Scripps that led to another set of dominoes too numerous to list here.

2 hours ago, MediaZone4K said:

I wish some of the canceled soaps could be revived on streaming, with their episode catalogs avalible aswell. Audiences might be more accepting of streaming soaps now as opposed to OLTL and AMC on Hulu back in 2013.

It's not unprecedented. NBC shunted Days of our Lives to Peacock last year, so I can imagine the other networks may be thinking of doing the same to their remaining soaps. Any day now, I expect ABC to move General Hospital to Hulu and stick in another GMA spinoff, assuming they don't just hand the time slot back to the affiliates.

And the judge shot the Suns-Gray deal down. For now.