nathannah

She will get ratings and eyeballs towards them and Today; her replacement is very, very not Wisconsin weather-minded at all. I never like to complain about someone, but WISN swung and miss and should've paid Molly Bernard to take mornings; she did fine thriving with Baden and Reccia in a three-person team.

And updating this now for no particular reason whatsoever. None at all. This totally didn't air on WTMJ this afternoon .

I'm thinking that Fox-owned stations will probably use July to launch their new programming out of the World Cup (which is why Sherri got rushed off the air now rather than working through the summer). I won't be shocked if news hours moved from Fox Local are the replacement.

The thing that gets me is this joke about 'old man about to die with a young wife' has been around for decades. It's the last half of Anna Nicole Smith's life. We pretty much can count like clockwork when Rupert Murdoch has had enough of last decade's wife and wants a new one. Leonardo DiCaprio has an entire legend about how he moves on the moment his girlfriend turns 25! I'm more offended by 'fat man/thin wife' sitcoms much more than I ever will be 'lol they're marrying a hot young lady before they die'. It wasn't even that vicious of a joke, it was just the most benign 'we're waiting for the funeral' jab that's been made since that man moved from Marla Maples to Melania. The biggest station revocation came only because KDND literally killed someone in a contest, so there's no way this is a serious effort to challenge licenses because the station cannot possibly control what the network airs, even if they are owned by them, and we're not in a situation like the Super Bowl halftime show. KTRK isn't going to get anyone in Houston whining about a lead balloon punchline, and nor is WPVI. Docking a license just because of a tired joke just feels petty and lame, especially when you've had a national news operation sanewash their way towards a national newscast that's just now a big-budget Inside Edition rather than a full sum-up of today's events (and which is happy to pre-empt anything on the schedule, like they did deciding the last five minutes of General Hospital didn't need to be seen so David Muir could show video of politicians chatting and remind us of how King Charles is).

It's a relief that while the entire network craters around it, the Daytime folks are standing their ground (and their Nielsen winning streak) to remain successful and basically unhindered.

I'm going to suppose now that if Sinclair overlays network-mandated NewsNation coverage on The CW as they've done previously, Nexstar will consider it a breach of contract and we're going to have a standoff between the two worst station owners.

And this was on top of Oh Baby being removed by Litton from the Weekend Adventure schedule a week before, for Home for Good, a home renovation show for LEOs hosted by a white guy. Just checked and that's even more egregious, even if Oh Baby was long in repeats.

The state of syndication isn't really good going by WVTM's acquisition of Family Feud for next season; it'll replace both Kelly in the afternoon and the station's 6:30pm CT newscast across three airings.

They'd be more likely to cut that last quadrant of channels that they don't own, and if QVC and HSN do indeed go the way of ShopHQ this summer their hand will be forced anyways.

They cannot outrun their legacy; welcome back Ion Shop.

The little cuts in quality have been noticed; removal of their voiceover artist, but still having the anchors do it, a lot more 'viral' content that has no place on any newscast ('close calls' where school bus cameras and airport tantrums are somehow news), more filler from Deals & Steals/Secret Savings, and they really don't know how to use the video wall for celebrity interviews. For some reason they can't just leave it alone, so on Monday when Olivia Munn was on, she was in front of a distracting 'waterfall' that had her name in barely legible print. And I agree about Sam; he needs to be on weather only and just adds nothing outside a seat on the couch. Plus the Bob Iger Memorial Retirement pieces the last couple weeks have just been a brutal watch.

Found this looking around Facebook (which has been throwing me so much Indianapolis content lately); apparently one of those things Nexstar couldn't restore back to pre-merger is a Baron contract for Tegna's weather apps they terminated, and they were pulled EOD on March 31. If you know how trash a Nexstar phone app is for weather, not a great sign.

In case you're wondering how bad off AMG is hiking Weather Channel carriage fees, this is an early preview with a provider just seeing them charge $5 a month for a subscription to it in the app store and finding it cheaper for their subscribers to NOT take it. They opted out and probably avoided having to pick up his other filler at high prices, and get to free-plug KCWH-DT2, along with a cheaper to carry AccuWeather.

The odd thing in all this is that Scripps is still going to be in Indianapolis because they're asking to purchase WIPX/WCLJ outright; do they want to enforce non-competes and just restart the news operation there as an independent station gunning for the Pacers rights and released from network commitments? There's so much about the deal we still don't know about somehow, but without any WARN act period this may turn out to be a massive legal headache for both companies and that staff (I have to assume the only literal 'they can't leave' person left was their engineer).

They only offered employment though, which is a big difference, and outside a few who probably had no seniority/choice in the manner, most of them probably laughed at the terms on sight. Also putting the logos like that in the footer as '8-6' is probably one of the most ironic touches I've ever seen in a press release announcing how they fired people and how they can maybe come back (good luck with that).

I had a feeling when we hadn't heard anything about it this year, but it's official that NATPE is no more.

I was searching through my guide for what sports were on today and apparently Envoy has found a sporting outfit that needs a TV home; the Team Boxing League, so that's airing this afternoon. Really funny to watch this on a channel whose star is all about conflict resolution, of course.

I've never been able to get it on Spectrum (Wisconsin has pretty much bombed on anything involving parimutuel betting like greyhound racing and the Native American tribes have done gambling a lot better.) so I never saw it, but I will give them credit for sticking it out through so many iterations and ownership changes and sticking to their strengths, and I appreciate that they adjusted their schedule so many times to try to get an audience. Hopefully all their properties find new places to go; I also hope horse racing does find its place somehow.

And now this; Rincon is suddenly done, with its stations being sold to Standard Media to form what looks likely to be another Sinclair shell. I am so tired (of being sadly right).

The news staff getting to have weather folks in the studio with them, along with programmers happy that AllenSlop is being tossed off the schedule and being replaced with harmless Gray shows like InvestigateTV+ and Aging Untold...

Spectrum has launched Brewers.TV on channel 308 for legacy Time Warner systems, 327 for Charter; they control Wisconsin so most of the state will be 'business as usual, new channel' for the debut telecast on Thursday in simulcast with WITI and the state network (with likely MLB authenticaion on MLB.tv following as Spectrum's MLBLM partners all have TV Everywhere access).

And many of them have specifically gone with CBS Radio News to differentiate themselves from Fox News Radio and how their newscasts mainly cue up talk show talking points. I've listened to those newscasts since 1989 and losing their general and neutral tone is going to be severely missed. I get the feeling the staff wanted none of Bari's influence on that programming and she took it personally and killed the division. I do know though it had been flagging (the sponsor tag at the start lately has been a red flag).

Going by RabbitEars it looks like Sagamore leases WODK's main channel to extend coverage (both share the same tower site but different transmission patterns, with WODK covering more ground and the northwest part of the inner ring).

Sinclair looks to be cutting at KGAN, with a Friday date to renew or leave.

And just breaking now, she's lawyered up to get out of her NCC.