nathannah

Weigel has started to air weather updates for Green Bay from WDJT during commercial breaks on WMEI so that the 'rusted knob' viewers of MeTV don't have to change the channel to find out the forecast. It's a very small thing, but compared to WRNN/Bridge/Innovate providing no commitment of service to their markets, is downright refreshing.

I was seriously joking when I was talking about a WFTX sale with the Beasley cluster purchase... This is probably much worse than I could ever imagine. I do think if Hearst tosses money at the market and good advertising emphasizing community service and weather (and absolutely going hard-in on holding local government officials accountable because FMB/Sun certainly won't), they should do fine, but having a broadcaster so ridiculously controlling a single market will backfire years down the line if there's a natural disaster or a mini Sumner Redstone situation among the Schwartzels and McBrides.

There's nothing funny about that Bennett, can we please do anything about them? They don't post anything but inappropriate reactions.

In case you're wondering how dire things are at an Allen station, this is not a good sign; one director and one anchor at KIMT on a high school football Friday night having to compile an entire newscast by themselves, along with game video and stats. Kamie Roesler should be proud of herself, but putting someone in this position should never be tolerated. But hey, glad Byron was able to send that suck-up baby gift to Tiffany Haddish rather than paying for an additional MMJ in Mason City/Rochester.

Nice to know exactly when WMEI will get the remainder of Weigel's channels back from WBAY through this, and the expiration date of their MyNetworkTV affiliation feels like a red letter date to see if Fox pulls it back next year. It also provides a window to see when WPGA will be able to ramp up and try to see if they can get the ABC affiliation back. It is out of date on some details; WDNN's month-to-month deals with Get After It's networks are already done, along with the Sonlife affiliations (cited to end in 2019) long gone for Telemundo.

They're also probably thinking of where to get wire video too, and the talent pipeline which local stations provide a lot of. Web media like RSBN can only be a few places at once and Twitter/TikTok influencers are not neutral reporters, so if their local competitors overprice local wire video and stick employees with onerous NDAs, then that puts Newsmax at a disadvantage. That's one way for a regular FTC to get some treasury revenue from an anti-trust suit, but that won't happen here, so Newsmax will get some conditions to be happy.

This is pretty well maddening; Times Shamrock is selling its Milwaukee stations, including WLUM and WLDB, to EMF They are literally the last alternatives to iHeart and Audacy basically turning Milwaukee into a voicetracked music market, so suffice to say, nobody outside EMF will be happy with the loss of a locally-based voice.

WDJT just had to interrupt their 5:30 p.m. newscast and cut over to CBS 58 Sunday Morning due to a gas leak in the building; the West Allis FD asked them to evacuate.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting, which was already taking body blows from the Noem administration pre-DHS, is cutting state and local programming and resources for the state's educators. Legislature, high school sports and some arts coverage will be saved, but station shutdowns were on the table.

He's so many years from retirement and earned the right to rotate his assignments from day to day. Maybe if Rob Marciano had known how to treat other co-workers and especially women he'd be doing the same thing now. I agree Sam is hyped up on all the caffeine and he's not for everyone, but his prime was in bright and cheery 90s news when seriousness was for the longtime 'grumpy old anchor who's too old for this but I'm used to this schedule' and everyone else could be goofy. But he does seriousness well when needed, is great as presenting even without certs, and he still has a 'morning show' mindset that's sorely missed when a lot of the format is now so much news, promotions, and having to regard the chicken sandwich wars like the Gulf War. I'll take his sincere cheer any day of the week.

This cluster is the most bonkers one I've seen; you're telling me they have a completely sober CBS affiliate (and the usual afterthought MNTV sub) and then a sub-company out of the same building (operating the CW, Estrella, and Univision network affiliates) that has brands such as "Right All Along" and "Trump Country" (formerly "Hell Yeah!" and hinting at wanting WF*K for a joke) owned by a literal GOP congressional candidate? When Venta writes an essay about it, you know even he sees through the facade. Watch as they also make an overture to Scripps to give them WFTX for a pittance.

At least moving expenses will be kept down and sharing staff will be easy. That really is a small market (they probably have a joking feud about who pays the snowplow bill).

We found out what would happen, and it was exactly that; cbsatlanta.com goes to cbsnews.com/atlanta/, so the gentlemanly thing was indeed done (including on their final newscast as a CBS affiliate).

The other consideration is that the USA Radio Network (which is still around) likely still has rights to the name and probably locked down the same rights for TV at the same time despite the many iterations it's gone through. NBC is not about to pick a fight/pay out the nose for the rights to that just for the channel to be gone before the end of the decade. I'm more interested in how CNBC rebrands, considering they burned money on a complete rebrand just last year and now will lose a lot of NBC News's and the O&O's gruntwork for a lot of New York, Los Angeles, and the Valley's companies and have to strike out on their own. I assume a lot of stuff is out of KNTV for instance and they may have to move their bureau there and in SFO.

And now they've also agree to pick up a cluster of radio stations from Bicoastal Media in Medford. It sounds like more of an advertising play rather than creating a new news shop in the area (outside the standard local morning news, the only talker in the cluster, KMED, is all-syndication).

