Adam MadMan

Hearst has launched Hearst Media Production Group to make programming for multiple platforms.

Frank Biancuzzo is heading the new department, and Litton Entertainment and Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien will be part of its output.

9 hours ago, Nelson R. said:

Noon Jerry Springer (replaces Maury, not sure if this is syndicated or CW but I think it’s syndicated because I noticed that Jerry Springer is gone from WLFL’s schedule that week

 

Syndicated. There's no more CW Springer. They sold the time slot back to the affiliates in exchange for running on Saturday nights.

I was listening to Nexstar's earnings call while working, and at one point he mentioned that only 16% of people in the country recognized the NewsNation brand, even admitting that 84% of the US "has no earthly idea" what it is.

At least he's honest that nobody's watching...

Jonathan Katz is gone from Scripps.

Oh my GOD.

They actually used a fan logo for their official website!?

20 minutes ago, Nelson R. said:

I thought this was just a one time thing because of the 25th anniversary but Charlotte is still a relatively new Nexstar market.

That makes sense from that market's perspective. The video I shared said that WWLP did this sort of thing in the past, but that joined Nexstar in the Media General buyout, so I believe they did this at least three times before (I'd say four if not for the pandemic). WJZY, of course, joined Nexstar just before the shutdowns, so they didn't get to promote the event that year.

Same thing's going on in Western Massachusetts.

1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

It didn't help they were oddly concerned about wanting to keep their 87.7 FrankenFM signal and the FCC kept having to tell them that they couldn't transmit digital with an unlicensed analog subcarrier at 87.9. 

Not that it matters anymore; Sinclair bought Fisher, and Sinclair only cares about TV; hell, they just announced they'd sell off their only radio assets. Hence why this application's been made.

Sinclair is giving a big push for its diginets Comet, Charge, and TBD, and apparently it's been doing well for them.

The same article suggests that Stirr is being used as a testing ground for future diginets.

6 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Here's a variant probably no one remembers, or has ever seen before.

 

This was after Kinney National (a conglomerate, not the old shoe store) bought them after the Warner Bros.- Seven Arts era.  Corporate scandal ensued soon after and the round "W" from the 70s and 80s came to be.

 

Speaking of conglomerates, why don't they get back into the media business again? 

 

Fun fact, the Kinney Shoe store was bought by FW Woolworth, and they started Foot Locker in 1974. 

Flash forward to now, and Foot Locker (and their sister stores) are all that's left!

I've known of that logo for a while, thanks to the logo community. Pretty rare picture there, since WB has historically liked to replace their old logos. Summer of 42 played earlier today on TCM, and the modern logo replaced the Kinney shield at the beginning (the ending still had the in-credit version, though).

9 hours ago, dman748 said:

Interesting details coming out of this CNBC article:

 

Looks like WarnerDiscovery is the leading choice for the name of the combined company

 

The main piece is this

 

Honestly I cannot foresee Disney wanting WarnerDiscovery because they already own the Fox Film Studios they bought from Rupert in addition to their existing studios. Owning 3 studios plus having a monopoly on sports rights should give the DOJ more than enough reason to not grant approval for the deal. 

 

I think Amazon or Apple getting WarnerDiscovery would be huge especially for Amazon specifically the Sports perspective. Adding a large collection of Sports properties that Turner has (including the NBA) would be a huge complement to Amazon.

Plus if Amazon gets MGM as well, that would reunite the old and new MGM libraries.

Still, Zazlav's thinking of a sale already? Good lord...

5 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

I think one thing attractive here is the CW. Discovery can add additional 'unscripted' programming to the CW and reduce the production costs while increasing revenue. The CW is still such a minor network that the amount of scripted programming it has is expensive compared to it's ratings. So it has a way thin margins. I think Discovery can boost that. I also wouldn't be surprised if Scripps spins off their networks again and Discovery, along with the vast library of WarnerMedia, buys that up too. Considering how many libraries they have and the studio accessibility, owning those assets as well would make sense.

