mrschimpf

This is a basic cable carriage fight where Newsmax now wants RTC rather than paying their way onto DirecTV...and these days trying to stay on a satellite service is akin to planning a hospice stay because they only have a few realistic years left. Somehow Newsmax turned what should have been just a number negotiation into 'censorship' because they're gone.

Chris Ruddy, you do know you have your stream everywhere. I couldn't get away from it if I tried and it's probably on the Tesla. Better ratings than News Nation, OAN, RAV and 'Star Wars guys rips the current trilogy for 346 hours because they have women' on YouTube. You are so far from 'being' censored that it's absurd. Just ask for a few less cents and get your carriage back, because unlike OAN (which was bad), you have some respect and names.

2 hours ago, CraigViewer said:

I can probably count the number of times on one hand that I have watched Channel 13 over the past decade or so.

And those occurrences were likely limited to when the Rams and Chargers were scheduled on Fox at the same time and got a KCOP bump (and really who was watching them early on specifically for the Rams or Chargers?). It really is sad how depreciated the 'sixth station' in a market has become just by its schedule or offerings.

On 1/18/2023 at 10:29 PM, CraigViewer said:

In many ways, Channel 13 basically has been Fox 11 Plus for a long time now.

And with that, Fox has finally found a way to finally deal with their worst case of triskaidekaphobia. Though the decline of KCOP from being a proper competitor to KTTV, and now just being both a glorified .2 and ATSC3 lighthouse is one of the saddest things to happen to a TV station.

2 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

The FCC has just proposed a fine of $504k to Fox for a violation of using EAS tones outside of an actual emergency.

I believe this was the incident in question.

I mean it predicted the Eagles in 2022 perfectly, so in that way, the promo did serve its purpose in warning the NFC East about the Eagles (along with just...Eagles fans).

But yeah, the fine is justified, if just a little high (it's more of a $100k violation than $500k for me). Just use a generic Morse Code alert next time, Fox Sports.

As we talk about a station group that hates streaming in 2023, it feels appropriate that their broadcast automation is also overly-aggressive and cut off the last few minutes of Fox's Accused premiere last night on several Nexstar stations, which the network really wanted to get eyeballs on. Just another thing for Rupert to add onto the 'I Do Not Like Dealing With This Company' checklist he's kept since the network pulled their Indiana affiliations from Nexstar.

On 1/22/2023 at 5:08 PM, nickInRoseville said:

so i was getting ready to watch the 49ers on fox 40 in sacramento. i have youtube tv, and i COULDNT WATCH THEIR PREGAME NEWS so if you have youtube tv heads up, nexstar stations may be blocking news access to you

I think this is likely just a technical error (I really hope so).

32 minutes ago, NEOMatrix said:

ie… WUAB could go back to its pre-CW scheduling (CLE43 II: Electric Boogaloo).

The Mannix and Cannon fans who have their shows pre-empted on WOIO's .2 would love this to happen. Of all the places to burn off MyNet, why choose the Me sub?

4 hours ago, CLETVFan said:

Both Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery have their own streaming services.  They both don't need The CW at all.  "All American" can easily move to either of the services.

It's part of the CW's old Netflix deal so it would easily move there without issue. I do think that Nexstar only really renewed not based on the loyalty of the show (which is great since it has a just as loyal spin-off), but to avoid minority scrutiny if they didn't have a 'black' show somewhere.   This is a company that's had major issues with their minority-owned shells, after all.

2 hours ago, nickInRoseville said:

LIV golf is sportswashing

Honestly outside the Saudi Arabia stuff, LIV is pretty much just those who would usually migrate to the Senior/Champions Tour just trying to find a new place to play for money, because they have both egos and don't want to make way for new golfers and go gently into that good night and refuse to give up their past glory. Or younger golfers who just want to participate in the big tournaments and hate that they have to play in other tourneys like the St. Jude and Memorial to earn their way, or be on the PGA money list or be eligible for the FedEx Cup. It is 100% the Sour Grapes League and they just found the worst sucker of all to finance it, and the most desperate broadcaster to show it; it says something that Scripps or Ion didn't even bother or Fox let the paper company behind MyNet do so either.

