mrschimpf

A lot of 'storm chaser' vehicles usually have a screen on an arm attached to the hatchback door to present a forecast outdoors...but they're usually always set to a very vivid mode and they usually use known brand name sets (often weatherproofed) with a very low-profile bezel. This one is a closeout 720p special (this one, specifically, a 24" 720p model with RCA and VGA hookups, and a '3.4 mm headphone output' (!); the brand is called Furrion, which specializes in RV TVs no sensible person would ever consider)...whoever picked out that unit should be fired; that's unacceptable even for one of those back-set monitors that plays a competitor station for decor. Even a damned iPad mini would be better than that POS. Do better, Fox.

My dream is that Fox uses this rationale to hoover up WUTV in Buffalo and finally makes it a Fox station that's respectable for 2023, not 1988. Including a full-scale news department and no more 700 Club. Sinclair can keep just keep WNYO and their tradition of not trying.

Never recorded it because it's on the Spectrum app, but the ticker's ads were for Elk & Elk and some service in Akron; it took until 2017 until we had Spectrum app access to TWC after the Time Warner merger.

I use my Apple TV all the time and not having it on there (as niche as it is) is a severe oversight. Not even a browser to AirPlay option. I have a Fire TV, but it's just too slow and, Roku's video standards and overall UX are years behind. Like the horrible situation where the private equity vultures forced apart the TV Guide channel and the magazine and it took revolt to bring them and proper listings back together, the entire situation with the Weather Channel's breakup has been a complete strikeout; I'm more apt to ignore the Weather Channel completely because Spectrum never upgraded their local headend for HD (thus I get the same feed as DirecTV in HD), so it's either watch local coverage in 4:3 SD (which I simply won't in 2022), or cue up the Spectrum app and watch the Milwaukee headend's data (with Cleveland ticker advertising for some reason) over reality glurge in primetime the vast majority of the audience doesn't give a damn about.

If KDKA Radio's talk lineup and KDKA-FM's sports hot takes haven't made it clear KDKA-TV isn't a part of them anymore, I don't know what to tell that viewer; there are still misguided radio listeners who call in to yell at WISN-TV for whatever hot take was thrown out by Mark Belling on WISN radio, even though they haven't shared anything, much less weather forecasts, in 20 years besides a callsign. That's definitely a viewer you're glad 'will never watch your TV station again you (whatever insult they have)!'.

Stephen Marks, the owner of WBKB, KXGN, WBUP and WBKP, passed away on May 11.

My apologies for overlooking that, they do simulcast in that direction. I don't know what's stopping them from simulcasting WDCW on WDVM though (contractual against WHP-DT3?), so the point does stand.

Plus it always gives you a backup when you need to push off programming for breaking news or push the bombs off the main station's schedule. Duopoly stations may be the last thing anyone wants, but you're glad to have them not competing with you, or to have a place to put in-house shows. Plus public places or parties still need shows on their TVs during the day that won't annoy everyone and it's free ad money for little outlay.

WDCW is in a channel-sharing arrangement with WFDC and its four channels/two HD channels itself pre-dating Nexstar, so they're stuck with that arrangement. And that map is a really optimal reality, as WWPX (which is a satellite of WPXW)'s contour just a few miles north has a shaky signal into the Beltway itself.

At least for Indianapolis, WISH-TV will likely be precluded from that, as you know Circle City would immediately argue to the FCC that Nexstar would conspire to make them as a formerly-owned station a non-factor in the market and that nobody carries (or really watches) WTTV/K-DT2. And internally there will be WGN pushback, though sadly the personnel that would've been able to moot the move will be told by Perry they have no choice (even if the current primetime schedule of sitcom reruns is otherwise ignored by management and the public).

