nathannah

WKTB has had full-power standard definition simulcasts on WPXA, and now WSB because the range of the WKTB signal is anemic. But important here; they do have an existing news operation which has done well in the awards department, so Gray is smart to snap them up at that price and give them a true HD simulcast in the market, along with a local ad agency targeting minority audiences, so it's more a $15/$15 million deal for both items, not overpaying for a station on autopilot without local deviation (and which has had solid local ownership before this point willing to pay for subchannel simulcast deals to better the hand they've been dealt). Of additional note...this WGCL news share deal made with Univsion's WUVG in 2017 will likely come to an end, suggesting that it's possible the WKTB buy-out came as a result of the new TelevisaUnivision deciding to put actual resources into the WUVG news department and kill the Meredith agreement.

ShopHQ was killed ASAP, and they plan to re-launch the station as it was this month, with its pre-RNN and ShopHQ management intact (see comments). Right now it seems to be carrying a simulcast of their Vuit channel, including newscasts and skycams, and extended newscasts will be naturally a part of the new KIKU schedule.

The comic book look is so...overdone. It just feels like they wanted to have their own 'image trademark' like their buddies at Dow Jones have with their 'hedcuts' in the Wall Street Journal...but it turned out looking like a bad educational comic. I don't understand why they never beta-test these fonts either, they're too bold, and the small-caps cause eye-strain as you try to figure out what letter each is. Notably, they aren't showing any graphics involving FoxBet or their Super 6 contest in that article. One day, sports betting will be inescapable on Fox Sports, and like college rankings (I will never care that someone ranked a team #17!), they'll just add more unneeded visual clutter.

PowerNation usually doesn't air OTA outside the old Raycom base, so probably don't expect it to come there. And it's unlikely PTTVS! will be gone before September at the earliest since they still have talent contracts to fulfill on the publishing and broadcasting sides and to give Gray time to figure out if it makes more sense to keep the show as contracted, expand it chain-wide, and stop carrying ET and Access, along with fitting the existing Meredith advertorial shows more into Gray's verticals like Moms Everyday or Ask the Expert. Also to be noted; it airs on several ad-supported streaming services as part of People's "People TV" channel, so DdM might be willing to keep it going to have content for that.

From WSAZ this evening; presented without comment outside I hope she is OK once the adrenaline wears off.

Anyone see any signs or promotion of the planned O&O subchannel launches? I expected the switch at least by 1/3, but WITI still has Antenna TV (and picked up HSN OTA on a new subchannel because free $$$), and I don't see that any other FTS stations have done it...maybe they pushed it because of the current staffing situation?

Channel 15 is shared with land mobile radios and hospital radiology equipment, and because of that they have the lowest full-power signal in the market.

I wish I could assume spin-offs here, but knowing how Tegna has played with things in each market in the past, it's possible under Standard that Sinclair-style 'subchannel mergers' will see WATL-DT1 moved to WXIA-DT2 and WJAX-DT1 being DT2'ed onto WFOX, leaving subchannel network farm husks behind, along with the WFAA and KHOU moves onto their sister UHFs being executed to take advantage of the UHF discount (a major Biden disappointment; it needed to be taken care of at 12:01 p.m. 1/20 last year, along with appropriate FCC nominees). They've started to become more common after being tested out on MyNet/CW stations with no provider, regulatory or consumer pushback, Sinclair barely had any notice of their Fox moves from the shell/sidecar stations last year, and I'm afraid it'll become standard (no pun intended) as time goes on.

Nah, by broadening their umbrella beyond E/I, they're hedging that there's still schedule gaps on the weekends; eventually the E/I facade will die, but then they have hours and hours of programming appealing to older audiences that just needs the literal E/I Band-Aid ripped off the screen to fill the time on stations that don't have an NFL game. Even the trades have long acknowledged no one over the age of 5 or under 50 is learning a thing from these shows or watching them seriously. It's a conveyance to offer products to seniors, and fills three hours that would otherwise go to news, infomercials, or much worse syndicated dregs (Allen Media, Associated Television, Telco, or A&E reality shows you already see on A&E).

MLBN/NHL is in the former MSNBC space in Secaucus in the Hartz Mountain development, where the WWOR studios once were. Fort Lee is up the road by the George Washington Bridge. 6A is also a possibility for WNJU (the old Megan Kelly space), which has been used by The Tonight Show and its Peacock kid's version since then.

The same with ABC; the window where they could have fled KDNL for anywhere else in St. Louis is officially closed. They don't renew that empty shell of a station, they simply end their relationship with that network. The era where the networks were able to strong-arm affiliates for proper terms/programming quality has passed. Also, NBC is stuck on the third or fourth place station in many of those Sinclair markets, and the few high-placing stations they do have are from old owners who never wanted anything to do with SBG but ended up with them under sketchy circumstances.

Actually it's the original version; been there for years. I do like the modern touch of merging in the 'A' and waveline in the new variation.

I just read about this story where a former Pappas station in Columbus owned by CNZ added a distributed transmitter to get their subchannel farm station into the Atlanta market (CNZ did the same with WIWN in Milwaukee). It does make me wonder if Gray is doing the same; buying up these stations to be extended nodes in an ad-hoc DTT network to move those no-hope licenses (usually from Edge Spectrum, ARK, and HC2) and eventually super-serve a larger market. Especially with ATSC 3.0 coming, it seems like they want to take no chances with presumed broadcast range like they did on ATSC 1.0 and the failed mobile standard.

