mrschimpf

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.

I handle my own cable bill, but the problem is the way bundling works. I watch nothing on Showtime and only a few shows on Starz a year, but Spectrum won't let me unbundle them from their package (I only got rid of the 'I never watch' Epix when they got new ownership and a new carriage agreement that stopped the bundling), even though they're premium channels that should be optional. I have channels on the higher tier I can't get on the lower tier because Viacom thinks that TV Land is a 'premium' service rather than an ad delivery platform occasionally interrupted by sitcoms, and I watch Younger because it's a favorite show. I like soccer, thus I pay $8/month for the Spanish tier because very few Tigres games are on FS1, even if I never watch the Spanish music video channel. Equipment costs have also gone up; I'm getting rid of their useless DVRs with a TiVo/TiVo Mini system, but that comes with a learning curve with everyone else in the house despite the $25 savings. I'm preparing to move my 25 year-old landline number from Spectrum to Google Voice, but that has to come with a week of AT&T prepaid because a landline/Google Voice transfer doesn't exist. Companies make it hard to switch or move to providers on purpose.

No, you don't mess with the Bachelor Nation...they aren't going to be happy with watching at 12:37am ever, and in the third largest market? Too much collateral damage. The move is more than justified here. Plus The CW is in full Cancom Hashmark Summer mode that evening (Pandora and Mysteries Decoded) and knows that this will be the last time this should happen, ever (unless Marquee becomes the new Sportsnet LA and no cable system will pick it up). There's just no issue with this at all. Finally, DirecTV is suicidal to think their viewers could survive without ESPN. At this point, satellite, like its internet counterparts at HughesNet and ViaSat, is quickly becoming a 'I'll subscribe if I'm desperate/relocated to Western Nebraska' kind of service with a declining channel lineup.

Someone saw the "3" in the universal film leader and decided 'hey, this is good enough'; It's just kind of blah...WISC did a much better rendition of the 'circle 3'...hopefully it has a little more life in actual use. I understand minimalism is the new thing, but this is absurd.

Personally, "Go on 3" would be a better name for that because it's a known term.

Spectrum is dumping the Fox College Sports networks in mid-October, and FIOS has also removed them, which sounds like an immediate Sinclair decision. Probably figure on some kind of "Stadium/Diamond/Marquee Extra" service starting up in the next few months so that the games that usually would air there live will be transferred onto there, or for Stadium to eventually return some games to SBG stations as they did in the ASN days. It also looks like the FSN's are still carrying the lower-tier Big 12 games. I'm kind of thinking at least until May outside of graphical changes, the channels will still be carrying Fox's properties until the offseason where a long-term agreement can be made to offload them to other networks or the Fox Sports app gets a lot more content in the meantime. FBN is already the overflow network for any 3:30 games on Fox which can't start there when the noon games run long, though that noon slot is wide open. The big problem though is these business networks just need to let go of the infomercial lifeline already. In 2019, nobody is stopping on CNBC to watch infomercials on Saturday mornings, and NBCU does know that, throwing on any sports they can, when it works for their schedule.

Some individual stations do play the ancient Air Force film on transmitter maintenance/Sunday nights; usually it's just replacing an Ad Council message, so there doesn't seem to be a universal anthem policy there.

The Nexstar/AT&T dispute is over, just in time for the NFL preseason to end...

It doesn't help that all of the shows out of Washington seem like they're taped in off-hours to only to air on WJLA as if they're covering their 1982 Sunday morning public affairs obligations. They're using people used to producing local shows that still produce them as if they're local shows (and if Armstrong is taping at WEYI or WPDE, it's public access quality). At this point, those stations are competing with kid's phones and tablets for their overnight social check-in. The KidsClick lineup was all Euro rejects (look up "Playmobil movie"...they aired the Playmobil show to an audience of crickets, and the distributor is desperate to make that film work in the States), and the cereal manufacturers have long adjusted to all-ages marketing. The days of kid's ads as they were in the 90s are long over.

It's totally in-house...and even locally on the area Sinclair stations it's usually either in the 'OK it's out of the way' slot before the political talk shows, and in markets with only CW or MyNet it seems to air either very early or late on Sunday nights (WVTV/Milwaukee airs it Sundays at 10pm where Sunday Night Football pretty much scratches its ratings). There's just no point when the show is just posted to YouTube and SBG's digital channels like Stirr can also put it on. Meanwhile Armstrong Williams gets his show into deep late night...and outside of the before-show app push on the local news app, you wouldn't know they have a Wednesday night show with Eric Bolling they foist onto their station websites.

As I speak, Fox Sports Wisconsin is still running NHRA repeats...you have to assume there's still some kind of agreement to provide secondary programming so that non-gametime programming doesn't become a looping hell of the World Poker Tour and 18 Holes with Jimmy Hanlin non-stop...or paid programming (which would definitely imperil carriage agreements). It also sets up immediate consequences for the Bundesliga, whose low-tier matches were on the regional RSN's...those have to move to the app from hereon out.

