mrschimpf

57 minutes ago, AmericanErrorist said:

 

The WBTS facility is licensed as a Class A digital, but it is actually transmitting on spectrum leased from WGBX, the full-power secondary station owned by WGBH, the PBS station in town, so over-the-air coverage is not an issue.

Certainly not the issue at all as they've done their best to improve the signal as far as they can get it and their facility is very modern. The problem is everyone else has had plenty of time to establish themselves and NBC Boston is pretty much a bodged-together combo of NECN and Telemundo NE with the addition of some other talent. Like in Milwaukee or Atlanta post-94, it's going to take an entire generation of talent to cycle out before they can consider themselves competitive, and where some stations were able to get a big syndicated show to lighten the load off news, that certainly isn't happening at all in 2024.

53 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Does Sinclair even try to promote their ARC branding?  Or is it just a name for their stripped CW affiliates?

 

The name and what they say it stands for is just a byproduct of soulless committee thinking. 

It's still just one YouTube playlist on KOMO's YouTube channel three months later, and they still have no website. I wouldn't be shocked if KUNS gets a traditional "CW 51 Seattle" branding come fall and ARC WM quietly goes away after the next Xfinity negotiation cycle, and ARC stands for 'Almost Ready to Close' here. It's also telling that it hasn't been launched outside those markets because other Arc organizations have pre-emptively stopped them from doing so after these two launches.

KGBT-TV in the RGV market had one of the guy wires snap on their tower this week, and after an evacuation for a day or two it was safely taken down. It had already been stripped of its CBS affiliation in 2021, become an Antenna/My Net sub zombie, and its main and Estrella subchannels were bumped to KVEO's bandwidth while NX figures out next steps.

I feel like they either move to KVEO's stick in the coming months with only the Nexstar classic nets returning in addition (the rest are Scripps networks and will likely see a contract rip-up), or it just goes silent after a year and it goes back up for bids; why rebuild a tower when you can just move its operations to the working one?

9 hours ago, Jase said:

 

I wouldn't be surprised if WFLD/WPWR makes a play for this (rather than WCIU). They're looking to add/launch new content (particularly sports-related content) and GMFB would be a perfect fit. 

I put the MyNet stations under the Fox Plus name now just because it's much more appropriate now rather than MyNet, and you're definitely correct, they have a headstart with WFLD as the Bears' offcial station.

Apparently, Chris Harrison has found religion (and about Texas's lack of income taxes) and will host the network's morning show with his wife in the fall a la Kelly and Mark. Sadly I found out by Entertainment Tonight (where his wife used to do features) doing a segment with him about it, so as far as CBSMV considering Dr. Phil persona non grata on their air, that isn't happening.

(also correct the title to remove the date since that didn't happen, please mods)

46 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

Hopefully, it succeeds, but it needs to not be written like any crap that's on soaps now. I'm honestly shocked. 

 

If it cuts The Talk down to a half-hour it's already succeeded; whatever that show was before, it now seems to be gliding by on its past glory, anti-GH viewers simply there out of spite, or sponcon.

This has Weigel, the CBS indies and the Fox Plus stations written all over it, along with Scripps just going by a raw eyeball of where it would air in NFL markets (Green Bay it'll likely be WACY for sure, likely KMCI for Kansas City, WCIU for Chicago and WMLW for Milwaukee).

To the surprise of nobody who doesn't want to stare at simulcasts of people who have faces for radio outside Piers Morgan (who ditched it last month) and isn't in the business of comparing LeBron to Johnny Unitas or Babe Ruth, TalkTV is going online-only.

The mets and traffic reporters probably simply thought the visual quality of presenting in front of a screen was poor and went back to the chroma key. You have to line up the map a certain way so a county line isn't confused with a screen seam (though here it's seamless) and they probably just did not think the presentation in front of a screen with blur rather than a key with known PQ worked long-term. Certainly no cause for concern.

On 1/28/2024 at 1:37 AM, CircleSeven said:

A couple of things.

 

The Weigel's COL switch from Wittenberg to Shawano on RF 31 was greenlighted (1/24).

 

Now I'm hoping in the future, should a new low power/translator filing window comes about, and if there is a vacant channel available for an LP, Weigel should pursue filing to get an LP repeater to serve the immediate Brown County area. Because I don't think that new RF 31 would be easily reachable for OTA viewers in that area, unless they have a really good antenna. 

They did more what I expected with the Shawano bump-over; they've filled a CP modification to transmit from Scrays Hill south of Green Bay with a southward null to protect WITI, so I would still expect a future LP to get more of the market, but likely for Manitowoc/Cleveland or Oshkosh/Ripon to get Fox River Valley/southern lakeshore coverage.

