dman748

More than likely it'd be Kevin Ogle doing the 4 and 5pm newscast. Most likely what Nexstar is doing is they're consolidating the seperate newscasts with seperate anchors into one newscast with one anchor team each now I don't know what that means for the future of anchors like Heather Holeman most likely she could just slide over to the 4pm side with Kevin and let Kevin/Joleen anchor all other newscasts except for 9pm on KAUT (unless Kate Smith gets the axe too). All I can say is that changes are coming to 444 East Britton Road and this could either be a good thing or it could very much be an epic disaster and before anybody asks about ratings I can't comment about them because no one in the OKC area does local station ratings anymore and the most recent relevant data I can find dates back to 2001 (that's 18 years ago)

For Companies like Capitol (WRAL/Z, WILM) and Griffin (KWTV+/KOTV+) localism works great for the 7 aforementioned stations. In the case of Nexstar, localism works great in some places but in other places it just doesn't work that way. It just depends on how the media market looks like with the ownership groups that are in those markets.

I am gonna say in a market where your only choices are Sinclair, Tegna and Nexstar. My educated guess would be that KARK is Number One in the mornings

It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being "Tribune acquires Nexstar" rather than the other way around. In a way it looks like Tribune influence is overtaking Nexstar and in reality, it helps that several Tribune executives came on board with Nexstar after the merger.

I'm sure they could but at the same time it'd make it seem as if they serve all of Arkansas to the viewers in Central Arkansas even though in reality the DMA doesn't cover the entire state of Arkansas

If you live in places like Mobile and Rochester, NY it'd be a good idea to get an antenna because (and I hope I'm wrong and this dispute gets resolved soon) I see no end in sight with this ongoing dispute

Let's just put it this way chances of AT&T and the Sinclair sidecars reaching a fair agreement is getting slimer and slimer as each week passes by I mean we're only nearly TWO full months away from the calendar turning to 2020 and neither side is any closer to any form of an agreement. I think it's gonna be a miracle if something gets done between the two sides by the end of the year

They're probably referring the "Central" part of the branding as in "Central Arkansas" KTHV couldn't just call the morning newscast "Wake Up Arkansas" because the Little Rock DMA doesn't cover the entire state of Arkansas.

According to this Facebook post WHO in Des Moines is expanding "Today In Iowa" to 4:30am starting tomorrow (10/28) https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2280410128736340&id=316872231756816

KOCO from October 1998 Features a partial newscast from October 14th, 1998 (just before I was born)

Now you see why I got mixed up because the way it was written it made it sound as if WHO and KDSM were in a duopoly even though in reality they're not.

IMO, Marty Haag and Chip Moody would both be rolling over in their graves right now seeing what Tegna has done to WFAA. It's not surprising to see WFAA's Breaking News coverage being as undelwhelmed as it was

Tegna's trend of rebranding morning newscasts continues. KTHV in Little Rock is going to drop "THV11 This Morning" in favor of a new newscast title called... "Wake Up Central". It'll begin next Tuesday (10/29)

Of course it's all about the almighty dollar. Quite frankly I think the STELAR Act needs to be repealed and replaced with something that makes it fair for both the broadcaster and the cable operators not something that tips the favor towards the broadcasters and not something that tips the favor towards the cable operators. I firmly believe that Congress will do something about the STELAR Act and hopefully prevent future lengthy disputes such as Deerfield's and Northwest's disputes with AT&T from happening again. Speaking of the STELAR Act, Senators are taking a closer look into the STELAR Act and signs are pointing towards a renewal in that act

Tegna might be putting it's radio stations on the block. San Diego Reader reported yesterday that Tegna might be selling the KFMB radio stations

The short answer to that is they have to get a fair deal somehow, someway. Even though this was a different case Northwest was just as bad as Deerfield is right now with AT&T and if Northwest can get a deal done so can Deerfield. It's up to Deerfield whether they want to get a deal done and bring back the likes of WPMI and WHAM to AT&T or it'll take until new ownership groups to come in before we see any of the Deerfield stations return to AT&T. So far it's been the latter.

Short answer, no. I would prefer if AT&T did but in reality unless it's legal for them to do so then no they can't sue Sinclair

1. If Deerfield is trying their deal into those of Sinclair's that could have significant consequences especially given the prior issues Sinclair had that has already been addressed. 2. AT&T can take Deerfield to court but knowing that Deerfield is not the operator of the stations what good would that do to take a company that has no operational control over their own stations?

For one Deerfield is not willing to negotiate a fair deal to restore their stations on the AT&T services such as U-Verse and DIRECTV. Secondly, Deerfield is essentially holding AT&T hostage by not willing to negotiate with AT&T That's what I consider to be bad faith negotiations and the longer Deerfield holds AT&T hostage the more of a chance that it'll go against the license qualifications when the license renewal time comes so if Deerfield doesn't want to be forced to liquidate it's assets they need to come to the negotiating table (AT&T should as well) and negotiate a fair deal to restore it's stations to AT&T

And all signs point to negotiations being in bad faith which I think we all can agree that this is a bad look for Sinclair itself

The only station where programming wouldn't move to the subchannel would be WPMI and WHAM, the rest of the Deerfield chain could assume their respective affiliations or in the case of WJTC, independent status. Send WPMI to either Gray, Hearst, or Tegna while WHAM could go to either Cox or Tegna. I think it'd be more appropriate to address the future of the Deerfield stations in the Speculatron thread and perhaps in it's own thread.

It's possible that Sinclair set it up with the stations owned by Cunningham, Deerifled and the like to tie in all of the program streams and AT&T apparently doesn't like that idea that maybe DirecTV pre-AT&T did. And that last sentence might prevent stations like WPMI and others from returning to AT&T anytime soon. AT&T isn't going to cave into demands of someone who's ownership is basically in-name only with Sinclair basically running the show on everything else. If you read what @DirtyHarry said on that last sentence that right there might kill Deerfield and their shell partners in the long haul. It may not be neccessarily killing them but wait a few months and it likely will.

If that's the case then why hasn't Sinclair stepped in to resolve this carriage dispute? I mean this Deerfield blackout is getting to be just as stupid as the Northwest Broadcasting blackout albeit it is totally different

If you have a solution for how Sinclair can force Deerfield into coming together with AT&T to get their stations back on the AT&T systems please let us know. So far the only solution I could justify it happening is a sale of the Deerfield stations, there's no chance in hell the Deerfield licenses gets pulled just because of a blackout. Something has to give, you cannot be blacked out of the cable systems forever, ask Northwest how well their 8 month blackout on AT&T went. Yes, it's two totally different situations here but so far it might be after the new year before the Deerfield stations return and that's a very bad look on not just Mumblow, but Sinclair as well.

They could be nice about it and everything but as Sinclair proven time after time they're not gonna do things the nice way