Blame the networks for not having ever provided a strong way to program 12:30. You've got The Bold and the Beautiful on CBS just eating everyone's lunch otherwise, an hour-long newscast is just repeating the noon all over, or you can go the paid advertorial route and alienate everyone. Someone's going to buy a WORX device and justify the money, and Humana needs to get people to know about Medicare Part D plans at a time they're awake. It's just the way things are and I don't think any lower of a station that does it.

Weigel owns the other half of Movies!, so you can be sure that the deal with Decades solidifies that carriage (along with H&I). I could see it more being a replacement for Light TV, which pretty much has sunk like a stone to an almost-all Christian station base outside the Fox markets. Buzzer at least has DRTV sales to keep them safe (and since Stirr and Pluto overlay the DRTV ads there, they want to stay on over-the-air whenever possible).

Day one of anything (outside of already awful media product that can't be saved) isn't a cause to call it a 'bomb'. You've got staff getting used to a new workflow and probably some new formats to deal with on-air, and technical issues can happen at anything. And it's nigh doubtful that a mere spelling error in a rare breaking news situation is enough to portend the downfall of an entire news operation (and who on earth besides news people follow news directors on Twitter?!). As long as viewers are watching and advertisers are spending their money, the show is fine. It didn't have the best launch. As long as this isn't its MO going into October, everything will be fine.

Going by their chicanery involving Glencairn which eventually got legalized later on...this is probably what's going to happen, but also going by 'business as usual', the 'voluntary contribution to the United States treasury' will probably come with a statement where they don't admit to blame about anything. An RKO situation would be a unprecedented, but Ajit actually forcing an apology of blame out of Hunt Valley would be much smaller, but just as shocking (and 45 would probably pressure the FCC to keep the fine at 'a bit of the quarterly statement' levels).

Not really that unusual; the small-market midwestern 'noon show' format since the late 80s is pretty much 20 minutes of news/weather, then the last 8-9 minutes being a local non-profit spotlight or a paid spot for home/medical services. It's just solidifying the format in the schedule. And for now the only thing it's replacing is an infomercial, so until September, taking a 'it's not broke don't fix it' direction is for the best right now.

Sinclair Fox affiliate KDSM/Des Moines had their tower transmission line burn out on Friday, taking out their over-the-air and satellite coverage, and today a tower worker trying to repair it fell from the tower at around 1,000 feet and died. They had already had to delay the repairs a couple days due to strong wind gusts.

The ticker though...that's always the same. I expect them to get the standard Gray ticker in due time (never understood why the ticker is standard for them but not the rest of the GFX).

Forgetting to do traffic in New York is like ditching the farm report in Nebraska; you just don't do that! Just print out some observations and have the weather person read off the times and show off the map.

If that would have been a possibility, it would have had its own Stirr channel at launch. I knew it was doomed the moment it didn't have one. The problem was all of the Euro content, which is just too esoteric to market to American children in the right way because American kid's networks run on the 'merchandise first, market second, quality last' model. These shows were never the 'We have a new episode, and it looks like the characters are in some pickle! Will they get out of it?' type of show to market, and that's not what's 'in' right now. And trust me...if it was up to station's general managers able to cancel out corporate, paid programming would have been the only thing airing in that time and they would have refused the shows. WVTV in Milwaukee never found any local advertisers and it was a PSA/in-house vortex of zerors coming into the station. And as it is, TBD's promo department is clearly the folks trying to work their way into the main networks like Comet and Stadium.

I'm not saying I hate it; kids aren't the primary audience for morning newscasts by any means (before school live TV and kids are a buried-and-dead audience when Snapchat and Instagram exist, no matter what Sinclair and the kids cable networks think). But the use of Internet slang by adults who you associate with being completely sober talking about a house fire up in Maumee is just plain jarring. And television stations have good cooperative relationships with local school districts (see WITI's decades-long segment with Milwaukee Public School students who get to read the lunch menu and any 'weatherman comes to your school' initiative). But if this was the Toledo schools coming in and specifically asking for this kind of encouragement...it was a swing and a miss by that district.

So...is this a record for TEGNAization with WTOL's morning show crew, even without the Newzatonix chanters and graphics? 'Enjoy' this painful 53 seconds of 'how do you do, fellow kids?' where Gray HQ is like 'yup, we made the right call in keeping WTVG'.

WTMJ & WGBA seem to handle using the same GFX without someone confusing them (outside their weather branding).

Because GMA Day/Strahan and Sara/Why Does This Show Have Tables In The Audience?!! is a complete mess and it's lost a quarter of the viewers with what is the local advertorial hour format taken to a national extreme that plain doesn't work. At least The Chew had some originality and an educational remit to get it by, while its replacement is just plain filler.

Looks like Gray is ramping up a competitor to the Sunday morning shows (and Full Measure). They've hired Greta van Susteren as a national political analyst with two shows in development, along with being in the Gray DC bureau's live/tape hits to their stations.