 

With regard to the name:

 

DISCOVERY  WARNER

4 hours ago, DENDude said:

I Don't think this deal is going to make the CW any better.  It will still just be there taking up airspace.  

 

At most, they'll probably just run a few Discovery specials here and there. If they REALLY wanna push it, they'd take over Saturday mornings from Litton, and even that's a long shot, considering Litton basically buys the time and lets The CW affiliates keep their lights on at no monetary cost to them. But it's just not within The CW's brand to run Discovery-style programming.

2 hours ago, channel2 said:

So when's Jabberjaw gonna be on Shark Week?

Oh my god, I made that joke on social media. I knew I wouldn't be the only one.

6 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Another casualty could be MeTV, especially since we're nearing the decade mark where Media General purged out RTV in favor of MeTV in many of their markets.  I"m sure Nexstar would rather carry an owned network over someone else's when the contracts expire.  Now the question is, will this harm MeTV if this is the case? 

I'm told MeTV does VERY well in the ratings in certain markets, with some key demos.

MeTV has been on a roll. They've been consistent in getting top-notch shows, they produce a late-night movie show, and they've even added a classic cartoon block with Warner Bros. and MGM shorts, something I don't think anyone was expecting. I can see them coming out just fine. After all, Weigel's been adamant about expanding their reach, and they've been buying stations in markets beyond the Great Lakes region they'd long restricted themselves to as a means to that end.

That MeTV's been doing well in certain demos doesn't surprise me at all. A lot of their programming doesn't really have any equivalents on other OTA networks, even the Big 5, and they just know how to pick the best shows.

3 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Sinclair was all-in for their stations getting MyNetwork.  Their only CW pickups were in markets that didn't have Tribune/CBS, no other willing takers or another netlet station in the same market (like WRDC).

Mobile/Pensacola was very peculiar since they aligned WFGX, then a half-market station that was also a WB affiliate for a time, but lost out to upstart WBPG (now WFNA) in 2001.  They later got CW under Emmis, and WJTC, the UPN station went independent as UTV44, then owned by Clear Channel alongside WPMI.

 

WFGX later became a full market digital signal in 2010 and finally had a market-wide MyNetwork station, even if it was padded out initially with This TV during the day and JTV at night.  They've picked up more syndicated programming over the years, especially since WPMI and WJTC were Sinclair-ized.

I remember hearing somewhere that Sinclair liked that MyNet didn't force retrans like The CW did. For all the good it did them. The telenovela thing bombed like a B-52, and nothing else they did besides SmackDown afterwards fared much better. Now it's basically just prime time reruns, assuming the local affiliate doesn't just shove it off into late nights. Sinclair bet on the wrong horse, which is a shame, considering some of their stations could've been prime CW affiliates. While WCWB (now WPNT) and WTVZ didn't have a prayer thanks to CBS owning WPCW and WGNT respectively, I've heard of some other cases where The CW landed on a weaker station due to Sinclair's initial disinterest, like KCWX in San Antonio (though KMYS did eventually realize their mistake and swapped networks a few years later).

54 minutes ago, ScottJ said:

The latest departure from WNYT is part-time meteorologist Allison Finch. Her last day was Sunday; she landed a full-time met gig at a station in Springfield, Mass.

That's my market. Better keep my eyes peeled.

Lisa Knutson just did an interview for TVNewsCheck about the National Networks' strategy.

Newsy still has to deal with contracts with MVPDs, which prohibit Scripps from moving the network to OTA right now. Once those contracts end, then and only then can Newsy start airing on OTA.

As for QVC, it seems like that may just be temporary until contracts run out or Doozy and Defy replace them.

Yeah, just looking at all this, you get the feeling that the decision to dump Qubo and Ion Plus (and Shop) was less about not wanting more channels and more about not wanting to deal with the headache of migrating those networks into the Katz operations, since they just went ahead and started two new dignets anyway.

