dman748

34 minutes ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

Also I believe WILX and WLNS are very close in ratings so there isn't a dominant force there?

That's also a very good point.

2 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

110? That's around the same ballpark as the Springfield, MA market, where I live. That market's never really been big enough to support three separate news producers. WSHM tried, but in the end, it wound up being rolled into WGGB after the latter was bought out by Meredith, so I'm skeptical whether Scripps can really get any traction in Lansing among the established competitors.

Difference here is that Springfield, MA by the time Western Mass News was established WWLP had long established itself as THE dominant station in that area.

In the case of Lansing, as GoldenShine said WLNS and WILX (the latter currently does news for WSYM) are pretty much neck and neck with one another in the ratings, that combined with an ABC station with only news being simulcasts of WLNS, yeah for a market that size (and a state capital might I add) I think Lansing does actually have the room for a 3rd full scale news department that Springfield, MA simply doesn't have room for.

13 hours ago, TSSZNews said:

How is Lansing, the 110th DMA, capable of supporting a new news operation from Scripps, but we continue to wait for WSFL in Miami to get their act together for now almost a year?

I think Scripps realized the competition in the 110th largest market (Lansing) isn't as fierce as the 16th largest market in the country (Miami).

Not only that but also the Spanish language stations doesn't even come close to being dominant in Lansing that they are in Miami.

I think Scripps realized the competition right now in Miami is too much vs what Lansing is right now.

Add Verizon FIOS to the list of cable providers all over the country that are dropping the RSNs, they dropped AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh a few days ago

https://triblive.com/sports/tv-talk-verizons-fios-tv-drops-att-sportsnet-pittsburgh/

39 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:

RBR+TVBR suggests it will launch by early 2021. As for timeslots, I'm guessing the existing 5:30 and 10:00 newscasts will stay, which leaves open if they'll add a morning show or expand their early evening news by 30 to 90 minutes.

...or both.

WSYM to launch a full scale news department per TVNewsCheck

No word yet on when they're going to start full scale in house newscasts or which timeslots will it be occupied by local news.

On 10/6/2020 at 11:52 AM, JohnnyNews said:

And it's the 6th and I see this still (MEDIA GENERAL GRAPHICS)

It makes me wonder what the issue is at WKRN with installing the graphics and getting it switched over and I'm sure @KentBrockman can explain this since he works at 'KRN.

From the 506 Forum Files Nathalie Pozo is leaving WHDH for WCVB https://www.wcvb.com/article/nathalie-pozo-joins-wcvb-channel-5-as-weekend-evening-anchor-and-reporter/34249232

16 hours ago, mightynine said:

Sinclair must be asking the world for those RSNs.

Problem is Sinclair ain't going to get anywhere near what they paid to acquire the RSNs in the first place.

Plus Ripley probably would rather let the RSNs bankrupt Sinclair by doing nothing and playing hardball with MVPDs a very common thing for Sinclair to do so as seen on numerous occaisions throughout this thread than fixing the business by upgrading the programming quality.

Sinclair has failed to understand its not just rebranding of a certain property (such as the RSNs) what matters is content and as the late Summer Redstone would say, content is king. COVID proved that the RSNs in general aren't worth a single nickel to pay for them.

20 minutes ago, A3N said:

It is easier said than done. The teams don't want the hassle of negotiating directly with video providers, hence why the RSN/Parent company handles that .

At least had the Royals invested in say a 20 to 30 percent stake in Fox Sports Kansas City things would've been okay at least on the Royals side (at least Sinclair would've still owned a pretty significant chunk in FSKC too)

Teams such as the Dodgers has proven that being their own middle man doesn't help get deals done, all we have to do is look at how long it took SNLA to finally be on AT&T.

5 minutes ago, ScottJ said:

How was it a "big mistake" for the Royals to re-sign with FSKC? The team still gets paid its rights fees, even when providers drop the network. It's Sinclair and the rest of the ownership group taking all the risk regarding carriage.

 

As for the Royals having their own RSN, been there done that. It lasted four years before going dark and signing with FSKC.

True but had the Royals been thinking this through and foresaw the fact that YouTube TV and other local cable companies (not all of them) would drop FSKC that would've signaled the Royals to sign elsewhere if they wanted to get as close to full coverage as they can especially with MLB being so relunctant to ending local in-market blackouts for their own services such as MLB TV.

4 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

It's time for them to eliminate the middleman and just let themselves or their league sell us the games.  Some have partially done that through ownership stakes in their channels like SportsTime Ohio, YES, and Marquee.