What's definitely forgotten here is that TalkTV...is basically radio on TV, as outside a few hours, it's just a rebranding of TalkRadio where most everyone is in front of cheap Hisense TVs in front of microphones doing a radio show that's simulcasting on TV, rather than in a radio studio, and badly. That is why the ratings nose-dived almost immediately; outside the curious seeing what their radio shows and people look like on TV now and a few gets, that's all they have for most of their broadcast day. Yes, Piers and their news block is all traditional TV setup, but that's a vast minority of their broadcast day,. You can't sustain a radio simulcast on television unless it's designed for the medium, or fills a niche, which sports radio shows set up for a dynamic video simulcast with plenty of touches to tailor to both audiences can do rather easily. But Pat McAfee has that energy to walk around and do much more; your average talker, they're just sitting in a studio screaming into a spit-shielded mic and yelling at their producer for three hours or like Mike Levin's setup, screaming at the camera and destroying VU meters for three hours. With most morning zoos, you see how the sausage is made and it looks like five hours of a group of four people in a studio both sleepy and looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Sure, there have been radio studio simulcasts that are appealing, but unless you were Rush Limbaugh, who had years of experience doing television and knew how to frame his studio, you're not only not getting people to pay for that, but not want to look at those people for hours on end because they all kinda forget they need more than just a camera in the room, but extra television production features like graphics and interaction. The main difference between America and UK/Canadian and Australian news though, is definitely the regulations, where news is clearly separated from opinion and can't be used to tee up the next hour of discussion. There's also a respect for the full audience where going off on people needlessly is going to turn people off, as what happened with Sun TV in Canada. There may be loud complainers, but they have the newspapers to complain to, and the radio. They just haven't made a good transition to television.

A very odd spin-off of iCarly dealing with her true crime reporting cousin? Actually, no, I'm not finding anything about it online. This is a total mystery of a show, and it's not associated with Fox First Run. The only thing I can think is former Bellum Entertainment staffers got together a new company and sold a new show, because outside Dateline and before Bellum's collapse (we're not counting True Crime Daily), they were the last to try a daily crime strip.

We're down to 22 UHF channels, and several (14-19) are already ruled out in military base areas due to land mobile radio use, along with medical radiology, so that's down to 17 realistically. And there's no realistic way that more channels could be added by reducing spectrum into smaller bits.

Yeah, I meant to leave out the obvious full-power ed licenses like KDTN, KLTJ, WYDN and KWDK; those aren't going anywhere anytime soon (and there's no way they're selling them to traditional educational interests). The low-powers acquired from bankruptcies like Equity's and Guardian are more likely to be sold off. And here, KDTL was duplicative to WPXS, and already carrying Retro TV instead, which seems to be an overall anamoly. That's good to hear at least. I do wonder if KPTV and KVVU have been able to genericize their More shows and just said to DDM 'well it hasn't been published in half a decade and it is an extension of our morning newscast, thus it's "more", so we aren't changing it', along with logo changes. I do think though eventually they'll take on the common Gray direction where an ad/traffic guy will host the segments with the sponsor.

Greta's been rumored to be moving to Newsmax, so the end of FCP definitely tracks. As for RTM, you can just assume that nobody would've noticed they stopped production until it didn't have a schedule slot in September. As they inherited their share from Raycom I assume they would have gotten out earlier if COVID hadn't got in the way and taken out some Fall 2020 premieres, and because it was just Zoom reactions mixed into clips for the last two years it was cheap to make. The other thing to watch in the next few months is if the Meredith stations retitle their versions of Better and More so Atlanta doesn't have to pay licensing fees for those magazine titles to DDM, or just because Gray prefers blended up-front advertorials in their newscasts to an outright hour lifestyle show, just cancel them for news extensions. Also interesting to see that station sale from Daystar; I get the feeling with Marcus Lamb's strong-arm tactics now gone, like TBN did after the elder Crouches passed, they're going to start taking a deep look at whether outside their Texas full-powers, they really need to own television stations when selling them to others and leasing a subchannel KOCE-style will keep their reach while saving them money.

Seriously, it's good that Nielsen isn't the monolith they were in the past and that ratings are now not only day-to-day in most markets, but often lessened as the 'rat race' has been de-emphasized. It always seemed stupid to 'hold back' an important story until a sweeps period because you had to have it backed up by some NBC disaster movie or tie somehow to an ER episode, and although there are still some sites (Deadline and TVNewser specifically) that still think people care about the night-to-night 'ratings battle', we're now in an age where those big stories are on YouTube or turned into a web series/vertical. If people need to take time off; let them. I'd rather see a happy anchor rather than one grumping through the last part of sweeps. Also don't forget that NBC station folks probably had to hold back summer 2020-2021 plans thanks to the Olympic delays and COVID, and are finally able to get those vacations in just now.

