nathannah

I'm beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be a bad idea for Nexstar to begin to air WGN's shows on WGN America. With News Nation coming up soon, outside of one Cancon import in two weeks that's new for them, it may be better to do for now than their reruns (and at this this point, the FCC enforcing that Syndex provision is as low a priority as possible in an emergency situation).

Let's just hope she's made sure to keep all eye-seeking toys from her kids out of the room.

Related to GMA, repeats of the noontime GMA3 have been suspended as of Wednesday for an hour-long update regarding COVID-19 developments produced by ABC News Now.

Every other news op in the country is busy with their own stuff going on. And just anchoring outside just throws people out into public areas in an unneeded manner, putting people at risk for absolutely no gain. We're in an uncertain time where the entire 'virtual set' model is showing so many cracks in the social distancing situation it may have been killed, we're seriously going to have to see so many on-air personalities in different shifts to keep everyone sane, and station groups may even have to en masse regional newscasts together. ESPNU literally showed a still screen for three hours because it's too dangerous for the Dan Le Batard Show to air as normal with everyone massed in a studio (everyone called in via Skype and such), and the CBS Morning News went without graphics. As long as information is being presented, that is priority #1 over not seeing your 'news family' in that close around the big desk for the next few weeks.

And because of the situation, a number of taped interviews with Al and Craig usually presented as 'live' through the day had a subtle 'Pre-recorded' bug in the corner.

Today's IE was compiled from LA, (IE tapes at Broadcast Center) with Deborah hosting the show from her home kitchen.

And Gray can't acquire it now; the station failed so no FSW can be filed if Gray files a CP for a new station on the 27 allocation (unless Ajit's willing to look the other way on even more stuff).

Small bonus seeing one Mike Darnell as the station's tape librarian there.

Negative leverage - nobody wants to pay for their $100/year price for the Plus package for #374 vs #685 in the world preliminary matches, and you have to pay a monthly fee even for TVE access; and consolidating a website and magazine into the same company is asking for disaster (Google Justin Gimmelstob about how this triple threat marketing is a disaster when a personality gets into hot water). Even Willow, the cricket channel running on a small budget, has a sane carriage fee and free TVE to the systems that have taken them on.

Every single contract with every single entity under their purview would be breached, and it would be a death sentence. The filler shows they run outside their main sports would absolutely eviscerate them in court if they switched to that model, and the entire traditional pay-per-view industry is dead. Outside of dish services that still have to maintain it and grumpy diehards that require it through a cable box, PPV movies are no longer a thing, nearly every ring sports event now has an IPTV option (which they love because only the most tech-savvy could record the event for forever viewing), and most systems only have three PPV channels overall, at most.

It'll be a three hour special in prime time two weeks from now and cause all life in SWB and the Lehigh Valley to come to a halt.

Knowing Sinclair's vexilological kink with the Stars and Stripes, 'Flag' could work .

WGN Sports isn't over after all; the Chicago Fire are airing 24 matches this year under a multi-year deal with the station, along with surrounding programming (it'll also be nationwide through MLS's ESPN+ streaming); not sure if it's WGN with editorial control or a brokered arrangement for play-by-play.

Maybe a go at getting the CW+ from WLAJ? Their stick has three HD signals going through it with the WLNS channel share which must struggle to manage bandwidth, though most of the Katz networks are already spread out through all the stations in the market. It's an odd situation since WSYM (their news share partner) shares common ownership with Katz, but only carries Bounce. Lansing is just a completely different channel map compared to most markets altogether...it could also be a way to arrange an SSA to get WSYM-DT4 (the MyNet affiliate) an HD signal in exchange for extending their agreement so that they don't just extend WXMI's news op into Lansing via WSYM in some way.

Honestly it reminded me of Wall Street Journal colorized woodcuts, which would make more synergetic sense, but it wasn't any better than the 'football player in a greenscreen room grabbing his jersey yoke' dullness that's overcome the sports media industry.

That's KTMJ in Topeka, part of their triopoly in that market where KSNT is the main newsgathering station.

And also...single-sponsor ads overlaying the entirety of the boards; the latter is very unwelcome as they cover up board lines.

It feels exactly that; they describe it as such...but in the end it's Yet Another Edited Radio Simulcast Show, with a bit of KDNL's late-and-not-missed Allman Report sprinkled in. I do not understand why even though this format has failed hard over and over again in markets big and small, stations continue to pursue it. A new coat of paint won't do much for them; they get rid of the now-irrelevant programming, but now it's replaced with what seems to be a loop of the auto-play pain that's carried between videos on ABC O&O sites.

WTVX's only news use was for hurricane purposes and was always an albatross; frankly for as little as we hear about it, WBFS could sign off without any advanced notice at this point and very few people would even remember WBFS existed. As much as political revenue is something to be chased, it's probably an incredibly low amount on your average MyNetworkTV affiliate, and a little more, but still negligible on a CW affiliate since you have your usual mix of low-wattage advertisers giving loyal year-round revenue on court show/sitcom blocks enjoyed in offices, restaurants and medical facilities marketwide. The Dallas duopoly is likely very used to doing multiple newscasts for both KTVT/KTXA and have it down to an art, along with WCBS/WLNY; WBBM hasn't done anything outside of traditional timeslots outside of 'at your desk' shows and social. Station strength plays into it easily, but having the ethic/ability to produce multiple newscasts is likely much more of a factor.

I will say it's bold, and certainly a better line of thinking than sticking with the old-line thinking of going with an every night 8/7 o'clock movie...because repeats of sitcoms and shows found everywhere else certainly isn't working at all. It also feels like a run-up to attempt to compete with Newsy, with more of a local bent than Newsy's national focus, and hopefully is an antidote to the RightThisMinute and DailyBlast-esque 'let's wasted a minute describing viral video' direction these national shows from big station groups have seemed to take. This is the same Nexstar that took one week to cancel Hollywood Today Live after they got Media General, so it's on-point. Hubbing it to WGN rather than KTLA also feels like another move to assure the 'Chicago media is self-destructing and in Big Private Equity!' worriers that they still find brand value in the Second City (though they just cancelled a content deal with Crain's Chicago Business for daring to speculate they'd sell WGN Radio, so double-edged sword).

Hartford and Springfield are two of the few markets which have never had a MeTV station in any way (WZME's tailspin into ShopLC/Sonlife irrelevance over the years can't be counted as serious, especially as they wanted to be NYC-exclusive). Weigel will pay for carriage for sure; it's undeniably worth it in a market with so few signals to begin with.

One of the major issues is that Nielsen isn't subscribed to universally any longer...some have that, and some use Comscore/Rentrak instead, and these days, there are so many ways that numbers are 'proprietary information' that no media organization wants the lawsuits that come with printing an xx.x number (Feder basically has to cherry-pick stations in his monthly radio rundowns to avoid the Nielsen lawsuit hammer because there are Nielsen-tracked stations that don't pay the money for that number).

Went to check the WTIC link to see if there was an update and it redirected to a random Cablevision outage story from September and the WBNS 'story' was blank for good reason; Altice has come to terms with Tegna for Suddenlink/Optimum systems, no blackout.

DirecTV and U-Verse, and AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now). Hearst usually is the type that won't ticker-plead until the eleventh hour.

This dispute also affects WTIC/WCCT viewers in Hartford/New Haven who have Optimum; Suddenlink and Cablevision/Optimum are both owned by Altice.