mrschimpf

WTVX's only news use was for hurricane purposes and was always an albatross; frankly for as little as we hear about it, WBFS could sign off without any advanced notice at this point and very few people would even remember WBFS existed. As much as political revenue is something to be chased, it's probably an incredibly low amount on your average MyNetworkTV affiliate, and a little more, but still negligible on a CW affiliate since you have your usual mix of low-wattage advertisers giving loyal year-round revenue on court show/sitcom blocks enjoyed in offices, restaurants and medical facilities marketwide. The Dallas duopoly is likely very used to doing multiple newscasts for both KTVT/KTXA and have it down to an art, along with WCBS/WLNY; WBBM hasn't done anything outside of traditional timeslots outside of 'at your desk' shows and social. Station strength plays into it easily, but having the ethic/ability to produce multiple newscasts is likely much more of a factor.

I will say it's bold, and certainly a better line of thinking than sticking with the old-line thinking of going with an every night 8/7 o'clock movie...because repeats of sitcoms and shows found everywhere else certainly isn't working at all. It also feels like a run-up to attempt to compete with Newsy, with more of a local bent than Newsy's national focus, and hopefully is an antidote to the RightThisMinute and DailyBlast-esque 'let's wasted a minute describing viral video' direction these national shows from big station groups have seemed to take. This is the same Nexstar that took one week to cancel Hollywood Today Live after they got Media General, so it's on-point. Hubbing it to WGN rather than KTLA also feels like another move to assure the 'Chicago media is self-destructing and in Big Private Equity!' worriers that they still find brand value in the Second City (though they just cancelled a content deal with Crain's Chicago Business for daring to speculate they'd sell WGN Radio, so double-edged sword).

Hartford and Springfield are two of the few markets which have never had a MeTV station in any way (WZME's tailspin into ShopLC/Sonlife irrelevance over the years can't be counted as serious, especially as they wanted to be NYC-exclusive). Weigel will pay for carriage for sure; it's undeniably worth it in a market with so few signals to begin with.

It's definitely going to work so much better on WGBA (which is a more leisurely newscast with more features that works better with the visual elements) than WTMJ (right off the top; the police blotter and accident roll, where putting a speech bubble atop the name of a robbery victim is incredibly poor taste). Same with a set match; WGBA has the luxury of just keying in new virtual set elements, where WTMJ is stuck with a Journal-era physical design kludged to meet what Scripps considers 'uniform'.

One of the major issues is that Nielsen isn't subscribed to universally any longer...some have that, and some use Comscore/Rentrak instead, and these days, there are so many ways that numbers are 'proprietary information' that no media organization wants the lawsuits that come with printing an xx.x number (Feder basically has to cherry-pick stations in his monthly radio rundowns to avoid the Nielsen lawsuit hammer because there are Nielsen-tracked stations that don't pay the money for that number).

Went to check the WTIC link to see if there was an update and it redirected to a random Cablevision outage story from September and the WBNS 'story' was blank for good reason; Altice has come to terms with Tegna for Suddenlink/Optimum systems, no blackout.

DirecTV and U-Verse, and AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now). Hearst usually is the type that won't ticker-plead until the eleventh hour.

This dispute also affects WTIC/WCCT viewers in Hartford/New Haven who have Optimum; Suddenlink and Cablevision/Optimum are both owned by Altice.

It could have easily been thrown at 2am on WTXX to do nothing; DBL should be lucky they even got a slot on the better station.

The Twitter complainers have Internet connections. They can presumably go to ABC.com or Hulu. Or their television provider has on-demand. Just wait until tomorrow. That said, Stan Lee special IS on WTAE at midnight tomorrow and midnight tonight on WEWS and WXYZ. But I am more forgiving of the show highlighting Pittsburgh microbrews on WTAE; they probably thought some sitcom reruns were airing when it was scheduled a few weeks back. But WEWS airing The List-mas Holiday Special, a show every other Scripps station would carry at 6am Christmas Day because it sounds like something forced on them by corporate, in primetime, is a 'general manager should be flayed' situation (WTMJ is burning it off Sunday at 1pm between NBC E/I programming and skiing). Looking up WXYZ, that show is Christmas Across America: A "Small Town, Big Deal" Celebration. Small Town, Big Deal is one of those shows that a station airs at 2am on a Sunday morning or against an NFL game if they don't have one and that has zero fanbase. That is also really dumb scheduling. If you're going to program national syndicated holiday programs in primetime...make sure they're things people will actually watch. One thing to syndicate a different Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, but it's doubtful anyone is going to enjoy A Very Made in Hollywood Christmas or Recipe.tv Hacks the Holidays when they expect much more competent holiday fare from the networks.

It's a really good multiplexer; I haven't noticed any signal degradation on .1 at all. It helps that the .2 auto-weather feed has the majority of its pixels stay in the same position 24/7, so they just have to worry about two small video windows and a thrice-a-day change in their 7-day window. They don't need to be; I feel like these are shows which would have contracted with networks like CMT, DIY, and Great American Country in the past, but they've both finally gotten rid of any pretenses about being about 'southern living' or 'home improvement.' It's better to outlay money for programming now than three years down the line being stuck running CanCon PPI garbage or like Heartland/TNN 3.0 did, had a 'Be Southern'-?-'Profit!' business plan that ran into trouble when nobody watched has-beens in old Music City Tonight interviews and the licensors and stations gave up on Luken.