I have to wonder what teams such as the Kansas City Royals was thinking when they reupped their contract with Fox Sports Kansas City?

I have serious doubts the Royals were even aware of what I think was a mistake reupping with FSKC.

Granted being a small market team it would be difficult for the Royals to start an RSN (at least by themselves) but they could've at least talked to Spectrum about launching an RSN of its own  (with the Royals having some control over its network) or have a significant stake in Fox Sports Kansas City when they signed the deal with Sinclair.

But from all indications they did nothing other than signing the deal to stay on FSKC for the foreseeable future and it's proving to be a big mistake for the Royals.

8 minutes ago, TheRyan said:

People may hate me for saying this, but I'm now at the point of saying Sinclair should just shut down the RSNs (or perhaps consolidate to a few stronger ones) and move on.    Obviously the fallout during COVID is not Sinclair's fault in the least, and unfortunately the lack of abundant sports programming right now is not helping matters.   They should leverage their station portfolio by expanding their original content for the stations.

 

The sad part is that now your only options in order to get the RSNs now are either Hulu Live, DirecTV and the local cable companies. That's it.

I'm afraid some of my early predictions of Sinclair collapsing may be becoming true all because of a disastorus acquisition.

As we've seen with Tribune with all of the bad buys in the 2000s and 2010s, Meredith with Time, Inc and now Sinclair with the RSNs all it takes is one bad buy and it'll set down a path that will eventually lead towards a sale (I'll save it for Speculatron though) and we're seeing that happening with Sinclair.

Whether you like Sinclair's politics or not its not the must runs or their political leanings that has doomed Sinclair (it may be part of it but not the whole reason for this) its the bad acquisition of the RSNs at a time where many people such as myself are cutting the cord is what's doomed Sinclair (on top of that Dish dropped them while Sinclair was in the process of closing its acquisitions of the RSNs).

Sinclair needs to figure out quick to reinvent the RSNs or else they may be in serious trouble.

As I told @JCB4TV in the Private Messages with him, what Sinclair needs to focus on is either improving the quality of the programming by adding better shoulder programming than those eons and eons of shows no one cares about before they even think about rebranding the RSNs.

I think that if Sinclair can do that they might be able to get back on Dish Network and other MVPDs but I think Sinclair is too busy focusing on rebranding and playing low ball with the MVPDs over content to even fix the programming inventory.

Fix it first and the rest will take care of itself. What Sinclair is doing is only going to kill off the RSN industry at an even faster rate than what it's doing now.

1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

As much as the industry would hate it...it may be time to go to a gametime-only model with these networks (or to just have league packages). The long pause between March and July showed that without any live programming, the FSN networks are a dearth of programming stuck with outdoors shows, senior tennis tours to justify the Tennis Channel purchases, and 43 golf tour shows.

I agree completely, the pandemic proved there is very little value in the RSN biz and it may just simply be time for the RSNs to transition to digital streaming only focused on only the games and maybe some team-centric shoulder programming but that'd be it.

I honestly believe that Sling was correct well before the pandemic even hit that the RSNs clearly provide no value in them whatsoever.

I did notice that Sling did include in the sports pack NBA team centric channels so I wouldn't be surprised if many streamming platforms simply offer team-centric channels during their respective sports seasons as a way to replace the RSNs on their systems.

13 minutes ago, AaronQ said:

So on October 1st, YouTube TV will drop the FOX RSNs. 

It's only a matter of time before Hulu drops the Fox RSNs too.

And who knows how many more who will drop them too.

18 minutes ago, MidwestTV said:

Radar instillation in more than 900 countries worldwide eh? Impressive. One for each nation and then some. Misspeak aside, I can't imagine this was a cheap endeavor. I'm most surprised they got the OK for not one, but three personal radars.

It helps when you have an owner that's committed to saving lives such as Byron Allen. If he wasn't committed to that there is no way he would've even thought about purchasing TWC or the stations he has purchased.

It wouldn't surprise me if this goes groupwide within Allen beyond WAAY.

45 minutes ago, Nelson R. said:

Right after the Braves-Mets game ended I saw a promo on WJZY for their 10:00 news, about a “Moving Mayhem” feature they are doing on Monday and it said it was “Charlotte’s most watched 10:00 news.” Whaaaaaaaat? So it has passed WCCB AND WAXN at 10? 

Someone will have to check the ratings in Charlotte but from the sounds of things, apparently they have.

14 hours ago, Kenneth Kissel said:

The "bandicam" over the video is a huge giveaway that it is screen capture software. I use a TV Tuner and a ELGATO HD 60S. It is much better quality then screen capture. 

