Big Rollo Smokes

As per The Athletic, three Chicago major league teams who presently call NBC Sports Chicago home will be moving on later this year.

(The article is behind a pay wall.)

"Standard Media Group in partnership with the Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox will be the new television broadcast home for all three teams beginning in October, according to an internal document obtained by The Athletic.

"The media group is expected to make the network, which is unnamed, available across 'multiple platforms,' including over-the-air and carriage agreements with cable and streaming providers.

"NBC Sports Chicago is the current broadcast home for the Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox. The teams’ contract with NBC Sports expires in October.

"Standard Media Group, which is based in Nashville, Tenn., is a local broadcast and digital media company. According to its website, the group has television stations in Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska and Rhode Island.

"The new network will not be associated with Stadium, a multi-platform network, which Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf purchased majority control of in 2023."

1 hour ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

WPIX and KTLA never went that route. KPLR just rebranded, and they didn’t go that route. I think it’s a safe bet that they won’t mess with what works.

WPIX was branded as CW11 for the first two years of the CW, before going with the more-appropriate PIX 11 branding.

WPIX, KTLA and WGN by themselves (and even St. Louis 11 for KPLR) are stronger brand names in their respective markets. But then again, look what Fox did to KCPQ once they got their hands on that station...it was goodbye Q13 (Fox), hello Fox 13.

It appears that the reduction-in-force train has hit Allen Media Group, according to Scott Jones at FTV Live. Operations at local stations and the Weather Channel are affected.

Any details?

Reporter Amy Yensi is leaving WPIX, and the TV business as a whole.

7 hours ago, TheNewsTV said:

 

I know, I just wanted to comment. Since it only lasted 30 minutes and was recorded with Dana Tyler. And as it is a news program also produced by WCBS...

Just say "my bad", admit you erred and thank me for the correction. Backtracking is not a good look.

And, you're welcome. 

5 hours ago, TheNewsTV said:

 

WUPA's 8pm news in Detroit which is produced by WCBS also moved to a full hour and live.

WUPA is in Atlanta.

3 hours ago, MD TV said:

Former WNEW and WPIX anchor Bill Jorgensen dead at 96:

 

https://deadline.com/2024/03/bill-jorgensen-dead-tv-anchor-wnew-new-york-was-96-obituary-1235860393/

 

Being with WPIX he was also one of the founding anchors of the Independent Network News.

Bill also worked at WTVN radio and WTVN-TV (WSYX) in Columbus, and KYW-TV (WKYC) and WEWS in Cleveland before going to New York.

On 3/1/2024 at 1:43 AM, badabing said:

This is honestly devastating news to hear.

 

I know linear television is in decline, but this is how you start turning off those viewers who you do have left. 

 

I’ve recently been thinking about how the NYC TV news market has evolved over the last three decades. What I thought was interesting is that WCBS went from being the most unstable operation to the most stable (at least in terms of the anchor desk). Not a single weekday change occurred from when Chris replaced Rob in mornings in 2013 until 2019 when Alex Denis left and John Elliott was moved to weekends. Even then, until John came back to weekdays, the stability was incredible— with the only anchor change being to add Dick at 6 and bring Cindy back to weekdays. (Speaking exclusively about WCBS weekdays— weekends and WLNY went through a lot of evolutions during this period.)

 

The problem with the WCBS operation is not the anchors— the anchors are familiar faces now. It is the massive churn of reporters. Part of the reason why WABC thrives is because their reporters don’t spend a few years at the station on the way to something else. 

 

Dana is the soul of WCBS. The station neglected and diminished her for the last decade, but she has been the constant. Maurice and Kristine are great anchors, I cannot take that away from them. They do not come off as people who really like each other much (Kristine would much rather be back next to Wragge), but they are good anchors. But we don’t need more of them.

 

Dick has been a solid contributor since he joined WCBS. He also deserves a prominent role at the station. 

 

For a while now I’ve wondered why WCBS is wasting talent that they have. I think Cindy is probably the single best anchor they have— she has a way of striking the right tone that Chris and Mary just don’t. Why does she only do 30 minutes on linear daily? Why does she not coanchor the noon newscast — a newscast that was hers for 15 years— with her friend Dana?

 

I also think Natalie Duddridge is under-utilized (she has grown significantly the last few years and is a very good fill in anchor). At the same time, I think Doug Williams is overrated (he lacks the charisma of his father and is awkward with reporters and coanchors). Regardless, he won’t be at WCBS for long, just like his father wasn’t. I also, contrary to many in this forum, find Alice to be bland and boring and I also think Jessica is fine on weekends but could never be a weekday talent. 

 

Let’s also acknowledge the industry might be moving in the direction of less anchors doing more newscasts, but this city isn’t. WCBS is returning to a period of four weekday anchors (plus Cindy at 9, but since she is underutilized, it is essentially four)— reminiscent of 2003 when Cindy/Michael did AM/noon and Dana/Ernie did 4:30-6:30 and 11. Back then, the station produced 5 hours of daily news; currently the station produces 8 + the half hour Atlanta newscast. Meanwhile, PIX just expanded to a fourth evening anchor, WNYW just moved a morning anchor to have a third in the evening, and depending on how you count, WABC has more than seven anchors for 7.5 hours of daily newscasts.