I don't forsee CW stations really boycotting it outright, but if they have weekend afternoon programming that already works, they might just bump LIV to overnights if it attracts a really lousy demographic and ratings. Their weekend advertising base is already poisoned enough with Weekend Adventure's geriatric bent, and the Has-Beens and Never Weres of Golf aren't moving that age down any at all.

The big problem overall is that "KCBS" has just become a jumbled mess ever since whichever guy at KNX-TV decided 'KCBS should be on our flagship station and we don't care that they've been on that San Fran station for decades'. It was the beginning of the end for channel 2's branding because for whatever reason, KCBS in SFO kept their call letters and come 2002, you had a brand manager's nightmare in LA where KCBS-TV, KCAL-TV, KNX, KFWB, and KCBS-FM all had different brands that never were united very well at all.

KFWB eventually got shafted and KNX and KCBS-FM became Audacy properties (along with KCBS-FM), but it still left open that it's only in 2023 that CBSNS is getting around to finally one-branding their local news operation, a thing that should have been done either in 1984 when KNXT-TV became KCBS-TV, or in 2002 when KCAL because CBS-owned.

At this point, stick with KCAL. CBS in LA=entertainment, sports or national news (the only thing that cares about KCBS-FM's calls is the FCC and PPM as it's 'Jack FM' to a normal person). KCBS may have been there longer, but KCAL has established themselves as a news brand.

3 hours ago, MD TV said:

There is discussion over moving production of The Kelly Clarkson Show to the NYC area:

 

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-kelly-clarkson-show-production-east-coast-1235489006/

 

Can't help but think that NBCU's Connecticut facility is an option.

With all the talk about NBC's late night future and Seth Meyers becoming Lorne's heir apparent at SNL, Studio 8G could open up, or they could redo 6A and eradicate the last traces of Megyn Kelly. New York would happily offer tax subsidies to support Kelly because there's no way she tapes at Stamford without making her and any guests extraordinary offers to deal with the drive up I-95 in a way Steve Wikos guests tolerate.

I'm surprised it was Kelly who was open to it, though, probably because California's COL situation is overall painful, which is why she's in Montana when she can be.

2 hours ago, jase said:

Since his contract expires next year and baring any more serious allegations, my guess is that he survives this and retires. There doesn't appear to be enough currently to justify dismissal. 

He's 50-ish, so he'll probably become some other company's problem down the line. He'll likely get hush money since his behavior is incredibly toxic (the 'speaking to employees without sarcasm' item is pretty much so many toxic bosses), but there's a reason we remember "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, George Pullman, and a certain Twitter head while the good executives are only mentioned in business classes.

It's Gray's station now and they want to get away from most of Meredith's messes over the years, so the rebranding was partly done with that in mind.

34 minutes ago, TVNewsLover said:

Wonder if KTRK will pick up Wheel.

The ABC deal was what they needed to go down the line with the rest of their stations to know it's going on; depends on if Stegna General negotiates for KHOU, or if it's Coxpollo that'll have to do it and if they don't bite, there's still the possibility of Fox and Graham trying to make a better deal for their stations before ABC can try there.

Now that we know things are a go in the biggest markets, it'll be interesting to see if some of the carriage aberrations like WSYT do have a renewal shot or if Imagicomm doesn't bother and shoves it off to Sinclair or Nexstar to replace it with The Bible Game or something. And if this new deal includes a much more streaming-friendly window for same-week or same-month replays while respecting existing station rights.

4 hours ago, GodfreyGR said:

Variety reports that Chris Licht is planning more changes at CNN- revamped daytime lineup and *gasp* no more sitting behind a desk, among other things...

 

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/cnn-daytime-overhaul-newsroom-headquarters-chris-licht-1235483637/

Because that worked so well and perfect and awesome for the BBC–oh, they're replacing them with new models because their robocam system is comedic. 

The problem is certainly not the sitting anchors, though I do agree that CNN's scenics since moving out of CNN Center can easily be compared to a market 150+ station. Back of a screen and fuzzy 720p or lower video is the only thing you ever see, or a 2000s faux brick wall aesthetic.

6 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

There's one more R&O today.

• WWDP (10 > 36)

I wish there was an ability to downgrade the terrible WRNN-owned stations to 200-watt AM daytimers instead of giving them better UHF signals.  Also this 'upgrade' applies to share/sister station WMFP, so yay, clearer ShopHQ and OnTV4U farther away, Boston!

