mrschimpf

And of course it was because Dan O'Donnell threw another temper tantrum about 'free speech for me but not for thee'. These stations just have to stop listening to these cranks because the only thing they're good for these days is outrage. I didn't even know she had an Instagram account, so this was her personal one, not anything connected with the station. Godawful situation that should have been a quiet suspension at the very most, and our X-obsessed man is a private citizen with no government power. She should not have been fired, and these news orgs are turning 'balanced views journalism', meant to deal with little things like football lights at the high school stadium and road expansions through neighborhoods, into a punchline.

At least unite the graphics packages, WTHI is still on a LIN-era system. I like unique looks but not because you starve your stations to make more cheap game shows with expensive comedians and court show hosts.

Speaking of AI, The Weather Channel now has all AI captioning, which is a sick and terrible thing that TBS, TNT and NFL Network have been doing lately, even for scripted shows and commercials that are properly captioned because they never turn it off. Sadly it feels like even if there was an FCC report about AI captioning it's in the letter and spirit of the law, so there's nothing we can do, and I fear they're probably going to remove the requirement that a specific caption rep is available at all times.

Just in the Hawaii case alone which otherwise only has Nexstar and Gray as viable news operations, this feels like it should be a license-forfeiting offense; there is no serious reason there should be weather forecast from 4,500 miles away nearer to another coast and a quarter of a day away. It's already questionable enough when TWC absolutely refuses to forecast the western mainland well to begin with unless it's in severe danger.

There though it mostly involved stations with no infrastructure whatsoever in the News Central format, and at least even in the TND era they still use mostly local folks on downtime to deliver forecasts and general breaking weather news. That I have no issue with because they still have that staff for the most part deliver breaking weather, even in the KTUL and WNWO situations. Just having everything come from TWC...say if you're watching on WAOW, are you going to have to deal with severe weather non-applicable to you from WKOW because master control doesn't know the distance between Beloit and Wausau? How do you know local landmarks and street names? And how on earth do you have viewers submit videos and photos now, because they have to go through TWC's national system rather than the known local system? There are a lot of dangerous unknowns in hubbing weather nationally even in a well-planned transition over a couple of years, and it's worse in this ad hoc setup where now you have bitter ex-staff either on a new station or just starting their own efforts online.

Look to the Equity bankruptcy and WLNE circa Great Recession for a little insight; they didn't shut down right away, but just let unpaid expenses and payroll claims escalate to such a dangerous level they start losing programming outside the network, then staff who are tired of them, and eventually it gets to actual satellite transmission, then IP, newswires, then the network finally gets to the point of revocation and then you're down to a sky cam shot until THAT contract gets revoked too. Allen at least has fallbacks, but viewers will NOT be happy to see 15 year-old car, pet and media junket shows in prime time.

I think that's what we've seen with the last big station moves with KMGH and KMOV; everything is going IP-based and you really don't need a studio to look like a stereotypical studio with all that exposed infrastructure any longer, and it certainly saves on any legwork to monitor outside. Even with the KETV move in Omaha a few years back the dishes and STL are well hidden. And FoxLocal has been building around podcasts they can air streaming there and on Tubi in syndication/network time so I like that they're planning around that rather than just having it as an afterthought.

I just don't see how you adapt the Weather Channel Radio model to TV at all; they get on during emergencies on radio and do fine there, but radio weather outside full service and all news has become one of the lowest priorities (either just by tossing TV audio or just having the EAS butt in and get back to Hannity), which is why Weatherology is thriving now. Replacing local forecasters with staff in Atlanta already overwhelmed by so many other network and station commitments is going to bite them hard. And we may be entering a dark age for stations and the FCC. Like Townsquare and Alpha just turning in licenses and refusing to sell to someone who will put effort in, I'm very scared. Also, Allen runs the state TV network for WIAA high school sports, so I feel like that's next to be in the lurch and Sinclair (who carries the network in Milwaukee) or FanDuel may have to jump in last minute for the hockey and basketball tourneys.

I always believed it was like the 'minority owner' racket in the 2010s where a distant woman or other racial group were suddenly 'running' stations stripped to do-nothing subchannel farms in the middle of the Great Plains until Gray and Nexstar could buy them back under a GOP FCC. INSP was so hands-off I was shocked and pretty much ran the stations status quo, so it feels like Imagicomm was actually Legacy 2.0.

They also renewed their NBC affiliations, and yes, WTWC continues to carry the network.

Imagicomm has put all the stations they got from Cox back on the market.

Meanwhile the Weather Channel's Deep Water Salvage is going into syndication next fall (likely in the weekend graveyard slot), but you wouldn't know that from their spin of it as an 'all-new HD series'. And yes, Spectrum still has TheGrio and I completely agree that what they did to WTHI has been a travesty. Tony Hulman is spinning in his grave.

You can see that in that they carried the Spanish statements with captioned Spanish even as other EN stations just broke off from the latest combined LA metro conference.

Everything has been sterling about KABC's coverage, but what I dreaded the most about the 'live view' element in the new opening has been happening through this and I wish they'd just turn the weather ticker pane off or fill it with 'Continuing Coverage', 'Red Flag Warning' or any other filler text because a general forecast is just not working right now.

All of the stations (including Spectrum News 1) are streaming on YouTube right now so simulcasting the same feed on the national streaming nets is pretty well duplicative, so that can be justified. And I think NBCNN is trying to stay in-format as much as possible for that same reason as they know the local folks are doing a better job covering everything than anyone in New York can.