mrschimpf

Only two public television stations that I can think of offer 24-hour weather coverage. KTCA is one of them and since September, they've rebranded their 24-hour weather channel as "TPT NOW" and if you ask me... the new look is really good.

 

(screengrab from tpt.org)

MPTV/Milwaukee really needs to license this system. They're still on the Accuweather platform that's aged horribly as time has gone on. TCT has always done an incredible job with their weather coverage, be it as a part-day KTCI service or as a full-scale channel.

Another dumb move by Verizon after dumping The Weather Channel.

Bloomberg is free on anything that has a functioning web connection at this point (though without the sidebar GFX). They probably figured that into why not to carry it. TWC you can excuse as dumb, but Bloomberg has just as much blame here for their looseness with how you can watch their channel.

Yeah, I wonder if we'll see a two-tiered system where the consolidated Big 3 stations keep the stupid URLs but the solo stations either keep their MG website names or revert to their old ones.

 

Although, interesting to note, KTVX kept "Good4Utah."

 

Wonder if it's up to each station.

Another thing I've noticed with Nexstar is they've decided to not renew the '.biz' spin-off sites they launched to try to snap on the Groupon 'local daily deal' craze from years back. WFRV's 'wearegreenbay.biz' and KARK's 'arkansasmatters.biz' both 404. That, or someone in Nexstar IT dropped a note to Perry that nothing on the '.biz' domain is trusted by anyone.

Do they take viewer calls though (thus justifitying the live aspect)? It feels like they could have just took that out (unless Dan Hampton has a bizarre exclusivity contract where he can't do late night TV) and pre-record the show (but with the Zach Miller injury they may have felt the need to have Joe from Palos Heights get in his feelings about it). I know WITI dispensed with their Sunday show for the week, but they had the excuse of the Packers being on a bye.

But on another note, the Bears' surrounding content TV contract has been a mess for years. Part on WFLD, part on NBCSC, and with many different hosts for each show. They need to streamline it for sure.

And don't even get me started on their Facebook page. It has become the digital equivalent of a tabloid newspaper. Every other day they post a photo with an obnoxious-sized caption in capital yellow or white letters.

You gotta blame Hearst's partners like VUZ, CNN (the obnoxious Tabloola-pushing side of that site) and such on that; WISN is a completely sober station on-air, but if you were to go solely on its website and social presences you would think they were running the third coming of a A Current Affair out of Hearst's offices. Compared to the other Milwaukee stations, their Facebook has the worst commenters in the market, by far, and you can tell their on-air staff absolutely would love to do anything else than interact with them (which is why they all have separate personality pages they can control on their own). And it's the same no matter what Hearst station I run into (Twitter is fine; there it's easier to avoid the VUZ/CNN garbage).

Back to WXII. Ever since WCWG entered into an agreement with WXII, Hearst has been pouring much needed resources into WCWG. I'd say the FCC should give it a go just on those grounds alone.

Pretty much this. If you actually make an effort to improve the product rather than just plugging into the CW and trash talk show producers and calling it a day, you should be considered on these grounds.

The banishment of "My" continues... (Though for KDFI, this seems a little less necessary than it might have been for some of the ex-UPN outlets...)

Especially since they established themselves as KFDI/27 for years as an indie; why not just go back to the old branding that worked rather than 'hey, this rhymes, it's cute and it might attract three more people?'.

That's interesting. I thought it was just special coverage for Hurricane Irma. Is it really necessary to have a 5pm broadcast on a Sunday? Didn't think that many people watched during the weekend

Do you want that advertising money and viewers going to your own station with up-to-date content, or for those viewers to scoff as you run Byron Allen barter junket product that's free to run but makes you look no better than Logo running Golden Girls reruns as an alternative viewing option to the NFL?

Even in the Central Time Zone I'm seeing more and more stations looking for more current content in that dead zone; some stations re-run their local public affairs stuff for awake audiences rather than what the syndication industry insultingly calls their 'original weekend content'.

At one point, when Tribune acquired This TV from Weigel, they would wait for the contract from a competing station in the market to expire. And then after that, it would be move it to the Tribune-owned station.

 

So if the Lighthouse wants those diginets (the one that they don't have) on their air, they would likely have to wait until contracts expire.

This doesn't explain why WMLW is still carrying This four years after Tribune took over. Did Tribune and Weigel just literally forget about its existence in Milwaukee and they keep forgetting to move it to WITI?

The channel number for WWOR at least has some value (the + branding killing number branding with 20, 36 and 45 is great; WRBW is the perfect candidate), so I'd expect something different. Likely it'll be bland like 'New Jersey's 9'.

