nathannah

A little bit far off, but it's been confirmed it'll be CBS Sports producing the Christmas games for Netflix. Likely we'll get both games locally in-market on the CBS-owned stations (including WJZ and KDKA). CBS talent is yet to be confirmed to be used.

And no changes to the Packers package this year; still in house with the same look and CBS production.

Going by their Eiffel Tower and IBC studio spaces it just might be smaller and have to be used for more things rather than when they shipped out the portable Today set-in-a-box, which really isn't practical for this Paris go-around. I suspect they'll have a lot more room in 2028 when they can do something like use the IBC (based at Universal Studios), use their studio 1 for a large set since Kelly is now New York-based, or even sub-lease space from the NFL in Inglewood.

16 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

So, that means Bally Sports New Orleans will go bye-bye, since the channel was built around the Pelicans.

It was truly the most pointless of the Bally channels outside of when FSN had the Carolinas channel around the Bobcats/Hornets. That team HAD the best arrangement by having their games fill time on News 14 (now Spectrum News), but of course RSN greed had to get in the game. And it was likely in that Cox-dominated market that the Pels saw the writing on the wall and that Bally had much less leverage with Cox.

1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

At one time, NewsNet was providing weather for both the Marks stations in Alpena and Marquette, and also sports for Marquette as well. 

Did they still have any arrangements with other broadcasters like Coastal Television to provide "local" news or have all of those arrangements expired?

Marks sold off to Morgan Murphy and they have subcontracts now; Alpena has 7&4/Sinclair in Traverse City do it now (along with most of the newscast), while Marquette I think has WISC or other MMM stations produce updates when needed, or they draw from WJMN's own staff. 

There's a paywalled story about the closure on Crain's Detroit Business; 80 laid off, and he cited low viewership for the closure; oddly the story cites that he bought all these properties because the costs of advertising 5-Hour were getting higher on regular TV, which...is confusing? How does buying a low-viewed network and physical TV stations reduce costs?

Quote

At the time the network began ramping up operations more than two years ago, Bhargava cited rising advertising costs for his energy drink brand as the major impetus for acquiring the stations.

“For me, it's more of a media company than a news company," Bhargava said at the time.

The closure of the stations comes while Bhargava remains embroiled in multiple lawsuits tied to his attempts to acquire the majority stake in the parent company (Arena Group) of Sports Illustrated.

58 minutes ago, jjj said:

I never understood why they never updated their graphics.  They looked horrible and off putting.  It looked so bad compared to MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, NewsNation, etc.. 

Italics need to have a clear purpose, and italicizing near all the text just wears the viewers' eyes down.

Twitter and Facebook are frozen on the last jobs report so it might be on the morning video loop with no one minding the store. Twitter/Facebook is frozen on the monthly jobs report.

Stick a fork in it; it's done. Seems like the folks who have been financing the Five Hour Energy guy's spare parts media empire are done with him too; I saw an absolutely long and long-winded 'buy 2 get one free' offer on cases of the stuff last night scanning by FNC which means their longtime agency also was done with them.

Next spoke to watch will be ShopHQ, which turned down an all-but-done deal with RNN to become a part of Indian-American Byron Allen's company; and we'll have to see what happens to Coastal's own news ops.

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be so amusing if Fox tells them 'yeah, we're giving you a new studio, but you still have to use the old set'.

But jokes aside, it's about time they get an up-to-date building with plenty of parking, though I'm sure WNYW is now feeling like the MSG of FTS (as in building age).

1 hour ago, GoldenShine_10 said:

 

It might be a boon to get the minor sports, smaller college and high school sports noticed.

 

I wonder how many more of these networks they may launch? And how they would handle states where they are one market short (i.e., Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, West Virginia).

I still remember when the independent Wazoo Sports Network in Kentucky existed and how that seemed creative back in the late 2000s...but sadly the low-effort Luken networks at the time made subchannel sports coverage seem like a money pit, so they went bankrupt

I do like this though, especially as public access stations begin to wind down operations as cable moves to IP-based distribution, and it's become a maze of other online networks and high school YouTube feeds to find games, and as Awful Announcing has cataloged, some of those online networks have personnel with few background checks that seem to hate the teams, sports, or women's sports they're assigned to cover and disregard 'the mic is always hot' liberally. Allowing local sports teams who know broadcasting inside and out and the teams to carry those broadcasts just makes more sense overall.

South Carolina is a good high school sports market, so this will work naturally and it's one less repeat feed to have to pay revenue to.

2 hours ago, mer764KCTV5 said:

LET'S GO, WE DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH CONFLICTS ANYMORE, YAY. 

Also, where would Telemundo go since KCOY-TV gained the CW?

Nowhere, likely just the usual; 480i widescreen CW+ on 12.3 to replace Laff (or 12.4 because 12.1 is SD for some reason), HD on cable/IPTV.