I do wonder if KENV's upgrade would bring back a major network to that station, or at the very least making it a KMYU satellite. As for WMC, as Lizzo would say, 'it's about damned time'.

46 minutes ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Another one of those crappy channels now is Logo. What used to be a network for the LGBT community is now tons of old sitcom reruns, probably pitched and sped up for commercials. Very few BBC-sourced shows on BBC America nowadays, it wasn't that way 20 years ago. FYI runs The King of Queens and Storage Wars reruns instead of what used to be biographical shows.

FYI also aired what turned out to be a very discredited edition of Miss USA in October. Unless you are a pageant superfan, you would've never known it was on because FYI's budget is the same as A+E Network's budget for paper and cleaning supplies. And the only thing Viceland proved is that young people will not pay for content that's on YouTube for free.

I just don't understand why AMC consolidates around that sole channel and just cut things down to AMC and BBC World News. All of their networks don't really have a focus; BBC America has pretty much made way for Acorn and Britbox, WEtv just seems to be a CSI outpost, and IFC/Sundance are down to the Independent Spirit Awards and a few rare great shows like Sherman's Showcase.

I get more monthly out of my YouTube Premium subscription for $10.50 than I do for $150 of cable programming, which for me is basically sports, local news, a couple of talk shows I like, SNL, and some shows I just prefer to let accumulate on my DVR and watch later without commercials. Most of the time I just watch a local looping weather channel I can stream for free.

YouTube allows me to shift from Animal Crossing to football to old commercials to news opens to highway content to product reviews to Strong Bad to MLM takedowns to fun LGBTQ+ content and then odd rabbitholes like 'why is there a big NO SMOKING sign on supertankers' and dopey drivers on drivecams. And there's no bean counter to stop me from mainlining Caillou grounded videos for an entire night (it's trainwreck content), with not a commercial in sight.

2 hours ago, DJonNews said:

And how about speeding up any pre-2014 program to the point that they're PAL-pitched? Yes, it's syndication, and yes, you have to attract those advertisers, but at the cost of just trying to watch the show normally? Paramount Global is the only company I know that is a huge offender of such a practice. Ever wondered why the "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes sound a bit off on TV Land? This is why.

I scanned by Great American Family one day during one of their Who's the Boss marathons done to waste time because they only care about existing during Christmas and Valentine's Day and Sony is happy to give them reruns for a pittance. The theme song was pitched to the point that Steve Wariner sounded like a eunuch, Tony, Angela and Samantha seemed to be on what Jessie Spano took for that one test and burning holes in the carpet as they did their scenes, and I could not understand much dialogue as even the captioning track was rushed. My spectrum brain noticed immediately and wished for everything to slow down. It was so disrespectful to the show, the actors, and the viewer, along with the creatives. All this...to shove in more ads.

53 minutes ago, CLETVFan said:

Has anyone noticed how channels like IFC, TLC and VH1 have become completely different than what they were 20 or even 30 years ago?  They are nothing more than networks with different acronyms.

VH1 just cut one of their four shows with a pulse, Drag Race, which is now on MTV to minimize that network's damage. It won't be long until the rest move there or BET.

And to be fair, MTV Classic and BET Jams/Soul still actually show music videos so they haven't moved from their original remits; I have no issue with them. It's the acronym networks that just plug in a VLC playlist of one show and call it a day.

7 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:

Aren't they buying some other Fox station in the region? I think in Minnesota somewhere?

They're trying to buy the KVRR station network in ND/northwest MN and KQDS in Duluth.

There used to be fun to TV in the afternoons, where people did live shows and there wasn't a news story to be found. Now the fun is limited to the last part of the newscast and met/sports anchor interplay, and with even Jerry and Steve in reruns now, it's either bad court shows, news, or repeats of sitcoms only palatable to older audiences, and the newer tolerable sitcoms are absurdly easy to access in full and commercial-free (or with saner commercials) on streaming services.

Only three game shows (and one, Family Feud, doesn't even get near a 1/10 of an entendre and makes me embarrassed to watch) are left, and it seems except for PBS, broadcast, cable and streaming have unilaterally decided that all kids watch is Fortnite and play Roblox and refuse to put money into any children's content (the Saturday morning E/I Hearst 'for kids...but really old people' racket doesn't count), and David Zazlav showed his true hand by culling every bit of kid's content from HBO Max and ready to cut Cartoon Network to the bone.