It won't be "Bally Sports" after the baseball season ends.

I know wouldn't happen, but it would be hilarious if it became ESPN Bet Sports (I'm sure Barstool or Pointsbet is the next one to chase for naming rights, honestly).

2 hours ago, Vlad said:

1. They are still on 720p (two steps below 4K), so they are not able to get the best picture quality because for some reason ABC and Disney opted for 720p during the HD rollout of the late 2000s rather than 1080i which allows for better lighting and picture quality. Most people won't notice the difference between 720 progressive and 1080 interlace, but 1080 is still more pixels and thus better quality. I'm not sure if ABC will ever upgrade to 1080i but that is certainly a limiting factor.

It was more an ESPN move than ABC's decision really because 720p was better for sports at the time, along with being more conservative about data and transmission (1080i and confetti is a nightmare and awful for fast motion). It's more likely they'd upgrade to mostly a 4K flow with an actual 1080p broadcast once ATSC 3.0 rolls out beyond the early adopters (who are a bit alarmist about DRM and such; unless you're trying to start Locast 2.0 or an archivist, the regular viewer isn't going to care, and the standard is still rolling out now so you know what you're getting into) and they move to the Yards. And let's not forget for years they had to share with Live!, so finally having their full and dedicated spaces for each other (when I watch that show I just feel ill from how cramped that audience is) is going to make so much more of a difference.

Honestly, I'm happy about this for WABC, though the current form it has does have its charms. Whatever the national news side/GMA is annoyed about, it's going to be a lot better in the end for 7 and the syndicated shows to have standardized studios with actual spaces and no longer having to work around the limitations of Lincoln Square.

No real surprises with the Bucks airing on WDJT/WMLW and the state network last night as far as graphics as it was all still a team-produced Diamond production with all the same personnel; they used a neutralized cut of the Bally theme and the red B graphics and mic-flag wise was replaced with WMLW's blue "the m" logo, along with any Bally mentions being removed from the opens/closes. Honestly, a familiar broadcast that worked perfect for everyone.

On 2/14/2024 at 9:38 AM, Action Newsroom said:

Geraldo is joining NewsNation as Correspondent at Large.

Will this set up yet another reboot of Geraldo at Large where he'll get a half-hour to do whatever he'd like?

10 minutes ago, Action Newsroom said:

Audacy is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with help from its new (and biggest) investor.

And certain folks on Twitter are totally reacting with full understanding and sense to who that investor is .

Of course, they aren't, really (the top result is Sputnik's imported gloom and doom). I'm sorry to tell most of them, but George Soros investing into Audacy doesn't immediately mean every one of their stations will become Air America, everything will become better or that he'll be able to get better songs on a radio station. Outside the all-news stations which everyone doesn't want to change, Audacy stations have been declining into automated and hubbed irrelevancy since the CBS merger, and it feels like he's throwing money into an open wound. I don't expect we've seen the last of Audacy in its doom spiral.

Quick minor correction that Enlace is cable/pay distributed so it's unlikely they'll lose any carriage based on that. However, Spectrum did dump most of the TBN suite several years back outside Original Recipe TBN and Enlace, so they'd need to restore that coverage. Even the channel finder they have outside the main TBN stations and must-carry coverage, is just a whole lot of 'request it' links to a boilerplate form. There are also some low-powers which carry Enlace as a .1 without any English services, so they haven't lost all of their OTA coverage.

But with two weeks to go until launch, not a great sign regarding network carriage.

3 hours ago, Yankees4life said:

Much to the surprise of absolutely no one. I'm not too sure what they were thinking with that one.

Trying to justify the purchase of what was an HD-era experimental channel otherwise bound for HC2 irrelevancy. The entire WHDT purchase made no sense from the start at all; sure, you get an overflow station, but what else can you do with that station outside guaranteeing full coverage for your subnets? The CW isn't moving, you've got WFLX and Fox already via sidecar, and the Ion flagship is just as sidecarred. I wouldn't be surprised if the purchase came with a Mar-a-Lago membership a la WLNY.

One side effect of the Dabl management deal has quietly appeared on Weigel's Start TV; they now air that day's DREW episode at 1am weeknights for the night owls who don't have local stations that repeat the episode overnight (or only half of it), a la Kelly airing on Bravo the same way.

2 hours ago, mer764KCTV5 said:

That doesn't sound right. That's not okay especially in a smaller market like where KNEP-TV serves.