That being said, I remember Adam Symson mentioning in the same webcast where that one user raised the question about Qubo and Ion Plus that he was glad to lower the average viewer age of his networks to being below that of the alphabet networks, if still older than streaming. But considering much of the programming on the existing Scripps networks plus these new ones, I get the feeling his words about "younger audience = better audience" were nothing more than the usual press fluff to get the panicking investors off his back, because I'm pretty sure 90% of these shows skew older.

WBTS/NECN anchor Joy Lim Nakrin is leaving at the end of March. She'll be working for Court TV starting in May.

Thankfully, there have been some internet sleuths who have recorded the switchover and put it on YouTube. Apparently, it happened right in the middle of an airing of Franklin in most markets.

Honestly, if I hadn't known about this from other forums, I'd have guessed this was some BS edit done by some anonymous troll. But no, this actually happened (in most markets, at least).

Thanks to Xfinity, we now know what some of the standalone Ion Plus stations will be airing:

Quote

In the select markets listed below, ION Plus will be replaced with Court TV or Bounce:

• Boston, Massachusetts (WPXG/WDPX): ION Plus will be replaced by Court TV.
• Indianapolis, Indiana (WCLJ): ION Plus will be replaced by Bounce.
• Providence, Rhode Island (WLWC): ION Plus will be replaced by Court TV.
• Raleigh, North Carolina (WFPX): ION Plus will be replaced by Court TV.

No real surprise, most of them will be airing Court TV.

The Ion subchannels are all in widescreen now. Figures they wait until now, when the subchannel networks are about to be replaced by the Katz stuff at the end of the month.

I've heard rumors that Inyo or Scripps may end up returning the licenses for the Ion Plus affiliates to the FCC, so I think that may be what happens. If not, then I can see Scripps moving Court TV to those channels, since they've been pushing the name for a while.

My big question is how this will affect WIFS in Madison. They've been running Ion Plus on their main signal, and actually added Qubo recently - just in time to have Scripps yank it away from them. At this point, I think WIFS will probably move Ion to the main signal. No idea what'll replace the other signals, if they even do replace them.

13 minutes ago, Action Newsroom said:

 

 

Honesly not surprised about Ion Plus -- it's basically Ion Television 2, and they can easily spread the few shows it airs across its networks -- specifically and especially Ion.

 

I'm more focused on Symson's thoughts on Qubo. I'm honesly surprised he would think that Qubo doesn't fit his vision of Scripps networks as "mature" when Laff is one of them (just watch it's promos--they scream [funny but] immature). I mean no, duh Qubo's not mature - it's a network for children. Qubo is a network that still can succeed across the kids demographics and (more importantly) still make them money. Unlike some of the other networks like Grit.

I'm sure by "mature" he meant "for adults only" but that didn't stop Ion Media from running it all these years alongside both Ions.  

When he said "mature", I'm pretty sure he meant "not grown as a brand". Of course, his company decided they don't want to grow the brand, and have put it in the line of corporate fire, like in those stereotypical Mexican executions you'd see on TV.

And as for the whole kids thing, Symson said in that same call that he wants diginets to go for a younger audience - which makes the Qubo decision all the more baffling, at least to me. Even if the brand isn't that desirable, Nickelodeon was in a similar state in the early 80s before it turned around under Viacom. Obviously, the times are different now, but it still seems wrong that they're trying to go "younger", yet have decided to leave the youngest viewers of the bunch to digital services such as Netflix and YouTube, like they want over-the-air TV to die off.

Basically, it just makes Symson's talk of "going younger" seem like the usual insincere corporate speak, which I'm 99.9999% sure it is.

Scripps had a webcast this morning about how they'll be operating going forward.

The only real revelation of the webcast was their rather casual dismissal of Qubo and Ion Plus. Adam Symson said that the services weren't "mature" compared to the Katz networks, and confirmed that the company will go Old Yeller on them so they can use their space for the Katz networks as planned. Basically, he brushed them off as worthless wastes of spectrum to be thrown away (and I guess they don't want their channels on their pre-existing spectrum either). Not what he actually said obviously, but that's what I got out of it.