dman748

I went ahead and started a new thread related to the U.S. Open (and other USGA-related events) returning to NBC

Not only that but also the economic conditions created by COVID-19 will in all likelihood make any effort made by Lockwood to start a news department from scratch unlikely.

I have to wonder if its feasible for a market the size of Knoxville to have 4 in house news departments? Depending the size of WTNZ/WKNX's facility it might be big enough to accomodate an in house news department for WTNZ

Wasn't WESH still with the V1 version on the L3rds or was that something else? It looks like V1 just from the thumbnail of the video alone but I could be wrong

Which KOCO was pretty much in the same boat as WCVB, having the Camera V2 graphics but some parts of it were still V1.

I believe KOCO got them just before WCVB got theirs. Here's WCVB from roughly the same period (about a month after KOCO received theirs) it's possible though that CVB could've gotten the Camera 2.0 graphics in the Summer of 1998 before KOCO got theirs (in all likelihood because KOCO was just recovering from a tornado that damaged their studio about 3 months prior to receive the Camera Mandate 2.0 graphics

Hate to bump up a stagnant thread but Sinclair is going to launch a Headline News Service that will run from 6 to 9am initially on stations affiliated with the CW and MyNetworkTV respectively as well as its own OTT service, STIRR. Scheduled to launch early next year https://tvnewscheck.com/article/top-news/250273/sinclair-to-launch-headline-news-service/ Don't be surprised if this expands eventually to other affiliates (particulary the ones without news departments).

Tegna and Standard General are scheduled to meet this week (h/t @ChocoMingo) https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2020/6/8/tegna-to-meet-with-standard-general-this-week Even though Kim did lose out on Tegna board seats back in April it should be interesting to see how this meeting goes and will have a follow up once any new developments comes out.

From what I read only WTVG made the disclaimer that Walker was an Amazon employee. I think the stations who are in the biggest trouble is the ones that ran the pkg more than once (WLEX, WTVM, KMIR, WOAY) Ironically enough a Sinclair station is involved in that (WGXA/Macon) Meanwhile Sabrina Bates is leaving KFSM for KOCO as the new meteorologist (h/t @ColtFromGulfcoast) https://twitter.com/5NEWSSabrina/status/1265412477933756420?s=20

While I do agree that merging the publishing entities with another would create further problems however given the situation were in right now there's likely going to be no other choice but to say we're going to become pure-play and dump the Publishing unit. Ironically enough the TV side for Meredith is doing fine in spite of losing half of the revenue on the TV side that particular unit isn't in as deep of trouble as the publishing units are. I'll save the rest of my thoughts for speculatron. I have a lot more to say regarding Meredith (as well as the situation with Apollo and their interest in buying DirecTV and Dish Network than what needs to be said in this thread

I think to be honest a lot of it is probably to do with COVID, I think that Meredith are just trying to get through the pandemic first and then as soon as the pandemic is over they'll put their stations up for sale. Howeven, given the situation happening right now with bankers predicting that AT&T will spin DirecTV off I think that will come to Meredith and bankers as well as creditors among others aren't going to wait until the pandemic is over to put pressure on a company to do something with the company's assets

Essentially for example Sinclair tries to buy stations C & D but already have Stations A & B they can transfer the station over to say Deerfield as long as the legal team is ok with that (same principle would apply to any station Sinclair tries to acquire anything from one of their shells).

The question then becomes is that part included in this quote Or is it something else?

The way I interpreted the whole decree it sounds like that Sinclair can't do anything with the stations whether if its their existing stations or TV stations that they buy from to transfer it over from the shells to Sinclair itself and vise versa.

I think that the bigger issue here is that the odds of them getting Meredith aren't looking too good that and I think there may be other fish to go after than Meredith That and given that Meredith is looking more and more likely they're going bankrupt is suggesting to me that Scripps may have to stay away from Meredith although they could still go after maybe one or two of the Meredith stations, maybe more. I'll save further thoughts in Speculation

If anything Scripps could potentially be looking at more stations however, I just can't imagine them with Meredith's stations because in spite of the overlaps it's just simply not a good fit for them and I think Scripps has bigger fish to go after than Meredith

Let's think about this: Since the sale of the RSNs by Disney to Sinclair (and even during the approval process of the sale) they've lost contracts with Dish, and several streamming providers (partially with YouTube TV) to carry the RSNs. That coupled with the lack of sports is really exposing and truly showing how much "value" the RSNs are actually worth (and its not much) Sinclair better hope the contact sports can get back to action by June/July

I'll save it for speculation as I don't want to go too far into speculating in things but we'll know a lot more about the impact of the RSNs by the end of the year and clearly states like Oregon want to bankrupt the RSNs by not allowing sporting events to take place with fans in the stands

As @TheRyan mentioned before everybody now is in this situation where they're not a very healthy company so Sinclair isn't the only one unhealthy here (as is everybody else in every industry) But it's these smaller companies like Hubbard are going to take the biggest hits out of the bunch

Don't be surprised that this is the beginning of what's to come for a lot of the smaller companies given the situation were in right now. But to answer your question no but that is not to say it will eventually occur on the TV side as well Honestly I think Hubbard's future in a post-COVID world looks pretty bleak

If this occured under Wheeler that would've definately been in the cards but since he's no longer in charge, yeah that's not going to happen

Exactly but keep in mind there were several media companies that were already unhealthy to begin with including Sinclair, which saw their stocks plunge even before COVID. I'd say give it until the end of the year and we'll know more about COVID's impact of the RSNs as well as Sinclair but I have to imagine they're cheering for the NHL/NBA to finish their seasons and for MLB to start their season to avoid the ultimate collapse of the RSNs and thus, Sinclair.

With the amount of debt load coupled with the fact that companies may not want to deal with Sinclair due to among other things their $13.2 billion debt even though Sinclair is now back in the good graces of the FCC, the best they might be able to do is station swapping to get into new markets

What Sinclair really needs is the contact sports (the ones where staying 6 feet apart is not an option) to come back if they really want to survive otherwise I think they'll be bankrupt by the end of the year. As for what happens to the Sinclair stations? Well.. I'll save that for Speculatron

Honestly I say it's a combination of two given the situation were in right now.