nathannah

WLUK has pretty much escaped most of the Sinclairization and been able to shove it off to WCWF outside must-runs, which they burn off at the worst times possible. They're switching from their LIN era studio now, but being neck-and-neck with WBAY while WFRV and WGBA crash out towards irrelevancy from their own companies helps keep Hunt Valley from getting their way with 11 fully.

Probably more future-proofing than anything; if the Fox logo changes or they switch affiliations (or in the future Fox just stops operating on the traditional model), they don't have to change anything physically on the building, and when they take the WBRC baby steps it'll be easier if they decide to drop it in the future. Also like WMTV they can brand it neutrally and equally with GCSEN or whatever else Gray decides to operate out of it (note the extra space beneath the ground sign and plenty of room on the building fascia).

Hopefully nothing breaks in these next three hours (news or technically!).

With the folks behind the standard doing all they can to sabotage ATSC 3.0 as a DRM'ed mess with weakened coverage areas to distribute FAST channels and websites nobody needs, this is just another nail in the coffin for it. Sunbeam is right to just give up on it and end the farce and focus on just channel 7 alone and figure out something else for their 3.0 plans; ABC and Fox don't even take advantage of 3.0 90% of the time.

Byron has renewed all nine of his celebrity court shows (I remind you that none of the shows are litigating real cases, but CA court transcripts with actors), which is probably going over well in the AMG station Slack or Teams .

Back to the conference room (which I remember from the last time, 2011-ish). Hopefully they'll be able to keep Aerial and not have to be stuck with an entire Sinclairization; at least they got a good life out of their LIN-era set.

When your network producer doesn't remember their affiliate roster...of course WDRB doesn't brand as Fox 41, but you'd think 'Fox affiliate WX chiefs' would be in Fox Weather's Tweetdeck for sure.

The Allen Wisconsin network is having a meltdown; WAOW has been stuck having to cover WKOW's newscasts since yesterday (and having to present their news that's completely irrelevant to Madison to pad out shows), along with having to do their statecasts in the morning. At this point, you might as well consider Madison, La Crosse/Eau Claire and Wausau two-operation news markets because it seems like Byron doesn't even care about having a proper third news operation (and Rockford will be inevitably hubbed out soon enough).

The winner in this deal? Actually, WRNN. The network abruptly left the air entirely on April 15 as it quickly became clear that the energy drink guy knows caffeine, but definitely not the news or home retailing industries. ShopHQ is trying to disguise their GOTB sale on their website as a spring savings event, no refunds for anything you buy there, and the WARN notice went out to the state about their Eden Prairie HQ being closed. Didn't want to update about this until a couple other things were confirmed, but they dropped Spectrum cold on April 1, and did the same to Optimum in February to try to shift live product demos to Instagram and TikTok, which...you're stuck with them on a cable channel lineup, but you can just block them and move on if they're annoying or irrelevant in your feeds. The younger ShopLC (The former Liquidation Channel) just opened a new facility in the Austin area and is strong (tariffs pending) and doing better than QVC/HSN, while ShopHQ is fatally done. Never thought any of that would happen.

In case you needed an updated exaggerated and catty Post update on the Michael Strahan/Kelly Ripa 'feud' with GMA's upcoming move to Iger, here you go. Oooh, they have to share an elevator and they might see each other, this is the most oppressive workplace outside the Kremlin .

If anything screams '2000s imagining consultants imagining what the kids like', it was their branding the most at that time; "43 The Block" remains on the hill of worst station brandings above "JoeTV" and that short time KWGN was "The Deuce". "Cleveland's 43" is a signal that there are finally adults in the room.

I was wondering what on earth that "Remarkable Woman" special was on the CW Sunday night; it seemed so vague as to be a time-buy from some group you expect to carry a generic 'salute to gospel' or 'independent film showcase (of whatever they could get cheap)' that you see on Sundays on a station that doesn't have the NFL doubleheader and the home team is on the other station. It felt like some kind of bizarre Queen for a Day rehash. It also seems kind of insulting to anyone not in a Nexstar market, because the states without a station just came off as having very 'unexceptional women' (they drew 11 randomly from NewsNation but like...just spread them across each state. There's no reason outside Perry's ego that Alaska shouldn't have a 'remarkable woman'). Outside of sports and the good shows they bought, The CW is really no better than the 'i for infomercial' era of Ion at this point.

That would be obfuscation and obviously actionable if a company claimed in good faith to buy all the assets and then sell the ones they don't want off immediately against the seller's will. Yes, Apollo is not going to get anyone to take but a small fraction of them, but if somehow they do get a deal, there will be a clause where they can't be sold off for a certain period of time or if they go bankrupt.

WGN has a good offer, but CHSN already has a television partner in WJYS; the issue is that they need to convince them to switch to RTC next go around to force carriage (or CHSN pays them extra to bump it to their DT1 for the Sox season until this is all resolved so pay-TV fans can watch), or that CHSN needs to figure out their issues with Comcast. It's obvious they're asking for too much and need to lower their pricing to get on there, and Reinsdorf is stubborn. Also this would be self-inflicted and stupid on Nexstar's part; either they want to run WGN as a news-heavy CW O&O as intended by dumping the rights back in '19, or they go back to sports and create a messy situation where CW programming is bumped to Antenna TV and now you've made NASCAR and your college football partners mad because they don't have Chicago carriage or you're back to a situation where WCIU has to carry your stuff because of this goofy offer. This is a good proposal for WCIU or even WCPX, but it addresses nothing about the main problem with CHSN and will end with viewer annoyance, along with WGN staff having to deal with news at midnight once again because of West Coast road games.

This is pretty much it; Coxpollo wants it to be 1997 where they can create an omnimedia company when nobody actually wants that. They're better off just keeping only the Atlanta, Orlando and Dayton clusters (or better, just the AM news/talk and FM simulcast) that are historically important to the company and so integrated into the TV stations that there's no way to easily break them up, and selling off the rest. They already created Summit Media the first time, which got the radio stations Scripps couldn't easily sell off, and that might just end up being the default direction they have to take.