nathannah

When your network producer doesn't remember their affiliate roster...of course WDRB doesn't brand as Fox 41, but you'd think 'Fox affiliate WX chiefs' would be in Fox Weather's Tweetdeck for sure.

The Allen Wisconsin network is having a meltdown; WAOW has been stuck having to cover WKOW's newscasts since yesterday (and having to present their news that's completely irrelevant to Madison to pad out shows), along with having to do their statecasts in the morning. At this point, you might as well consider Madison, La Crosse/Eau Claire and Wausau two-operation news markets because it seems like Byron doesn't even care about having a proper third news operation (and Rockford will be inevitably hubbed out soon enough).

The winner in this deal? Actually, WRNN. The network abruptly left the air entirely on April 15 as it quickly became clear that the energy drink guy knows caffeine, but definitely not the news or home retailing industries. ShopHQ is trying to disguise their GOTB sale on their website as a spring savings event, no refunds for anything you buy there, and the WARN notice went out to the state about their Eden Prairie HQ being closed. Didn't want to update about this until a couple other things were confirmed, but they dropped Spectrum cold on April 1, and did the same to Optimum in February to try to shift live product demos to Instagram and TikTok, which...you're stuck with them on a cable channel lineup, but you can just block them and move on if they're annoying or irrelevant in your feeds. The younger ShopLC (The former Liquidation Channel) just opened a new facility in the Austin area and is strong (tariffs pending) and doing better than QVC/HSN, while ShopHQ is fatally done. Never thought any of that would happen.

In case you needed an updated exaggerated and catty Post update on the Michael Strahan/Kelly Ripa 'feud' with GMA's upcoming move to Iger, here you go. Oooh, they have to share an elevator and they might see each other, this is the most oppressive workplace outside the Kremlin .

If anything screams '2000s imagining consultants imagining what the kids like', it was their branding the most at that time; "43 The Block" remains on the hill of worst station brandings above "JoeTV" and that short time KWGN was "The Deuce". "Cleveland's 43" is a signal that there are finally adults in the room.

I was wondering what on earth that "Remarkable Woman" special was on the CW Sunday night; it seemed so vague as to be a time-buy from some group you expect to carry a generic 'salute to gospel' or 'independent film showcase (of whatever they could get cheap)' that you see on Sundays on a station that doesn't have the NFL doubleheader and the home team is on the other station. It felt like some kind of bizarre Queen for a Day rehash. It also seems kind of insulting to anyone not in a Nexstar market, because the states without a station just came off as having very 'unexceptional women' (they drew 11 randomly from NewsNation but like...just spread them across each state. There's no reason outside Perry's ego that Alaska shouldn't have a 'remarkable woman'). Outside of sports and the good shows they bought, The CW is really no better than the 'i for infomercial' era of Ion at this point.

That would be obfuscation and obviously actionable if a company claimed in good faith to buy all the assets and then sell the ones they don't want off immediately against the seller's will. Yes, Apollo is not going to get anyone to take but a small fraction of them, but if somehow they do get a deal, there will be a clause where they can't be sold off for a certain period of time or if they go bankrupt.

WGN has a good offer, but CHSN already has a television partner in WJYS; the issue is that they need to convince them to switch to RTC next go around to force carriage (or CHSN pays them extra to bump it to their DT1 for the Sox season until this is all resolved so pay-TV fans can watch), or that CHSN needs to figure out their issues with Comcast. It's obvious they're asking for too much and need to lower their pricing to get on there, and Reinsdorf is stubborn. Also this would be self-inflicted and stupid on Nexstar's part; either they want to run WGN as a news-heavy CW O&O as intended by dumping the rights back in '19, or they go back to sports and create a messy situation where CW programming is bumped to Antenna TV and now you've made NASCAR and your college football partners mad because they don't have Chicago carriage or you're back to a situation where WCIU has to carry your stuff because of this goofy offer. This is a good proposal for WCIU or even WCPX, but it addresses nothing about the main problem with CHSN and will end with viewer annoyance, along with WGN staff having to deal with news at midnight once again because of West Coast road games.

This is pretty much it; Coxpollo wants it to be 1997 where they can create an omnimedia company when nobody actually wants that. They're better off just keeping only the Atlanta, Orlando and Dayton clusters (or better, just the AM news/talk and FM simulcast) that are historically important to the company and so integrated into the TV stations that there's no way to easily break them up, and selling off the rest. They already created Summit Media the first time, which got the radio stations Scripps couldn't easily sell off, and that might just end up being the default direction they have to take.

I imagine in that market most of the viewers (if they are) mainly hate-watch for certain political reasons and posting said hate-watching on the station's socials, so neither news org needs to put their best foot forward in the first place and the out-of-state staff is doing their 2-3 and fleeing.