6 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

The question is, who is more desperate... Nexstar or Paramount Global?

 

It'll be interesting to see if this has any effect on any future sales of the non-CBS stations....

Here had to be Nexstar; they didn't want another mid-January surprise for CBS to pull WJMN's affiliation and look where that station is now, and both had priorities; CBS to keep their coverage, Nexstar to not have The CW end up on an HC2 station (or even worse, cable-only or ATSC 3.0-exclusive).

Perry learned his lesson from the affiliates; play chicken all you want with the sidecars and cablecos, but when it comes to the networks you will not have a happy new year if they're having to throw Grit on a main channel and lose event revenue because of egos in Irving. Because of that, the alleged 'worst' station in the market in WZMQ was giddy to grab CBS and suck all the oxygen out of their competitor's news division to have it sold for a pittance to Morgan Murphy.

5 minutes ago, Rusty Muck said:

That's going to be because the CW primetime lineup is a giant blackhole of cheap, forgettable programming and Canadian imports, not out of anything on WSVN's part. It's the Ollie's Bargain Outlet of broadcast networks.

At this point it's believable outside of cable ratings that Ion is the 5th network, with MeTV easily 6th (not going to argue about major because that Wikipedia fight wore me out).

43 minutes ago, MorningNews said:

Is the 4pm an hour long as well? They already do an hour at 5 and now an hour at 6. 

Yup, three-hour block of news. WITI bumped their 10pm to an hour at the start of July.

This channel just Will. Not. Die.

1 hour ago, MediaZone4K said:

With all the talk of new graphics...How is the WXIN (Fox) WTTV (CBS) duopoly allowed in Indianapolis? Don't the FCC rules state that a company cannot own more than one of the top four local stations? Fox 59 and CBS 4 are the #1 and 2 stations respectively according to Nexttv.

When Tribune acquired them they were a #5 CW affiliate and they switched to CBS, so it's allowed to stand with no issue. Most of the Big Four combos were allowed when the Fox affiliate had a sudden bad month against the WB because the FCC uses Nielsen market rank at the time of proposal to determine if a non-failed station waiver merger could go further or not; remember the attempted WTVJ sale to Post-Newsweek that didn't go through because Uni and Telemundo ranked higher than them before it died due to inaction.

WITI already switched their 10pm news to an hour a couple weeks back, which lost Seinfeld its second run and pushed everything further a half-hour back.

Scripps is getting out some new opens and re-orchestrated music for the Olympics; WTMJ started rolling them out on their 5pm today.

35 minutes ago, RCA TK47 said:

It's all just for show.  WBD doesn't have a leg to stand on.  I helped work on a $1.5 billion bid package about fifteen years ago (not for the NBA) and it was rejected because a clueless executive missed signing one section that was required in a part of the proposal.   Our proposal was only within $100,000 of the winning bid.... And we almost sued, but the company layers said good luck with that.  I jumped ship and ended up working for the winning company instead, so I guess it worked out for me in the end.              

I still remember the story about how WTMJ Radio in Milwaukee lost the rights to produce Badgers content to Learfield because someone at Journal submitted the paperwork late, being overconfident because before the 90s, the UW programs were a national joke and they figured 'we have a long relationship, they'll understand' (the UW Regents did not). They still carried the radio broadcasts, but it was one of the balls that started the inevitable roll towards Learfield/IMG producing anything college and after Journal/Scripps decided not to move the Packers to FM, the team did it for them with iHeart.

WBD had two years to seal this up, and I think the dumping of the Turner Sports brand for that awful long WBD Sports monicker was the start of their doom; they quickly adjusted to TNT Sports, but it isn't Turner Sports. Really, I think it was lost the moment they decided to start throwing game simulcasts on TruTV surrounded by gambling and sports talk dreck; you've got Inside the NBA and Kevin Harlan?! Nobody gives a crap about some random multicast only out there for degenerates and to satisfy 'new content' checkoffs in provider agreements because you can't keep running Impractical Jokers all day and all night. The ESPN multicasts make sense to someone, but the TruTV content never will.

Calendars have been this way since the 1800s; red indicates weekends and holidays, white or black weekdays.

Some stations may differ in color, but weekends are always demarcated by a different color than the weekdays.

13 minutes ago, rtmclaug said:

Man. This hurts. Both Mark and Vic were icons at WJZ. Now that Mark is gone, who’s going to do sports?

Besides the website archives being dumped for the cable channels it sounds like corporate is about to start another slow-roll cull of big name talent via early retirement (just like the New York and LA offices are heavily filled with Robert Half contractors)...this can only end badly and I feel like Skydance/Son of Oracle is about to give us an even uglier replay of the Tisch era for CBS.

WBAY has slowly been integrating the new typefaces and graphical style into their promos but haven't made the switch yet for the actual newscasts or weather (or my beloved, the weather subchannel)...which makes the rebranding of their formerly unbranded seven-day weather planner into the SUPER 7 DAY® with the current package very surprising.