The Press radio stations, Newsmax and NTD/Falun Gong were dropped at the start of the year already (Newsmax would've been gone no matter what because of their rise on cable and just stopping that free carriage model). Scripps networks should be going pretty soon since WPXN and WFTY already carry them, and the Get After It/Luken trash will be gone ASAP. As for WZME still carrying Sonlife, that org loves to get long-term deals so it's going to be awhile before that's gone (and Weigel seems to be okay with other networks as long as they don't compete in their own spaces. I do assume though that Wiegel will honor their existing deals with WCBS and Fox in the market in full, like they've done in Denver.

The same rumors have been floating around since even before 45 announced his candidacy (and the BTS issues have been public for years already but only cared about by the worst of cable news obsessives that aren't on this board). Until anything actually happens on this, it's still 100% skepticism they'll do anything outside a natural letting go at the end of her latest deal (or seeing if the show fits better on streaming).

Well that would be a complete 180º; I still remember when Nexstar killed Hollywood Today Live the moment the approval for Media General came because Perry thought it was a distraction from their 'local first' initiative.

A possibility is launching HD affiliates of Circle, since that's an area it would do very well in; no current affiliate of the network is on the three major stations there. Could see that and since they lost NBCSN, they might ramp up PowerNation as a subchannel network so they don't have to keep playing musical chairs as cable networks wind down.

I say it because internationally, Disney Channel, XD and Junior have gone dark to focus more on Disney+, where they don't have to share any revenue with pay-TV providers. The US and Canada might be different, true...but the children's market for traditional cable channels is declining, and Disney's new programming on those three networks exclusively without D+ sharing has completely declined. I would not be shocked to see the networks wind down before the end of 2025. Eventually, that same 'secret sauce' will be found for the major sports networks. Not anytime soon (as we see with Bally and had it not been cancelled, the Arizona Barstool Bowl), but Dish is done with RSNs, and with ESPN Classic gone, now ESPNU and ESPNews are the focus of networks to be reeled back for ESPN+ coverage instead.

I thought of it more as NBCSN merging with USA, and USA being the brand that got to keep going on. NBC Sports no longer needs to buy filler like Mecum or PowerNation and fill 168 hours minus infomercials in a week, while the USA side gets to reduce the films and series they have to air on the weekends for live content they desperately need as their repeat shows can easily be streamed, without commercials. Frankly I want more of this; network mergers to remove pointless networks and 'bundle bloat' that have no reason to exist when their programming can easily do so on another channel space. NBCU has embraced this in the past by killing Trio, Cloo, Chiller and Esquire and with eventually do so with Universal Kids (now just a literal YouTube playlist with traditional commercials), and slowly Disney has by also taking out ESPN Classic and likely soon Disney Channel and XD (thanks, Disney+)...while ViacomCBS continues to go on thinking viewers need VH1, which hasn't shown a Video Hit since 2013, along with Logo, MTV2, BET Her and TV Land, which are all just rerun channels with different audiences, and that Nicktoons and NickMusic need to somehow still exist.

ABC promoted the first ever (English-language network) Puerto Rico countdown on New Year's Rockin' Eve tonight (shhhh...Univision, Telemundo, and WAPA airing that for years doesn't count somehow)... Completely forgetting that most of their affiliates don't usually like to start their news at 11:01/10:01 for no good reason, especially on a night where five minutes (and three minutes of ads) are already taken away for New York coverage. Both my ABC affiliates (WBAY and WISN) have hard master control clocks and went right to their news at 10 on the dot, and I'm sure a good percentage of ABC affiliates in the Central/Eastern Time Zones did too. Very bad planning on ABC and Media Rights Capital's part. Making it worse? They didn't even count down for a full minute, it was on a broadcast delay, and when they did start the countdown, it was the top of the hour and there was no natural lead-in outside chaos on stage desperately getting the crowed to get hyped for the countdown, thus the affiliates made the right choice in going to news. I'm not even going to get deep into the unmasked disaster that is CBS in Nashville tonight (say everyone is triple-vaxxed all you want, people will fake their cards and there's no breathing room in those crowd shots); at least the NBC coverage does have a mostly-masked crowd and compelling performances from Miley (Pete Davidson though...noooooo), and outside that bad clocking, ABC is fine, though the late-late night recorded performances from LA and previous years have been used as a primetime Plan B. ETA - ABC also forgot that the Friday night Mega Millions drawing is a thing stations air (which originates at WSB and is always aired there and all Cox stations), so the San Juan countdown was also pre-empted for that.

The infamous 9am hour in 2008, which included turning the morning news towards a lurid 'local gossip' focus wholly incompatible with The Early Show, and they effectively broke up the Cheetah Girls when some wacko 'reality blogger' who claimed to represent one of them went on the show to do damage control. Thankfully that direction didn't last very long.

Seems like the current Gray MO; WBAY still has the 2013 logo open but the new bug as shown above. But it's more of a 'when we get to it' project anyways.

Or...they just decided to encompass both stations in a fun promo and the song was handy to do so? Not every station promo has to be a lurch involving crimes and accidents and claims of being first.

The entire point of buying low-stakes reality programming that has no continuous format is so you can break in when needed. Is there really a minority of people out there who will be angry that World's Deadliest Weather or Could You Survive? were pre-empted last night outside Creek Stewart's agent?

December 1 was the Scripps vaccine deadline, so that would probably be the answer unless there's another reason to be found.