Without the Sony game shows (there by default because Nexstar and Sinclair aren't throwing money into a perceived 'dead market' like Syracuse) WSYT would probably be a Coastal station like WYDC nearby. It really feels like an complete afterthought since Sinclair spun it off with WNYS.

Today GMA3 started out without the goofy 8:30am theme or 'This is the third hour of GMA' from the announcer, but plenty of mentions of 'what you need to know' in a couple of feature stories, so it looks like they're experimenting week-to-week.

Speaking of CBS and syndication, the 50/50 Weigel/CBS network StartTV has quietly begun to air that day's Drew, ET, and Inside Edition in late night, just as ABC/DIsney and NBC air their big syndicated shows in late night on their own stations (with Bravo also airing Kelly Clarkson the same way). Probably a big way to address how ET is now considered very pre-emptable by many stations without much consequence if they don't have the late night re-air.

Name a Paramount Global channel whose name doesn't start with Nick or CBS Sports; MTV, CMT and VH1 could easily merge their schedules into one at this point and their digital cable era spin-offs are just as useless.

WRAL's streaming strategy is a big firehose with multiple services rather than just limiting it to certain websites and services (and times... *cough* Perry Sook ), including an open stream of their WRAL+/WNGT-CD service on YouTube, so this isn't a surprise; just another means to get their news out there. I wouldn't worry about any takeovers; this is just a broadcasting company that remembers the 'broad' part of the name and Fox letting them do so through that affiliation agreement, the same way they carry WAGA's audio on an HD2 radio subchannel through Audacy, and I'd expect this will be the first of many FoxLocal streaming deals (or perhaps a part of the upcoming cord-cutting app in planning).

I completely believe this because what used to be a good tool for managing accounts in TweetDeck is probably now a bodged together online-only mess because the guy who took over the site destroyed the downloadable app that let you do this all offline THEN send the muted words onto their lists. I don't know the TweetDeck experience right now, but adding every variation of the r-slur because that place refuses to moderate anything just as an individual user now was a nightmare and a half.

Which would be suicidal and I'm sure the local folks will try to talk New York out of it, but we're talking about a company that utterly refuses to kill a cable channel even as nobody is watching them and subscribers plead with providers to force them to die to get even $4 of relief on their bills. Les Moonves is a jerk and his personal life sucked, but he literally only seemed to be the only adult in the room that could get through to the Redstones and the Viacom board and deal with every CBS division with an iron fist. I would expect next go-around if this sticks, Sony seals a deal with ABC-Disney for distribution and streaming and that if not Netflix, Hulu already has a head start to start streaming the shows just based on Sony/ABC's overall relationships regarding the show alone. Every single negative thing Les feared about a re-merger has come true.

The "not a difficult decision" in her statement was very telling and candid because they did a few things and hires that you could say are 'more palatable' to certain suburbanites, including getting a new hire outside the station for the nightside rather than promoting deserving talent already there. (It's still much less than what 4 has gone through since the Scripps sale though) A day one hire from WTMJ, and a well-deserved wind-down for Mike (and Sunday Morning is a good example of what stations should do on the weekend mornings); one of the last of the 'steady and solid' guys from that era of Milwaukee news.

WBAY is at Gray...Half right now. They have the ticker and the bug good to go, but the older-gen weather, main graphics and L3 system is still in use (I assume the plan is to have it all done by draft night on the 24th for sure). It actually still works together despite the two different design languages.

They used to air a third hour of GMA online...just do that on ABC News Live at 9am so viewers can choose instead of this goofy GMA3+4 silliness and make the noon hour across the country a floating news hour or just give it to the affiliates. There's barely enough GMA segments to justify a 20 minute brand extension, much less an hour, and it's pre-empted half the time anyways when something happens in Washington.

This is a losing strategy for sure, and in the smaller markets where there's already no other choice but Nexstar (aka the first ones to be sold off to vultures like Standard and AMG so they can get pointless pipe dreams like a WGN/WCIU duopoly) this will not go well for them. Less competition has been nothing but bad for them, and the 'competition' they've provided in SouthernBorderNation (does NewsNation report on anything else) has not been close to worthy at all.

There was probably a vacate date of March 31 so it was something they literally could not wait for, and Disney wants to showcase their new building and spaces in a unique way. No harm, no foul here.

So are they just hiring the Weatherology Voicebot 4000 to do Allen station weather hits? It feels like they should be adding staff rather than subtracting from it, and hiring cheaper and younger inexperienced talent (God forbid the worst of young WeatherTwitter) just puts them in the same boat.

I'm guessing since the same staff does GMA First Look they justify a two-hour shift (outside sudden breaking events where the GMA cast isn't on-site yet) and keep running it in that manner for cost efficiency purposes.

It makes you feel like they're going to have red LEDs all over the studio even when its 85º and sunny as they Future Alert you that thunderstorms may happen in the month of April. Baffling brand; it feels like it belongs solely as a forecast model brand rather than one for the entire department.