ETA - They've adopted the 'weather in 7' format seen on other Gray stations.

A lot of stations get a clean feed, and since it was during local time (Deco Drive), WSVN preferred to do that and stick with it rather than an awkward rejoin of the network at 8. In network time, stations can do what they want, and it wasn't a 'red alert' event requiring taking the network feed. I've seen a lot of stations do it before because they prefer both to make their own calls and not to be left in the lurch if the network doesn't cover it.

8 hours ago, SDHIll1980 said:

 

Tyrannical Bastard answered the question very eloquently, but to expand on his point...let's say, for example, that the new sports streaming joint venture between Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox, and Disney becomes a success (and if it gets off the ground), if that doesn't put a nail in cable TV's coffin, it'll expedite the process much further. It also probably doesn't help that streamers such as Apple TV, Peacock, Prime Video, ESPN+ (with separate content from linear ESPN) and now Netflix are offering more and more live sports content, along with certain individual NBA and NHL teams now offering in-market telecasts via streaming and/or over-the-air TV without the use of a cable/satellite subscription.

 

Traditional TV providers are continuously losing subscribers left and right, either to the likes of YouTube TV, Sling, or Fubo, or going back to the old "rabbit ears", with the streaming platforms serving as a complement.  Not even the news channels are strong enough to keep cable alive IMO, especially when you have multiple streaming outlets to get live news from--from the Big Four themselves, their O&Os, their station partners, or independent outlets (including certain newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times).  Also, we've seen in recent years that you no longer need the use of cable/satellite to watch the premium movie networks...if you're not a sports fan, or even a news buff, those alone can entice you to "cut the cord", and subscribe to whichever individual streamers that may have your favorite movies.  With the current setup, it's going to continue to make traditional cable TV even more useless outside of live sports and news.

 

Already seeing it really with Spectrum and Comcast where unless it's the only way you can view it, they're done with cable boxes and going to IPTV streaming. InDemand, the PPV provider will be done by 2025 and it's doubtful their former partners retain the status quo on their own. With both providers they're giving out Xumos or Apple TV remotes and pushing folks towards the apps, and once they get DVR-like controls on their cloud DVR systems (Spectrum plans to launch end of year), that'll be it. Outside channel availability that's the only thing keeping me from moving on (still have TiVos and an HDHomerun), but if their FF/rewind works well I'll dump them. It's already slowly going away, and I don't think we'll be seeing things as is even by 2027.

10 hours ago, Encore 323 said:

It seems like the duopoly is only interested in hiring younger people that look attractive because it fits the “LA vibe”. Vaughn is just your typical news anchor but they didn’t have the decency to tell him why he was fired.

Oh, I'm sure they did tell him the reason truly (likely that he refused to help any of the younger talent out of jealousy and anger that his low-effort anchoring was being replaced with actual personality), but he dismissed it out of hand in multiple evals and then when they pull the trigger he just dismissed it and then caught the Larry Conners Express to refuse to take any blame for his own demise. Putting all of this in writing in a legal filing just amplified it.

Considering no one ever heard of him until this moment (sounds like a mediocre midday/weekend guy) and he's being represented by a certain friend of 45 legal firm that campaigns for only straight white men, this is the most sour grapes lawsuit so far this year.

The thing that gets me though is why did he have such a problem with 'someone who didn't live through it' doing 9/11 coverage? My man, you are in LOS ANGELES! Most people there didn't see any affects outside flight delays and TSA's creation directly after. I'm sure you were there then but your co-workers are allowed to have assignments about historical events.

5 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

Free TV Networks has acquired the naming rights and programming inventory of Defy TV from Scripps, which repurposed the (original) Defy’s former channel space for an OTA relaunch of Ion Plus (a farm of 2000s-2010s dramas carried by other Scripps networks, former Ion/Pax originals and obscure CanCon and ‘90s-early 2000s first-run syndicated series that Scripps relegated to AVOD streaming shortly after acquiring Ion Media in 2021).

One of the most confusing network 'launches' I've ever truly seen. They knew the CW wasn't going to let that slogan and name fly, they had the same library and it was still a last-minute decision where Scripps just handed them the Defy name? And right now their affiliate body is the decaying husk of HC2 and whatever full-power crumbs they could get from Gray?

Scripps is the clear winner here; they got to throw back on a popular channel over-the-air in Ion Plus (I think it should've never left but Katz got his way for a bit after the Ion close before he got pushed out), gets completely out of this gender-segregated network nonsense that has never worked (TrueReal already died last year) and Free TV Networks gets that A&E reality inventory that has become an absolute viewer repellent, aging like raw milk. About the only positive thing is they're adding Live PD reruns, but who wants to watch old crime coverage from six years ago?