But it is interesting that most of these rebrandings are coming with the influence of Roger Ailes on FNC and FTS quickly disappearing. Without him and his 'run it cheap' mantra, MyNet probably would have died in 2009 when Smackdown left.

What's Weigel doing buying stations? That's literally the last one I'd expect to be buying anything.

It was probably getting sick of MeTV shifting around all over with Nexstar and Sinclair dominant in the market and with Trib's sale, felt like it would be bumped out for TBD or Charge, along with Katz (a speaking of; Scripps bought out Katz and their four subchannel networks this morning). Decades also has no chance for clearance with KUTV choosing to double-split with KMYU. The price is basically peanuts for them and they just can auto-run it in the same way they do their Rockford station, plus they've got Salt Lake cable clearance, which is more important than the out-of-market tower.

The intricacies of local TV station ownership are too much for a lot of people on both sides. I had to explain to someone that WLOS was not owned by ABC and its newscasters didn't work for ABC.

Don't even start with the confusion that is syndication with 'regular people'. It doesn't help that in most places Ellen usually airs on an NBC affiliate, so they think it's produced by the network, while everyone will think the Sony game shows are from ABC themselves. Just this week TVNewser ran with a faulty story that 20th Television's weeknight RightThisMinute ripoff will be hosted by Billy Bush (it isn't) and even they were saying it was being produced for the Fox network when it very clearly isn't.

And then there was a few years ago when the local conservative talk radio station with the same calls was forcing the TV station that hasn't done a thing with them for 20 years ago having to state over and over that they have nothing to do with the radio station and were completely neutral to the issue being pushed through the state capitol. Times like those are where I wish the 'you break up, one of you gets new calls' rule was still in place.

Posting this here since it's not related to the old set. But what is this camera for? Seems like it would be dangerous if this were used on air. From other images (of morons acting silly) it doesn't look like a pro camera.

It just records outside roll from outside the studios (I assume definitely edited and cut to carefully); I moved out of the way when I realized its purpose as I watched a newscast in front of the window, but they never cut outside with it when I was there. The other side screen is just the air feed.

Is that the old "News Central" set he's using? It might as well be, since Sinclair is that cheap.

He said he was coming from WJLA; there's an NC8 set there overused by all of SBG's must-carry segments and shows, including Armstrong William's weekend graveyard filler between Made in Hollywood and a real show called 3 Wide Life (at least in Milwaukee). He thinks it's impressive he's coming from Washington, but I'd be more impressed if a Sinclair host filmed a must-carry from KIMA in Yakima or one of their lower-market stations.

Sinclair is bragging about the "ratings growth" it has made by its must-run Sunday series "Full Measure With Sharyl Attkisson" (and some of the numbers they boast are hilariously bad!)

This is what literal 'fake news' is. Of course ratings are going to be up if you replace infomercials and E/I treacle (which Full Measure did) with a series with actual content. The painful 'this new show is up 400% over last year's time-slot filler, a test pattern' press releases are good for a laugh and little else.

That is the wrong sort of 9-pack — it hides half the graphic space you throw at it. Get Devlin to build one like KSAZ has or something. Please.

Hell, just go down to Best Buy and buy a 75" Vizio. I remember when one place was over-brightening their nine-pack to finally have an excuse to junk it. And those Journal graphics (they are, but with a font and color substitution, down to the blinking 'live' bug) might as well bump them down to 2007.

Also no more Your4State. Their new url will be LocalDVM.com (whenever it launches).

It's going to take a while to get used to a Nexstar that's finally been convinced 'call letters in a web address without some hokey 34-letter branding aren't terrible'.

Newscasts started with a title sponsor for the entire program, and we'll probably end that way too. I don't like it, but that's the way it goes. Our sports segment is sponsored. So is traffic during certain hours. Let's not forget the ticker, the stock report (which takes ten seconds), the movie reviews, the tech report, one feature franchise.

And the copters; it was jarring to see KTVI's Ferguson aftermath coverage from the air brought to us 'courtesy of the Bommarito Auto Group' (it was never said but it was lower-thirded). We'll see if the viewers actually reel back from them (and they're third in the market so this is basically not going to do much) or do what most of us do with stupid sponsorships; take one look, roll our eyes and continue to watch while making sure never to shop the stupid place mentioned again.

I know we just said goodbye to Schurz (TV-wise) and to Bay City Television but there's another thing to say goodbye to... WHTV.

 

No one noticed here but WHTV (Lansing) has finally shut down. It's the first television station in the country to shut down as a result of the recent FCC Spectrum Auction.

Gray also brought down WAGT/Augusta, KSPR/Springfield, MO and WIFR/Rockford's full-power licenses yesterday too and turned those licenses into the FCC, though technically they're all still up on the same facilities, just on low-power licenses where the power is turned down on those existing towers. WIFR's LD license was a middle-of-nowhere one from DTV America purchased by Gray and moved to Rockford.

