mrschimpf

8 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

The FCC should've acted on this way sooner.

 

As soon as the KRDK's owners filed that petiton to deny, the FCC should've made this ruling right then and there and not let the deal drag on for 25 months.......

 

And Gray can't acquire it now; the station failed so no FSW can be filed if Gray files a CP for a new station on the 27 allocation (unless Ajit's willing to look the other way on even more stuff).

2 hours ago, nicksair said:

In the latest series of AirchiveSloan's collection... Did anyone ask for a nice, clean, clear, long cut of Gari's On Your Side from KTTV in 1988??

 

Here you go!!

 

 

Small bonus seeing one Mike Darnell as the station's tape librarian there. 

On 3/6/2020 at 1:29 AM, channel2 said:

Sinclair just doesn't have the leverage with MVPDs that Fox did. They don't have a Fox News or even an FX to use as a cudgel. WUCW is not KMSP-WFTC, for instance, and I don't know what kind of cachet the Tennis Channel has.

Negative leverage - nobody wants to pay for their $100/year price for the Plus package for #374 vs #685 in the world preliminary matches, and you have to pay a monthly fee even for TVE access; and consolidating a website and magazine into the same company is asking for disaster (Google Justin Gimmelstob about how this triple threat marketing is a disaster when a personality gets into hot water). Even Willow, the cricket channel running on a small budget, has a sane carriage fee and free TVE to the systems that have taken them on. 

3 minutes ago, CubsFan79 said:

Could Sinclair's RSN be pay per view only?

Every single contract with every single entity under their purview would be breached, and it would be a death sentence. The filler shows they run outside their main sports would absolutely eviscerate them in court if they switched to that model, and the entire traditional pay-per-view industry is dead. Outside of dish services that still have to maintain it and grumpy diehards that require it through a cable box, PPV movies are no longer a thing, nearly every ring sports event now has an IPTV option (which they love because only the most tech-savvy could record the event for forever viewing), and most systems only have three PPV channels overall, at most.

1 hour ago, TheMassMediaGeek said:

Now I wonder how many people are going to complain about the Tegna graphics on the next Talkback 16? 

It'll be a three hour special in prime time two weeks from now and cause all life in SWB and the Lehigh Valley to come to a halt.

36 minutes ago, oknewsguy said:

What would that F stand for if it's not going to stand for Fox?

Knowing Sinclair's vexilological kink with the Stars and Stripes, 'Flag' could work .

17 hours ago, Sendir said:

The transitions are the worst. Going from a supertease into in the open is just terrible. TERRIBLE 

I guess you'll have to complain to their news director in 1994; that's how long they've done that tease format since they launched the 4 and 4:30pm newscasts that year. If it didn't change then, it isn't changing now.

And the new lead-in slogan makes sense...the current VO for WINS did the same voiceover for the 5pm show for WTMJ in the 90s until 2004.

WGN Sports isn't over after all; the Chicago Fire are airing 24 matches this year under a multi-year deal with the station, along with surrounding programming (it'll also be nationwide through MLS's ESPN+ streaming); not sure if it's WGN with editorial control or a brokered arrangement for play-by-play.

1 hour ago, CircleSeven said:

Looks like Gray is LP-picking again. 

 

They struck a deal with religious broadcaster TCT to acquiring Lansing, MI's WLNM-LD for $175K. 

 

But here's the twist. The parties formed a subchannel agreement in which the LP will carry TCT programming on a sub of WLMN for five years after closing.

 

It'll be interesting to see what Gray is going to do with this stick. Currently, WILX run five subchannels. But Gray has also ran the same amount of subs in some of their other markets (Toledo is one of them).

Maybe a go at getting the CW+ from WLAJ? Their stick has three HD signals going through it with the WLNS channel share which must struggle to manage bandwidth, though most of the Katz networks are already spread out through all the stations in the market.

It's an odd situation since WSYM (their news share partner) shares common ownership with Katz, but only carries Bounce. Lansing is just a completely different channel map compared to most markets altogether...it could also be a way to arrange an SSA to get WSYM-DT4 (the MyNet affiliate) an HD signal in exchange for extending their agreement so that they don't just extend WXMI's news op into Lansing via WSYM in some way.

WTMJ switched their logo on the website; no sign of the new package today though.

ETA - I would not be a good Nostradamus; remove failed prediction.

19 minutes ago, channel2 said:

The comic book illustrations are another effort to be cool, piggybacking off all the superhero movies and such...

Honestly it reminded me of Wall Street Journal colorized woodcuts, which would make more synergetic sense, but it wasn't any better than the 'football player in a greenscreen room grabbing his jersey yoke' dullness that's overcome the sports media industry.