 

 

Dana has been on the weekday anchor desk since 1992? 1993? More than 30 years. She has been on from 6-6:30 at WCBS for more than 25 continuous years— since I believe 1999 (for a few years post-massacre she was moved to 5pm). And this is a horrible and cruel way to work her out the door. “Fill in anchor.” Yeah, we will see her do that a half dozen times before her contract isn’t renewed and she is pushed out of the station. 

 

Just want to put a few stats out there before I close:

Dana is the longest ever anchor at WCBS (nearly 34 years total, 30+ years weekday — Jim Jensen spent 31 years at the station and was a weekday anchor for 29)

Kristine is the longest serving 11pm anchor at WCBS (Kristine is currently at 16+ years; Michele had about 14.)

Kristine and Maurice are the longest ever anchor pair at WCBS (13 years; previously Jensen and Rolland Smith spent 12 years together)

 

But you know, this was always the most likely outcome at this station. Look at the way they treated other station icons like Jim Jensen and Michele Marsh. 

 

I genuinely thought Johnny/Sarah were an improvement over Peter/David. Doesn’t look that way now.

 

It is a cruel business, but it doesn’t have to be like this.

Can you please do the fellow posters/readers a favor and give us full names? Not all of us have total recall.

Big news from the Big Apple: after nearly 34 years as an anchor at WCBS-TV, Dana Tyler is leaving the desk at the end of March. But she will be staying on as a special correspondent, of sorts.

In actuality, both she and co-anchor Dick Brennan are being moved off the 6:00 PM show in favor of the station's lead anchor team of Kristine Johnson and Maurice DuBois, who will now anchor all of WCBS-TV's evening newscasts. What role Brennan will have at CBS New York after the move is not yet known.

1 hour ago, Abraham J. Simpson said:

Would affiliates give up time? No. Not a snowball's chance in h....well, we know where. Not going to happen. Cutting back Y&R, or the Talk, is likewise not reality. They stay or they go, but they're not being trimmed. 

 

The problems with the idea of only a few days a week in some kind of checkerboard include the obvious inconsistency. Daytime is built on the same thing daily, and people are not going to be bothered with "is it Wednesday or is it Thursday that the Bold and the Beautiful is on." Or this embryonic idea of a new show. DVRs and on-demand options help, but delayed viewing is generally supplemental to "live." It doesn't replace it. You're also going to get the ad revenue only for however many number of days you put it on attributable to that show. If you're willing to find a cast that can actually act (OK, it's a soap, so it's more like chew scenery) who wants to get paid the commensurately less money while still being tied down...well, that isn't easy. And you still need to factor in the costs of the studio and sets, costumes, etc. It doesn't matter if you only use the set 2x a week, it's not any cheaper to build. The notion of running something only a couple  of times and not being out of a cost crunch isn't a business reality. In theory you have two shows with less network revenue coming in but still occupying space and dealing with fixed costs. Sometimes convention is convention for valid economic reasons.

 

If this idea ever comes to fruition, and many things reported as "in development" die "in development," it only works to replace an existing show. It doesn't work replacing Let's Make a Deal for both economic and practical reasons. Deal is no Price but it does well enough and it's a unique flex player on the schedule, airing in morning or afternoon. Mornings don't work for soaps (see Guiding Light, Santa Barbara). And getting affiliates who take Deal in the morning to give you their afternoon hour back in exchange for the morning slot is a hell of a hard sell. Heck, their own O&Os wouldn't exactly be thrilled with that...um....deal. Price is Right is going nowhere anytime soon. Y&R got its renewal, though it may well take years if this thing even progresses, so that isn't off the table. B&B has a year left on its deal; maybe it gets renewed, maybe they evaluate where development of this idea has gone before pulling the trigger on another extension. That's your most likely slot. The Talk is by no means The View, and you don't have the Chen/Moonves dynamic, but the show has carved out its own space and delivered decent numbers in an ad-friendly demographic. It would be the second option, should this concept be an hour-long one. 

 

Or it ends up being put on Paramount Plus. Or it gets shuffled off to BET. Or it morphs into a different form. Or like the rest of the developments from this arrangement, it lingers in purgatory and people forget it ever hit the trades for a day. 

 

 

To piggyback on this:

I assume that all of the posters here are men, just as I am. Y'all/We aren't even in the main demographic age-wise or gender-wise for The Young and the Restless or The Talk, and most of you probably don't watch either show. I don't watch either, either. So, to say that Y&R and/or The Talk should be cut in half or altogether canceled outright is short-sighted and silly. Especially as both shows still make money for the network even if viewership levels aren't what they were at each show's peak.