In Spanish-dominant markets such as LA, Miami and Houston quite a few English-language stations caption in Spanish via CC3 (and in the past carried translated audio over AM/FM). It's at least something, and any little ratings help doesn't hurt in any way. Also...despite all the cash grabs the TV industry and station groups have these days, there's still room for public services like this. Either way, whatever Estrella's 'official local news window' is, both the 10 and 11pm slots carry reality drivel Estrella allows easy pre-emption for local programming ("Lol : - )", yes, that's its title, is just one of those languageless clip shows like "Just for Laughs Gags" taped in Quebec to grab gobs of CanCon and worldwide syndication cash).

Also, most stations carry a midnight mass instead of late night talk shows because the networks don't provide talk shows on Christmas Eve, and a station not providing a newscast on Christmas Eve or morning is never a bad thing or portends the end of its news department. News folks are humans too and should be with their families if they can (I don't know how many times I've seen posts other places/Wikipedia edits that find not having a newscast on Christmas morning as a personal affront to their moral compass/a travesty). Surprised there wasn't another bump to The U--er, um, I mean CW26, or even to 7.2. I also enjoyed reading the PR, which outside of Echosmith is a 'who's who of huh and oh they still exist?!'

A few of those stations will keep the searchlights because they're part of a duopoly where logo design is at priority #543; it's doubtful Disney is going to file a copyright lawsuit denying them use of the searchlights simply because of 32 years of 'prior art' where you associate the Fox network with them. It's the same reason about 10-20 UPN affiliates put in the least amount of effort when they switched from the shapes to the disc logo. Fox began to downplay the searchlights in the 2000s already and had mainly used the middle pillar of the 'O' and the angle of the 'X' as part of their branding since then; it's just finally leaning full on into the abstractness of their letters to go all-in. I wouldn't be surprised in a few years when they have this established if they try to use the abstract letters as their main brand, though it's not going to happen outside the main network because Sports and News would never go for it.

Just happened to be up for Live today, and Kelly and Ryan had a couple minutes towards the end of host chat to say that Tony is indeed retiring, and paid a very nice tribute to him.

That looks so much better; the Bell Gothic and stretching just seemed like a completely horrid design to begin with that screamed "2002" and only worked with MySpace profile logos. This looks so much better.

I look at this situation this way .. Madam Secretary is in its last season and under an aggravating situation where any NFL thing earlier in the day throws off its entire schedule for the night, whether it be a bump of a new episode to next week or to a 9:48pm start. It was airing on time for once at 9pm, and KTVT wanted to see if the tornado developed before going forward because the viewers of that show already get enough aggravation from CBS's scheduling as it is. They went forward when it was clear it was time to jump to live coverage and could argue to viewers 'we tried to air it but it just wasn't going to work out'. They made up for it by staying on late into the night, at least. Meanwhile, KDFW's 9pm news was only delayed by one minute and they rightfully bumped right into weather at 9:01...while The Rookie is a dog on ABC's schedule, and WFAA probably felt 100% confident 'it'll be on Hulu the next day' would work on that show's viewers (Madam doesn't really have that choice due to CBS All Access). KXAS of course was 100% dumb, and even dumber when you see their only acknowledgement was a 'go to our website/Facebook' message...nobody was going to be pissed because their show on Cozi was being pre-empted by football! Redirect people to 5.2/whatever cable positions it's on instead of the clumsy NBC local streaming player.

Going by the Scripps Milwaukee MO and since they're both ESPN Radio stations, the WBNS stations would fit like a glove with Good Karma, which is already up in Cleveland and after the WMVP management deal, is a buyer for sure, and they would overpay to be the Ohio State flagship. Saga is more music-heavy outside of dominant markets than a runner of talk stations.

Fox or CW possibly? Nexstar has both in Burlington, but there's a whole lot of real estate that hasn't had local Fox since Hearst got WMUR and killed Fox on their translators (their MO for MyNetworkTV right now says it's definitely not for that affiliation).

The problem was you are in the toughest position; they probably thought taking social media heat and putting out a quick apology likely worked better in the end than a number of entitled Cowboys fans making death threats and calling for KXAS's license to be revoked because they dared to move the game to 5.2. Sadly, you know any calls for Ajit to make an example of them will fall on completely deaf ears.

They've branded with 'Fox 19 Now' in all ways for several years, thus they are 'always now'...kinda wish that could've gone for just plain 'Fox 19'.

That sweet Medicare Part D ad money from Humana and the like is too irresistible to refuse. It's free money until December, why not take it?

Knowing how the station deteriorated without ABC, it can be said that this was a huge loss trying to wage a culture war for this station. Over ten years and likely around $10 million to carry ABC, to be sold off for couch cushion money ten years later just because the owner hated Grey's Anatomy because it dared to tackle LGTBQ+ issues feels like karmic justice, and that nobody is willing to follow you to 'family friendly' disasters like RTV and the other Luken nets (whoever steered the way for him to carry Weigel probably saved the station from just going dark completely).

Honestly considering the programming of those networks outside of games, it may just be the best direction to have four master schedules to work off from and a few hours for the usual local stuff like outdoors shows and high school sports and cut the lousy hangers-on who should just move to YouTube already. And the DMA thing is definitely going to be hamstrung by whatever the NBA, NHL and MLB tell the networks; I know the NHL would be unhappy to lose the Wisconsin market that currently gets Minnesota Wild and the MLS Loons due to a lack of franchises for those teams in the state.

I wouldn't even curse a Luken net with that disaster of a TV station; they still run everything in 480i 4:3 and are proud of their affiliation with AMGTV. Gray buying them would be like moving from a Super 8 to the Ritz-Carlton.