Tamron is moving to 2pm, then Jennifer Hudson at 3pm in the fall, so outside sliding back their lineup an hour, there's nothing to move.

WISN has always been the 'hard news and people you know' station in the market, and it's always felt like if it was up to the news side and not the bulk deal corporate had with Warner/Telepictures, they would've done so in June 2011 after Oprah ended rather than sliding Ellen up an hour. A lot of local news seems to happen in that 4pm slot and WISN has been handicapped to balance covering it with not getting "AngyAngie13030' yelling at them on Facebook because they missed one of Ellen's games or the 'secret sweepstakes keyword' during sweeps. WTMJ has had the timeslot in 1993 but over time their news in that slot deteriorated due to corporate mandates/egos, as Journal and Scripps were more interested in making it light and forming their shows to the whims of the siding/window companies that advertised on it (also when they had WTMJ radio, promoting that and their hosts to absurd points), while WITI and WDJT took to the timeslot in order to counteract that and Ellen to be the hard news option in the hour and just all those talk shows bombing at 4pm after 2012 just forcing their hand. Honestly though, WISN was very limited in the middle of the decade, still only doing morning/5/6/10, and the expansion has sorely been needed for years. They've expanded much more judiciously over the years and they have an anchor roster/weather staff that will have no problem handling it.

I feel like this was the worst-kept secret in Milwaukee once it became clear Kelly is stuck on 'TMJ for the foreseeable future and they never got any real viewer pushback on Ellen pre-emptions for breaking news. Also glad to see Derrick will be on with Mark (they're like a Laurel and Hardy at 9 so it'll be nice to get them at 4 now). They usually have more studio stuff in the 5 and 6 shows and more live shots in the morning and at 9 and 10 (with 11am and 9pm where you see Hearst must-runs and verticals), so this will be a slight change as they get in more live coverage at 4 permanently.

Joel Osteen has his Sunday shows on broadcast stations sponsored by Lifelock/Norton (including ads at the beginning and end), so sadly this isn't an alien concept to American televangelism either.

There is a DRM update coming to current tuners that will enable that, along with adding broadcast flag-like protection on network feeds (which shouldn't be a thing but we're in the age of secretary-designees and not passing FCC commissioner nominations, thus they'll try to get away with it).

Gotta give them props for trying at least; it's not like the FCC can take away their other license. As for the bidders, it's shocking that Sinclair doesn't have everything in order, and good to see that Weigel is still using that spectrum auction money from WMLW to up their reach. We can immediately rule out Renard (one of Craig Fox's companies) getting anything, along with Rxdio, which going by this site has no real business plan for their Muzak service in the middle of the desert outside 'get TV spectrum...profit?'. Estrella might have their name in the hat, but with their struggles right now they'll be out early.

It'll be interesting to see how Spectrum and Altice react to a channel going from cable to broadcast, even if it's a declining network forced down to 480i; Spectrum and Altice dominate NY, thus why it might not be on there, but it's on in a bunch of markets where Comcast or Cox is primary. But if they decide to dump the cable carriage and go all-in on broadcast, you could see Tegna/Standard throw in the towel on True Crime Network and take Oxygen as Snapped does fine on whatever platform it gets put on.

I really hope it'll be on pundits and overpaid on-air'ers more than off-air staff and bureau folks. In the last few years they've seemed to forget the actual correspondents whose goal is just to report news and not have their contributions set-up Don Lemon moderating more culture war/political nonsense. There's no excuse as to why Christiane Amanpour's daily show for PBS doesn't get any CNN US exposure on the network, even late at night.

I wouldn't mind a suite of channels like Peacock and Pluto already have, so you'd have a channel of "Parts Unknown" next to ones with "Larry King Live", "Style with Elsa Klench" and "Pinnacle" episodes, or "On This Day" rolling news from a moment in history. And of course, "Forensic Files" and old CourtTV content, since Ion Mystery now draws less from that archive. There was so much potential with this service that was wasted from day one for more shows about current politics, media criticism and 'other news' content which should just be on regular CNN.