Don't get me started on the refuse that is the Discovery networks, or alleged movie channels Sundance and IFC carrying not one independent film. I'm sure cable providers actually want to cut useless filler like MTV2, TruTV and 4 of the Discovery networks, but the big companies are like 'oh, you don't want Yellowstone or the NCAA tournament? Or SpongeBob? Welp, then you don't get CBS or Nick because you don't want to carry a diminished TV Land!' Big events get held hostage because of small networks which started as 'special interest', but now carry nothing but reruns.

43 minutes ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

JEERS to ABC for airing commercials during this monumental tragedy. It should have been commercial-free from the time the ambulance drove onto the field.

 

Most of the breaks were ABC and NFL promos where nobody was getting paid, though (and the local stations still require their break time). And before 9:15 they still thought the game would resume. You can't go continuous with a lot of unknowns and nothing really happening, and people need time to decompress and figure out what's going on and to vent off-air before going back on-air.

After the game was suspended they did indeed stay continuous. Under the circumstances I have nothing but respect for how things were covered, and god forbid if this was a few years ago we'd have to deal with Ditka or the like (or as we saw on another network, Skip Bayless) trying to scream 'the game should go on, we have such wusses in this league now'. Thankfully that side didn't get any oxygen tonight, and it was the right call.

1 hour ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

I don’t think so; there are plenty of Gray stations using old stuff from Gari/615/Non-Stop. IIRC, Warner Chappell is charging their clients a crap ton if they want upgrades to music packages.

I know Warner Music Group (WC's owner) only licenses the name from WBD for continuity purposes, but it's just been a bad year to be associated with anything named Warner.

On 12/30/2022 at 6:56 AM, Myron Falwell said:

Ratings for cable talk channels in general deserve a massive asterisk. Yes, they (and Fox News in general) have a large audience, but when the bulk of it is over the age of 54, does it even matter? Maybe that’s why FNC only needs direct response ads, because they get hefty retrans fees from cable providers.

It's also just a declining pool of viewers; at maximum you can have 15 million on a good night, and on a night where nothing is happening, it's down to 5 million. That's 1-5% of the country, and even then how many of those TVs just have it on for background noise? You have so many places where the TV is just set on FNC or CNN just for the sake of visual noise, and to try to talk a declining audience to switch to this 'new' network you associate with reruns and multiple programming directions, and you're not going to do that because you'll just get customers who are like 'put it on a REAL news channel' (or are in a place at 3am wondering what the hell a campmeeting is).

Also don't forget just how much FNC is just in so many routines. Fox News Radio is now the main radio news service, along with their features on even mainstream full service stations, so even if you're nowhere near a TV with cable, Fox is going to be on something. NewsNation has just one radio station, WGN, along with whichever leftover affiliates somehow decided ABC, CBS, FNR, USA Radio, Salem, or Westwood One don't provide a good news product. WGN has become the most mid station to ever mid and is run godawfully (their schedule page thinks Jim Bohannan is still doing his show in his casket, I guess).

And Fox has Fox Nation, MSNBC has NBC News Now, CNN has their app. At the start of 2023, I still cannot stream NewsNation on Spectrum or even in their app off wifi. Nexstar failed terribly at getting their ducks in a row before launching NN, and Perry's 'the web is a fad' thinking is going to come back to bite him sooner than later.

Personally, I wouldn't ever boast about beating taped programming on two nights the NFL buried anything with a (live and on-air and not involving home shopping) pulse, but for NN, I guess beating a taped show about the 'war on Christmas', on Christmas, in a very asterisk-heavy demographic manner, is an achievement in something, something enough to have your classic TV network being forced to acknowledge it on Facebook.

2 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

I'm not a fan. And I still don't understand the purpose of putting them in Times Square if they're not going to use a real window or make use of the location.

The hard sell of "CBS Deals" is really not helping. It's enough when your local advertorial show is doing it, but when a national morning show is pushing Wish refuse, it's absolutely intolerable. It might be making some money, but it's doing cheap and dirty damage to a brand that certainly doesn't need more.