nathannah

WMAR is already back to their regular schedule and Scrippscast like features on their livestream (including of the Key bridge story...not the time for this at all!) as WBAL and WJZ haven't left the live air since 2am, and WBFF is doing the best it can. This is about as much of an indictment on how bad Scripps has become and their generational neglect of WMAR as a whole.

The best stations seem to thrive in spite of their networks, bad syndication breaks, and ownership initiatives, which is certainly being proven by the Coxpollo and Hearst ABC'ers, but it certainly helps if your station builds around the community first rather than the network that carries it, which WDJT and WANF have found out and WWJ is learning to do now. Meanwhile in reverse WWL-TV seemed to turn their back on NOLA when Gannett/Tegna took over (including the inexplicable "CBS This Morning" set emulation which backfired the moment they had to move the local morning show to WUPL) and WVUE is thriving on what used to be 4's bread and butter by just embracing the city and the Saints. And even though it has to deal with Sinclair, KUTV still manages to put out a good product which is strong against KSL and KSTU, while KTVX never seemed to find its way once non-local ownership muddled and meddled it to death; it certainly didn't help that its ownership pre-Nexstar was more used to running independent/UPN stations than a network affiliate.

Congratulations, CityNews for finally giving your talent chairs to sit in while on camera after almost fifty years! Now we just need to get the rest of the industry to knock off this 'standing while anchoring' idiocy.

But if they add a show at 12:30, how do you get affiliates to pick it up or not send it to 3am so they keep the full hour? Compulsory carriage is the only way that works. And even then, I don't see them going to a fully straight newscast because CBS Deals is being pushed heavily and they aren't giving up that revenue source even if everyone else outside compulsive shoppers hates it.

Certainly not the issue at all as they've done their best to improve the signal as far as they can get it and their facility is very modern. The problem is everyone else has had plenty of time to establish themselves and NBC Boston is pretty much a bodged-together combo of NECN and Telemundo NE with the addition of some other talent. Like in Milwaukee or Atlanta post-94, it's going to take an entire generation of talent to cycle out before they can consider themselves competitive, and where some stations were able to get a big syndicated show to lighten the load off news, that certainly isn't happening at all in 2024.

It's still just one YouTube playlist on KOMO's YouTube channel three months later, and they still have no website. I wouldn't be shocked if KUNS gets a traditional "CW 51 Seattle" branding come fall and ARC WM quietly goes away after the next Xfinity negotiation cycle, and ARC stands for 'Almost Ready to Close' here. It's also telling that it hasn't been launched outside those markets because other Arc organizations have pre-emptively stopped them from doing so after these two launches.

KGBT-TV in the RGV market had one of the guy wires snap on their tower this week, and after an evacuation for a day or two it was safely taken down. It had already been stripped of its CBS affiliation in 2021, become an Antenna/My Net sub zombie, and its main and Estrella subchannels were bumped to KVEO's bandwidth while NX figures out next steps. I feel like they either move to KVEO's stick in the coming months with only the Nexstar classic nets returning in addition (the rest are Scripps networks and will likely see a contract rip-up), or it just goes silent after a year and it goes back up for bids; why rebuild a tower when you can just move its operations to the working one?

I put the MyNet stations under the Fox Plus name now just because it's much more appropriate now rather than MyNet, and you're definitely correct, they have a headstart with WFLD as the Bears' offcial station.

Apparently, Chris Harrison has found religion (and about Texas's lack of income taxes) and will host the network's morning show with his wife in the fall a la Kelly and Mark. Sadly I found out by Entertainment Tonight (where his wife used to do features) doing a segment with him about it, so as far as CBSMV considering Dr. Phil persona non grata on their air, that isn't happening. (also correct the title to remove the date since that didn't happen, please mods)

If it cuts The Talk down to a half-hour it's already succeeded; whatever that show was before, it now seems to be gliding by on its past glory, anti-GH viewers simply there out of spite, or sponcon.

This has Weigel, the CBS indies and the Fox Plus stations written all over it, along with Scripps just going by a raw eyeball of where it would air in NFL markets (Green Bay it'll likely be WACY for sure, likely KMCI for Kansas City, WCIU for Chicago and WMLW for Milwaukee).

To the surprise of nobody who doesn't want to stare at simulcasts of people who have faces for radio outside Piers Morgan (who ditched it last month) and isn't in the business of comparing LeBron to Johnny Unitas or Babe Ruth, TalkTV is going online-only.

The mets and traffic reporters probably simply thought the visual quality of presenting in front of a screen was poor and went back to the chroma key. You have to line up the map a certain way so a county line isn't confused with a screen seam (though here it's seamless) and they probably just did not think the presentation in front of a screen with blur rather than a key with known PQ worked long-term. Certainly no cause for concern.