The Bonten acquisition was only announced a month ago and SBG hasn't taken control of anything yet there, so this has no Hunt Valley handprints all over it.

But this is still a sad example of the 'press release journalism' you see in small towns where only the police and their press releases are considered to be official, and everything else is under the broad 'sources say' discrediting, or the dreaded 'balanced news coverage' umbrella designed to fill out 90 seconds. At least the state's other media like their newspapers and other TV stations are taking a wider view.

In the early 1990's many FOX news startups were encouraged to run Sun-Thur main anchor placements, but the participating affils really didn't see noticeable or consistent spikes despite FOX doing well on Sundays with Ally Mcbeal and X-Files.

 

It really just depends on the market.

Ally McBeal was always Mondays/9pm, but I'm sure that helped build Fox's Monday as one of their stronger weeknights.

As someone who has produced many live stadium/sports-related newscasts, it certainly seems like WGCL didn't plan much in advance. Preparation is key. I write as much as possible in advance, then throw it out the window when the anchors see things happening on location. We have meetings and test sessions with engineers to make sure IFBs, monitors and iPads work.

The Brewers do a lot to help stations plan for their opening day coverage too; every single year since Miller Park opened (even the first year) they were all over the place making all the TV and radio people comfortable and set in wherever they're positioned and coordinating things (alumni appearances, sausage racers, 5am lighting of the field, scoreboard playouts). Most teams do the same in their markets, and I'm sure the Braves were doing the same since the ballpark opening needed to be perfect, especially when the Cobb County funding controversy and I-85 issues are still in the news. These two Norma Desmonds definitely overthought about everything involving their liveshot and maybe could have just had the ND send off an email to the Braves with a few questions. For the most part, Opening Day should definitely be ad-libbed for most of the time and it shouldn't be as canned as these anchors think it should be.

New from the vault of unprofessional Scripps fun comes this gem of an FAQ about an on-air contest WXYZ is running to give $1000 away every day for 2 weeks as long as you are watching when they announce your name. Never mind how desperate that is. This is pretty sarcastic and snarky:

Eh, I've read and heard much worse from radio station contest rules, especially from stations who treated having to dole them out as a minute-long announcement with utter and hateful contempt (there's nothing that ruins a day more than an awful morning host trying to make contest rules 'funny'). One of the best FCC rules of the last ten years was allowing a 'see the website' disclaimer and leaving it at that.

I will admit though, I play a 'text-the-keyword' contest daily with their local TV station during sweeps. The station is very comfortably #1 in the market and it's for a trip, so it doesn't bother me as much as desperate 'please justify our purchase of Modern Family reruns by being caller #56 to win a $45.29 Jimmy John's gift certificate' contests.

I don't know where some stations will be able to commit to this; WTMJ already has their advertorial and The Real (the first thing that might stick for them in the ex-Santa Barbara timeslot since Montel) and that's it, unless they decide to give up RTM to another station and shove The List to after-Carson Daly territory.

The problem is if Ben Aaron can make this work; his co-host was driven off Crazy Talk three months before its cancellation (we still don't know why but it can be inferred 'we hit the wrong demo' easily) and it basically got killed when he decided 'enough' and followed his wife to Dancing with the Stars. If he's going to do this, it has to be until May this time.

I'm surprised it lasted this long, despite the fact it aired in small markets and that--even after all this time--I still barely know what it is. It still has no Wikipedia page, for corn's sake! (not that it needs one now.)

It really doesn't; most days it played like a non-aware parody of other talk shows. I only saw one interview with an actress I actually knew and they were hiring actresses as co-hosts at probably good salaries. Hopefully they can pawn off the Hollywood/Vine studio lease at a good price. It's no wonder that the moment WBAY and KWQC got their MCs moved to Gray they were easily able to justify that infomercials made more money than a late night playing of a talk show from noon.

A Sinclair station complaining about bias? That's rich!

I'm sure they're extra wounded whenever someone reminds them they're a UHF subchannel of a MyNetworkTV affiliate, rather than their heritage position because Sinclair couldn't bear to part with the latter's license.

Not related to Nexstar now, but WBAY has had their web backend switched to Gray's from the old MG system, along with iOS users having to upload new Gray-managed station apps due to Apple security issues not allowing a transfer of the existing app to Gray (it was seamless on Android). They also immediately pulled Hollywood Today Live from late night now after Friday's show now that they're not under MG/Nexstar ownership (replaced by infomercials); now it's just a matter of how long it takes before WFRV is forced to take HTL themselves (which would also replace infomercials).