mrschimpf

ABC promoted the first ever (English-language network) Puerto Rico countdown on New Year's Rockin' Eve tonight (shhhh...Univision, Telemundo, and WAPA airing that for years doesn't count somehow)... Completely forgetting that most of their affiliates don't usually like to start their news at 11:01/10:01 for no good reason, especially on a night where five minutes (and three minutes of ads) are already taken away for New York coverage. Both my ABC affiliates (WBAY and WISN) have hard master control clocks and went right to their news at 10 on the dot, and I'm sure a good percentage of ABC affiliates in the Central/Eastern Time Zones did too. Very bad planning on ABC and Media Rights Capital's part. Making it worse? They didn't even count down for a full minute, it was on a broadcast delay, and when they did start the countdown, it was the top of the hour and there was no natural lead-in outside chaos on stage desperately getting the crowed to get hyped for the countdown, thus the affiliates made the right choice in going to news. I'm not even going to get deep into the unmasked disaster that is CBS in Nashville tonight (say everyone is triple-vaxxed all you want, people will fake their cards and there's no breathing room in those crowd shots); at least the NBC coverage does have a mostly-masked crowd and compelling performances from Miley (Pete Davidson though...noooooo), and outside that bad clocking, ABC is fine, though the late-late night recorded performances from LA and previous years have been used as a primetime Plan B. ETA - ABC also forgot that the Friday night Mega Millions drawing is a thing stations air (which originates at WSB and is always aired there and all Cox stations), so the San Juan countdown was also pre-empted for that.

Someone at Scripps and 'TMJ decided 'hey, so this weather warning is the same size as legal type in a cell phone ad, and our viewers have to squint or get three inches in front of the screen to read the text...but it's good enough for us!' 2021...the year my hope that 'TMJ would right the ship...didn't happen.

Whatever's going on with KCPQ (and Fox knew that was a multi-year fix going in), Fox got the best part of the deal; WITI hardly needed fixing and now they don't have to worry about having to hassle with the WJZY shoebox. They were better off just leaving things as-is with WCCB, or giving the affiliation to WAXN and just going on autopilot knowing that a few off-hours newscasts from WSOC was all they needed.

The infamous 9am hour in 2008, which included turning the morning news towards a lurid 'local gossip' focus wholly incompatible with The Early Show, and they effectively broke up the Cheetah Girls when some wacko 'reality blogger' who claimed to represent one of them went on the show to do damage control. Thankfully that direction didn't last very long.

Seems like the current Gray MO; WBAY still has the 2013 logo open but the new bug as shown above. But it's more of a 'when we get to it' project anyways.

This gives flashbacks to the Group W era of WCNC when they had the WPCQ calls and a management who just let WBTV and WSOC steal their lunch. City-based brandings also kind of wed you to only news of that type; you've just told your Kannapolis, Rock Hill, Concord, and Belmont viewers that their issues are less important than those of Charlotte.

Or...they just decided to encompass both stations in a fun promo and the song was handy to do so? Not every station promo has to be a lurch involving crimes and accidents and claims of being first.

It's not even real brickwork; though the patterns can vary, the surface is just pre-cast panels that are flat as a board on the back and repeat on each panel. It looks like they got the 'economy brick' package there.

I hadn't seen this until now, but E! is carrying Access Hollywood same-day at 11:30 p.m. ET (mainly since they killed their news department last year). It's just after the West Coast goes to primetime, but for many of its stations that only have room for it after network late night or Fox stations, they can't be happy to be undermined like this. I understand cable rights for talk shows and the like late, late at night (as Bravo does for Kelly Clarkson) or time-fillers nobody cares about like Celebrity Page, but this doesn't seem like the right move for Access unless it just moves to E!.

True; just noting more that they started from the exact same place of being small stations not noticed by many in their markets, and while the CBS-owned station which presumably had all the help from their network but by 2002 they were like and gave into what seemed to be a stone-written fate, the mere affiliate took full advantage of the opportunity and competes strongly.

It's so odd that WDJT in Milwaukee has a good news operation and just leaned in full into their "CBS 58" branding and never changed it, while in Detroit, WWJ's basically been treated as a second CW station with no news; I had expected this a lot sooner than after the Entercom merger, where they couldn't fill their website with WWJ Radio content any longer. Hopefully there will be good effort put into this; Detroit's long needed a fourth voice between the other three news orgs (though WDIV has really calmed from their 2000s worst).