32 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

There's also two identical WJBF mic flags, and two ones for KSNT's Fox affiliate (FOX 43) next to each other with one in white plastic, and the other with black plastic.

Unless I'm missing some other FOX 43 somewhere (it's not WVBT and definitely not WPMT)....

That's KTMJ in Topeka, part of their triopoly in that market where KSNT is the main newsgathering station.

47 minutes ago, CBS11 Weatherboy said:

The logo looks much better.

Like I said, I was surprised NBC allowed them to have a Baby Peacock for so long, and the social media icons looked beyond cluttered. Glad they're finally fixing it. 

1 hour ago, JCB4TV said:

What they're calling player & puck tracking technology, some new graphics made a cameo during NBC's coverage of the NHL All-Star Game. I took these screenshots from the NBC Sports App.

And also...single-sponsor ads overlaying the entirety of the boards; the latter is very unwelcome as they cover up board lines.  

10 hours ago, oknewsguy said:

Meanwhile here's the WFLX news open with the new graphics. All I'm gonna say is what in the name of frankfurt is the WFLX logo? 

 

Blame the Raycom-era owners for this one; Gray will eventually get the standardized logo in, but they're still on their own drummer.

5 hours ago, justin2kx said:

Lawd it makes NY's chasing news a 'pro' in production by comparison + even then it says a lot. Looks like it's filmed at some mancave basement, used for podcast rather for some conspiracy theory/right wing talk or some ish. I mean i see small WJR logo placed there.

It feels exactly that; they describe it as such...but in the end it's Yet Another Edited Radio Simulcast Show, with a bit of KDNL's late-and-not-missed Allman Report sprinkled in. I do not understand why even though this format has failed hard over and over again in markets big and small, stations continue to pursue it.

1 hour ago, TheRolyPoly said:

The Live Well Network name is finally going away, years after ending national distribution and mainly being a repeat-focused lifestyle network.

 

Instead, it'll become ABC's Local-ish starting February 17th.

A new coat of paint won't do much for them; they get rid of the now-irrelevant programming, but now it's replaced with what seems to be a loop of the auto-play pain that's carried between videos on ABC O&O sites.

On 1/17/2020 at 5:14 PM, TSSZNews said:

This has to be purely for political dollars, or Seattle would be in the mix. CBS is probably kicking themselves for tossing WGNT (Virginia/NC) and WTVX (West Palm).

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. 

34 minutes ago, rkolsen said:

The only thing I can think of are WBBM’s ratings woes.

WCBS is a stronger station than WBBM. 

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.

3 hours ago, Spring Rubber said:

I would think their biggest challenges are the fact that WGN America has gone 6 years without any content that draws an audience, so they need a lot of advertising to get eyeballs back on their network, and also it feels like a hindrance to only do nighttime news with no daytime component to draw the daytime audience and cover breaking news.

 

Here's hoping they can overcome these hurdles with time.

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.

18 minutes ago, channel2 said:

 

6? Wasn't it less than three years ago that they canceled all their Critically-Acclaimed Originals ahead of the Sinclair takeover that wasn't?

 

I can't imagine Nexstar has any interest in prestige television...

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).

On 1/14/2020 at 1:26 PM, qunewsguy said:

That's going to be interesting to see what they do considering WHCT doesn't even have must-carry status anymore.

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.

23 hours ago, TSSZNews said:

That's where this look is going to work best: In the smaller and more traditional news focused markets. But Detroit? Nashville? Cleveland? Denver? Vegas? Maybe even home base in Cincy? Look out!

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'.

1 hour ago, channel2 said:

Most major media outlets seem to have given up on that beat ages ago. It's noticeably harder to find reliable ratings info than it used to be.

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.

4 minutes ago, oknewsguy said:

Does the carriage dispute between AT&T and Hearst include DirecTV? 

 

Because I've been checking the guide on DirecTV and KOCO hasn't started running the info channel about that as of yet

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.

On 12/28/2019 at 12:11 PM, Morphtato said:

TEGNA/Suddenlink is next on the board. https://www.10tv.com/Suddenlink

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

5 hours ago, scrabbleship said:

It looks like Daily Blast Live is slowly being picked up by the ex-Tribune/Nexstar stations. Looking at a schedule for the Hartford market, WTIC has picked up at 12:30 AM which is perhaps the best it can do unless they cut DailyMailTV (3:00/3:30 PM), Two and a Half Men reruns (6:00/6:30 PM), or Big Bang Theory reruns (7:00/7:30 PM) to a single rerun.

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.