They did more what I expected with the Shawano bump-over; they've filled a CP modification to transmit from Scrays Hill south of Green Bay with a southward null to protect WITI, so I would still expect a future LP to get more of the market, but likely for Manitowoc/Cleveland or Oshkosh/Ripon to get Fox River Valley/southern lakeshore coverage.

It won't be "Bally Sports" after the baseball season ends. I know wouldn't happen, but it would be hilarious if it became ESPN Bet Sports (I'm sure Barstool or Pointsbet is the next one to chase for naming rights, honestly).

It was more an ESPN move than ABC's decision really because 720p was better for sports at the time, along with being more conservative about data and transmission (1080i and confetti is a nightmare and awful for fast motion). It's more likely they'd upgrade to mostly a 4K flow with an actual 1080p broadcast once ATSC 3.0 rolls out beyond the early adopters (who are a bit alarmist about DRM and such; unless you're trying to start Locast 2.0 or an archivist, the regular viewer isn't going to care, and the standard is still rolling out now so you know what you're getting into) and they move to the Yards. And let's not forget for years they had to share with Live!, so finally having their full and dedicated spaces for each other (when I watch that show I just feel ill from how cramped that audience is) is going to make so much more of a difference. Honestly, I'm happy about this for WABC, though the current form it has does have its charms. Whatever the national news side/GMA is annoyed about, it's going to be a lot better in the end for 7 and the syndicated shows to have standardized studios with actual spaces and no longer having to work around the limitations of Lincoln Square.

No real surprises with the Bucks airing on WDJT/WMLW and the state network last night as far as graphics as it was all still a team-produced Diamond production with all the same personnel; they used a neutralized cut of the Bally theme and the red B graphics and mic-flag wise was replaced with WMLW's blue "the m" logo, along with any Bally mentions being removed from the opens/closes. Honestly, a familiar broadcast that worked perfect for everyone.

Will this set up yet another reboot of Geraldo at Large where he'll get a half-hour to do whatever he'd like?

Quick minor correction that Enlace is cable/pay distributed so it's unlikely they'll lose any carriage based on that. However, Spectrum did dump most of the TBN suite several years back outside Original Recipe TBN and Enlace, so they'd need to restore that coverage. Even the channel finder they have outside the main TBN stations and must-carry coverage, is just a whole lot of 'request it' links to a boilerplate form. There are also some low-powers which carry Enlace as a .1 without any English services, so they haven't lost all of their OTA coverage. But with two weeks to go until launch, not a great sign regarding network carriage.

Trying to justify the purchase of what was an HD-era experimental channel otherwise bound for HC2 irrelevancy. The entire WHDT purchase made no sense from the start at all; sure, you get an overflow station, but what else can you do with that station outside guaranteeing full coverage for your subnets? The CW isn't moving, you've got WFLX and Fox already via sidecar, and the Ion flagship is just as sidecarred. I wouldn't be surprised if the purchase came with a Mar-a-Lago membership a la WLNY.

One side effect of the Dabl management deal has quietly appeared on Weigel's Start TV; they now air that day's DREW episode at 1am weeknights for the night owls who don't have local stations that repeat the episode overnight (or only half of it), a la Kelly airing on Bravo the same way.

With all of the issues, it may have just come down to that there literally isn't much advertising revenue to support the station even in a part-time bureau state and they were completely under water with the station (over the years the transmitter alone was a money sink which kept breaking down in the core of winter). Some of these smaller markets are down to a state where they're stalled out to the point of ripping and reading from Nixle and Facebook for much of the show (because police and municipal authorities don't want them to go deeper than that and openly obstruct them from doing so) and the only original content left is weather (which can be outsourced) and sports (outside the high school football and basketball regular seasons just a vacuum of time).

I would literally pay extra for a 'clean feed' with just a simple scorebug and no tickers; every new sports service seems to think it's required to appeal to the 'prop bet on random Bangladeshi netball at 4:30 in the morning' category of bettors. I really hope that information isn't baked into the video of this service.

Should also mention WGN Radio airs the 4-6 block of channel 9's morning news in Chicago; it's a common thing for heritage/struggling stations that can't justify filling the 5am hour these days with Orion retired and Max mainly focusing on his TV duties (as their farm reports used to fill that 5am slot), and WGN starts at 4am because their overnight syndicated filler (Rich Valdes) ends at 5am ET/4am CT. There are some set aside periods for the radio side to contribute their own traffic reports and you have to assume that the TV side adjusts their presentation knowing that radio listeners can't see images on-screen. And it just makes me sad that WGN and KABC (which is so badly-rated Cumulus is embarrassed to ask Nielsen rate it) have to depend on TV stations to fill time now.

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