This name gives off 'bad screaming Indian news channel vibes', especially with the world part, which we all know this organization is going to cover with just Reuters video; you won't be seeing an "MSNOW London Bureau". As I said about the Tampa station naming situation, branding people are really bad at this lately.

I really hate how generic Scripps newscasts are known as now; WTMJ had its branding as "Today's TMJ4" built in for so long, so having to hear "TMJ4 News" instead is so grating. I also assume since WXPX is now programmed as "The Spot" they needed to drop the specific ABC branding to avert confusion (and avoid absurd newscast titles like ABC Action News at 9 on The Spot Tampa Bay 66), along with the Cox branding royalties mentioned in that thread. ETA - Thanks for bringing up WTOG (aka "Tampa Bay 44") in that thread @TheRolyPoly; on top of that and "10 Tampa Bay", it's both clear there's a dearth of creativity and confusion among brand managers in that area.

As in "it won't become another feed of Byron Allen reruns" good news and at least keeps that channel and its sisters going at the very least.

American Public Television (completely separate from both orgs) distributes most of the instructional and other cooking and travel shows that aren't usually associated with the larger public television stations; they have not been affected by any of this to date.

One good sign is that BET is off the sale block, which makes me assume that no networks will die and MTV2 and VH1 will continue to be zombie feeds of UPN/WB sitcoms until their next RTC cycle.

I still remember when WebTV and CueCat were going to revolutionize 'interactive TV' so long ago... The American TV market is not the UK is a passive audience and it just has never worked well. Why would we interact with a TV when our phones are in our hands to do said interaction? I've had the same computer setup for years, either a TV window to the right on my monitor, or a separate TV and the most interaction I do have with my TV (just cable television, not with an Apple TV or Roku) has just been the weather forecast in a cable box menu...which simply usurped a traditional channel doing the same thing for 2+ decades. That, and polls have just plain become pointless noise that doesn't do anything except bring Facebook 'engagement' in arguments that just are viewer poison to someone who just wants the news. Consumers would just be pleased to be excluded by ZIP code from weather updates that interrupt their shows for events nowhere near them. Weather radio can do that, and has for three decades, but somehow, two different digital TV standards have it as a 'back burner' feature that could be activated, but won't, because the NAB knows with their whole chest if it is rolled out, then advertisers can't have the full audience on their ads, and stations won't have their 'first alert' coverage go to everyone, so it'll forever remain a 'promised feature' that is part of a standard but like the closed captioning text channel, will never seriously be used. And I definitely agree that not selling higher-quality PQ has been baffling. Why are broadcasters all about just simulcasting their existing channels with barely improved PQ in formats that are out of date? Yesterday, I was watching WTMJ's flood coverage in 1080p through their app with crisp and clear weather maps that look blocky and unfocused in 1080i over-the-air. Push all of that over 'you can have the temperature on the side of the TV' or bad polling, along with this inane push of advertising targeting that the consumer does not want.

The schedule was just as I thought it would be; KVVU/Arizona's Family East, though with some more sports programming. They have a successful template in those stations (even back to Meredith), so I think it's worth a try in Atlanta. Be relieved there's not a single Byron Allen program on it at the very least.

WMYT is a literal subchannel among WJZY's formerly record-high map under a channel sharing agreement, so a sale of them to TCT, and The CW Charlotte is 46.2. That channel position has been empty for years even back to the Fox days, as if they've always known a WMYT conflict sale can just have the license and channel share agreement, not the station IP and schedule and it's an easy move.

WCTX channel shares with WTNH, and WCCT's main channel is hosted by WTIC as the area lighthouse. Subnets notwithstanding, it's a very manageable conflict as we all know WCTX is the CW affiliate once Tegna's CW deal is done, and WCCT (which had their 'site' hosted on the CW+ portal for over a decade) is all but a zombie station once the CW moves off there (the only issue with CW of course is if WTNH prefers to keep the primetime newscasts as-is and they move to streaming/WTNH+ down the line). Worse comes to worse because WCTX and WTNH channel share is both WCCT and WCTX get sold off to someone like RNN, Weigel or HC2/Innovate, and 59.1 becomes 8.2 in a renumbering and is your new CW affiliate. And Nexstar still has a wild card with WFXQ-CD, which could be moved from being a WWLP UHF repeater in Springfield to a Hartford station without any regulatory conflicts rather easily. WTIC could even be sold off to comfortably fit Fox onto 20.1 because hey, it's #6 in the market until Fox moves there, so then it's a 'clean deal' in technicality. They will finagle these deals and conflicts in a way that makes Sinclair/Tribune look like a clean merger in comparison.

As I sadly expected, the first victim of the PBS/CPB cuts on-air isn't one of the 'woke' documentaries the GOP targeted, but older reliables like Lawrence Welk repeats which have heavy ASCAP/BMI fees. PBS Wisconsin is pulling it after this Saturday's episode. And yes, the old folks who put in a lot of money into their member stations are mad (rightly so).