With all of the issues, it may have just come down to that there literally isn't much advertising revenue to support the station even in a part-time bureau state and they were completely under water with the station (over the years the transmitter alone was a money sink which kept breaking down in the core of winter). Some of these smaller markets are down to a state where they're stalled out to the point of ripping and reading from Nixle and Facebook for much of the show (because police and municipal authorities don't want them to go deeper than that and openly obstruct them from doing so) and the only original content left is weather (which can be outsourced) and sports (outside the high school football and basketball regular seasons just a vacuum of time).

2 hours ago, Action Newsroom said:

A standalone ESPN DTC streaming service is officially launching next fall (or as soon as next August). It'll air feeds of ESPN networks and programming, and interactive features like stats and score. Yes, is different from ESPN+.

 

https://deadline.com/2024/02/disney-espn-streaming-launch-date-bob-iger-1235818372/

I would literally pay extra for a 'clean feed' with just a simple scorebug and no tickers; every new sports service seems to think it's required to appeal to the 'prop bet on random Bangladeshi netball at 4:30 in the morning' category of bettors. I really hope that information isn't baked into the video of this service.

On 1/31/2024 at 7:45 PM, MorningNews said:

KTLA also streams on the radio. Might be an LA thing.

Should also mention WGN Radio airs the 4-6 block of channel 9's morning news in Chicago; it's a common thing for heritage/struggling stations that can't justify filling the 5am hour these days with Orion retired and Max mainly focusing on his TV duties (as their farm reports used to fill that 5am slot), and WGN starts at 4am because their overnight syndicated filler (Rich Valdes) ends at 5am ET/4am CT. There are some set aside periods for the radio side to contribute their own traffic reports and you have to assume that the TV side adjusts their presentation knowing that radio listeners can't see images on-screen.

And it just makes me sad that WGN and KABC (which is so badly-rated Cumulus is embarrassed to ask Nielsen rate it) have to depend on TV stations to fill time now.

3 hours ago, LOWERCASE GUY said:

Nah. Too short of a URL

thefinestcitywiththefineststationsintheworldfromthefineestbroadcasterinamerica.com

On 1/17/2024 at 11:22 AM, mrschimpf said:

It really just buys time for the online components; if Spectrum drops them in February, expect the dominoes to fall and for other providers to follow, which is why the NBA set aside games later in the year for other outlets. In Wisconsin, Spectrum is the majority provider, and there is absolutely no way the Bucks or Brewers would stay on Bally if that occurs. Fubo carriage can only overcome so much and it's still going to take several months for Diamond to move from "Baby's First RSN CMS System" (which is pretty much been trashed to hell and back by the Bucks fanbase) to AWS.

And now it's been confirmed; ten games this season among WDJT, WMLW, and Telemundo Wisconsin in Milwaukee, with outer markets still TBA;
 

19 hours ago, Glimmer said:

There was a tidbit in one of the articles when this was going into the market that CMV was telling stations with the current Judge Judy package NOT to pick up Judy Justice; kinda wonder if that’s the reason why a lot of the current Judge Judy station groups passed on this 

Since all the episodes are available on-demand lately it's probably more that than anything rather than CBS mob-tacting them; at the end of the day it's yet another 'if you haven't seen it, it's new to you' syndicated package that fills an easy hour and captures the audience which doesn't want to deal with Freevee. And it certainly isn't original content in 2024.

What is CBS going to do, take away their Dr. Phil reruns? No, not the Dr. Phil reruns from 2018 we air at 4am anyways that OWN and Pluto also air and will clog Merit Street soon, please don't take those.

43 minutes ago, kjohnson said:

If we are "news saturated" that seems to be news to people here.  A quick look at any newscast that KMOV has proves a lot of news is being left on the table. KPLR isn't really producing much of anything, other than essentially a rebroadcast of the previous KTVI newscast. It's leaving KSDK and the Post-Dispatch to find rest of the news out there, but they don't have the resources. We need another functioning newsroom. Spectrum News doesn't really have any sort of obvious presence.

St. Louis before the traditional 'cable guys' got their hands on Charter and moved it to CT is still in many ways, Spectrum's true 'home' market Charter-wise; it's really surprising that they haven't had a Spectrum News outpost in STL for years, and it seems like a severely missed opportunity. I know the big three organizations seem to 'serve' enough, but it's a very entrenched and conservative market where even changing the graphics (as KMOV just did) is akin to a gaudy plastic surgery to the market core in St. Louis County. Some kind of competitor would be welcome, but they have to balance the city and county viewers and find a niche that works.

KDNL's move meanwhile isn't shocking as for their netlet/lower Big Four stations, SBG prefers a small studio to do what they need to do for commercial clients and the occasional public affairs show. I would worry about deferred maintenance for those Cole St. studios though.