The entire point of buying low-stakes reality programming that has no continuous format is so you can break in when needed. Is there really a minority of people out there who will be angry that World's Deadliest Weather or Could You Survive? were pre-empted last night outside Creek Stewart's agent?

That was the test chain for Pictionary, so yup, FTS's stations will get it. Which makes each ratings period for 25 Words and You Bet Your Life on those stations important, as they're in a deadlock now, and the one ahead by February or March can start planning for a new season, while the other is done.

December 1 was the Scripps vaccine deadline, so that would probably be the answer unless there's another reason to be found.

Promos and surrounding content will still appear on 46 unless the commercial deals are that strict, and 17 and 46 have a shared website. And if the interview has news interest, they simply have to ask her if it's okay to mention or show it on 46. For reference...46's PR about it.

I had been rooting for Jake Tapper, but he stated in the latest Vanity Fair report he's uninterested because he wants to be with his family at that hour and prefers straight anchoring rather than pundit moderation. Can't blame him on that; I prefer just a straight news rundown show without any pundits in primetime, but that isn't happening in this environment.

After Jerry Springer's commentary caused Ron Magers and Carol Marin to defect from WMAQ, that seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for the trash talk shows on most network affiliates. NBCU still distributed them, but never on their own stations (except for the edge cases like KDNL where Sinclair got quickly cheap after they bought out River City and programmed it like a UPN station). The court shows weren't that way on purpose; local news went from just 6pm to adding a 5pm show around the late-80s, then filling the other half-hours from 4-6 (which were prime Big Three syndication hours then) from 1992 on, and they hit a crater around 1995 as syndicators had trouble finding timeslots before the Fox/CBS switch. Once Judge Judy hit in 1996 though, there were two categories; Judge Judy and all the other court shows. The same change pretty much took Big Three affiliates out of the sitcom business for the most part (again there are still edge cases like WFRV with their hour of "Friends" at 3pm because Nexstar plain got sick of all their talk show acquisitions bombing after a season). Then came the end of Fox and The WB filling the afternoons with kid's content. A lot of open timeslots, but also a bunch of stations who didn't have Oprah or Ellen helping them out, or at the very least game shows (when Family Feud was in a low place itself). So we ended up with a glut of court shows, many of them narrowcasting, or like "Divorce Court", choosing to go downmarket/real and cheap to fill a schedule at little cost as possible. Surprised to hear about Wendy on WPTV myself (it's also very odd they get to delay Live! for two three (!) hours, which much make the 'Trip Trivia' players in South Florida very unhappy, as WPLG also delays it an hour), but paired with WFLX via SSA, it seems like they can build the schedule for both stations rather than having to take a struggling show otherwise.

They're taking a major hit; Justice with Judge Mablean (which has been out of production since the pandemic) on a double-run is their replacement.

We've seen the December 1 date come and go for the Scripps vaccine mandate; haven't seen any news of departures yet.

That looks so generic that if feels like a 12 year-old Logopedia contributor made it for one of those fake TV station wikis in honor of the TV station serving their SimCity. Alas...it is real.

As Hawk Harrelson would say...'he gone!'

By cable, it's likely some homes carry their station in PA if they can't get WTAE. Since the affiliate list got pulled BTW, here's what it was for PA before the political site went up; (current Google cache) Since WPGH and WATM are non-news Sinclair-managed stations it'll take a bit to ascertain their status. WICU hasn't noted anything yet in their story, nor has WBRE or WKBN.

Nor his viewers, who probably are like 'WTF is this political information?! I just wanted health tips?!' 0/100 for logo originality; shift the colors, 'U.S. Senate for Show'...he basically used Sony's art department to create his campaign image!

The blackout would also affect border states and markets, so New York, Baltimore, Buffalo, Youngstown, Charleston, Wheeling-Steubenville, Binghamton, Elmira will also be affected if Sony decided to just blackout the state rather than put the show on hiatus, which is now pointless since it's not 1995 and his website, YouTube and OWN (which carries his reruns) exist. Suffice to say, he's handed Sony a major headache to deal with.

Cuomo now under indefinite suspension. This year, the 23rd falls on a Thursday, leaving it or Christmas Eve perfect for an inevitable firing via news dump.