Maybe Dado simply doesn't have the budget to find something to record better than bandicam, who knows. It's none of our business to ask about Dado's financial situation anyway.

6 hours ago, MikePulse said:

No fanfare. Tom Randles is gone from WSMV. I think there’s something in the water at Meredith corporate. (Edited to link to Randles’ profile)

5 hours ago, Samantha said:

This smells of a round of cuts:

 

 

5 hours ago, newsman123 said:

Wow. Tom Randles. This follows Dennis House. They appear to be dropping all their highly paid main anchors within the company. 
 

This should not come as a surprise because its clear to us who's going to be on the block next (when the time is right).

There is no way Meredith would be selling if they weren't making all of these cuts.

4 hours ago, MidwestTV said:

 

What a horrendously distracting severe weather set up.

While it is very much agreeable that this is a very distracting set up however this is something that I would've expected for a market like Hartford that deals with primarily Nor'Easters and not so much Severe Weather. If this was in a Severe Weather aggressive market that would be very much understandable.

And the day they debut the Tegna graphics, they're covering Tornado Warnings 

15 hours ago, CircleSeven said:

Oh.... Vaughan could very well be next.......

 

But on the paperwork tonight, it's the Shield (WXXA & WLAJ) that's going to MIssion.

 

The fact that Mission is buying up all of these shell companies are leading me to believe that one of the things that @Myron Falwell had discussed on Discord in the past and is leading me to wonder this.

Is Nexstar preparing Mission to be its own full blown company (with no ties to Nexstar)? Are they turning Mission into a company where Mission enters markets Nexstar can't get in because of either overlap issues that would exist or because of the cap (as it was the case with the WPIX acquistiion)? Or is it something else?

I think there has to be a plan that Nexstar has drawn up not only for the future of the company itself but also for Mission as well because if they don't there's no way Mission is buying up the other Nexstar shells right now.

On 8/11/2020 at 11:39 PM, CircleSeven said:

A small M&A. But a key one at that.

 

Aperio Communications is selling its Fresno's MyNetworkTV station KAIL 7 to Christian broadcaster, TCT (Radiant Life Ministries) for $2.2M.

 

Not only it airs the MyNet programming, but the station airs KFSN's hourly 8pm newscast every weeknight, and a repeat of Action News Midday at 1pm.

 

The question would be if TCT decides to dump MyNet, which station would take the affiliation along with the syndie shows with it? KAIL also carry many diginets (H&I, Light TV, This & Ion).

 

I asked this because while TCT would normally replace the secular shows for their own once transaction ends, it recently bought a station in the Mississippi Delta (WFXW) they have kept the Ion stream on a subchannel.

 

 

I see either Nexstar or Sinclair taking the MNT affiliation in Fresno. Additionally whoever does will likely assume the production responsibilities of the 8pm newscast from KFSN.

EDIT: Somehow we missed this one. Sonya Heitshusen is leaving WHO 13 after 17 years in Des Moines (h/t @ColtFromGulfcoast) 

https://who13.com/news/sonya-heitshusen-says-farewell-after-17-years-at-who-13/

On 8/9/2020 at 6:35 PM, JCB4TV said:

I know that KFDX, KAMR, KTAL, KNWA, KSNF, KARK, and KSNW are just some here in the southern plains that I know use the Nexstar NBC package. This is why I see KFOR eventually getting the NBC package whenever Nexstar gets around to imposing their look in OKC.

Actually I don't see the Nexstar NBC package coming to KFOR.

I imagine that either KFOR is going to get the variant of the KOIN pkg that WKRN will be getting October 1 or, they may wait until the localized version of the Graphics that will be used on NewsNation starts to get rolled out to to the stations (and that'll be awhile before that happens)

26 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

If what was said above comes to be true, it would almost be like replacing the prior MG look with the KOIN graphics.  Besides WCBD and WSAV, who else in Nexstar (legacy stations) uses the NBC package?

 

By default, WCMH has the best graphics in the market, ever since 10TV came down with the Tegna-itis and all of the Sinclair stuff over at 6/28 we've come to put up with. 

And Nexstar has really upped the production values on WCMH since taking over from Media General.  It may not seem like much, but just by getting Arnold's Guardian and adding the Working 4 You slogan, it's really pepped up the product that's suffered under the neglect by Media General as WSYX and Sinclair have sailed ahead of them.

True but considering the fact that WFLA and WKRN are switching to this package I think it would only be fair to see WCMH get this as well (I think most likely they'd get the WFLA version and not the version WKRN is launching)