With that said, I will be surprised if this proposed soap makes it beyond the developmental stage, let alone to CBS. And if it does, it's a prime candidate for streaming. (I was going to say BET, but who knows if it'll be owned by Paramount Global a year from now.)

Over at FTVLive, a patrons-exclusive story is teasing that the dreaded "Scrippscast" (aka "news-on-the-cheap") is coming to WEWS in Cleveland.

On 12/31/2023 at 7:44 AM, MD TV said:

Meanwhile, WPCH has agreed to air Hawks games on Friday nights starting January 12th:

 

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/12/30/atlanta-hawks-partner-with-grays-peachtreetv-broadcast-10-games-free-over-air/

 

Of course, that station did air Hawks games years ago as WTBS.

 

The first two games will also air on WANF.

...and when WTBS became the NBA's main cable outlet, Turner sublicensed Hawks games to WGNX, the predecessor of WANF.

17 hours ago, compubit said:

1983 per the copyright…

interesting to see Dave Courvosier at 12 - I’m used to seeing him on Vegas…

IIRC, Dave Courvosier is originally from the Cape Girardeau area. This may have been his first run at his hometown station.

I first saw him at KLAS-TV in LV around 2006 and thought he had the coolest anchor name ever. All thanks to that Busta Rhymes song.

From Cleveland: longtime WEWS anchor Danita Harris is leaving the Scripps' co-flagship. Her last day is scheduled for Dec. 21.

“Scripps and the management at WEWS offered me the option to stay...it was a decision that I made because I felt it was the best for me. I’m grateful that this bittersweet move was understood and respected by news management. They encourage and support my passion to be true to myself.” Those are her words.

But with all the heads dropping around Scripps stations recently, read between the lines.

3 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

And now this from Cord Cutters News: BALLY SPORTS PLANS TO SHUT DOWN IN 2024.

 

Wow, that's so poorly written it makes me question factual accuracy. Once I see two spelling and/or punctuation errors, I'm done.

But with all the speculation and the lack of proofreading aside, it wouldn't surprise me if it actually does happen.

On 10/5/2023 at 10:16 PM, T.L. Hughes said:

...The New Orleans and Oklahoma feeds were both spun from Fox Sports/Bally Sports Southwest when the Thunder and Pelicans began play as NBA expansion teams...

The Oklahoma City Thunder are the relocated Seattle SuperSonics.

The New Orleans Pelicans are technically the relocated (original) Charlotte Hornets, who moved to N.O. in 2002–03 then got displaced by Hurricane Katrina and played their home games in OKC for two seasons, setting the stage for the Sonics' move shortly thereafter. After the Bobcats/Hornets/Pelicans name change, the NBA retroactively turned the Pelicans into an "expansion franchise" by transferring the pre-'01–'02 Hornets records and history to their successor team in Charlotte, the former (expansion) Bobcats.

As for who is anchoring the 7:00a webcast...

At least for now, it's Kemberly Richardson.

On 8/15/2023 at 10:13 AM, Big Rollo Smokes said:

 

Not anymore. The sale to RNN is off. ShopHQ's new white knight is a company owned by the founder of 5-Hour Energy. More from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

 

And this guy is just getting started. It looks like he's looking to be a major-minor player in broadcast media.

UPDATE: It seems as the failed sale of iMedia Brands/ShopHQ to RNN either created bad blood between the two, or triggered a contractual out clause.

Because in a very recent development, ShopHQ is no longer on WRNN in the NYC market. ShopHQ's replacement? The Liquidation Channel, aka ShopLC. One can assume this has been mirrored at RNN's other stations.

No announcement of the switch was made on either side.

On 9/17/2023 at 4:54 AM, SS8609 said:

That would be absurd. Disney is not just going to sell ABC without ESPN. Because a big chunk of ABC’s ratings are tied to ESPN and the sports department runs as one joint unit, it would be impossible to sell to Allen in this sense without causing a mass disruption of the sports media market.

 

The most ideal situation for ABC and ESPN would be Hearst teaming with Berkshire Hathaway (just like the latter funded Capital Cities’ purchase of ABC long ago) to buy the networks and perhaps National Geographic which could be collapsed into the A&E Networks structure. I would however consider Freeform instead of FX though - since FX is still in form a Fox network at heart airing Fox repeats, even if they are no longer a News Corporation Fox entity. All that Hearst can then do is turn its ABC affiliates into O&Os along with WBAL in Baltimore (which Hearst has owned from day one in 1948), and sell most of the rest of its stations to Scripps.

 

...and that would be compensation for essentially handing WMAR-TV the NBC affiliation in Baltimore once again.

But here go the conflicts...Cincinnati, Fort Myers/Naples, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. Also, KSBW-TV in Salinas/Monterey has both ABC ("Central Coast ABC") and NBC (on main channel).

1 hour ago, AmericanErrorist said:

...Worldwide Pants owns the entirety of the CBS late night talk show lineup from 1993 to 2014, leaving for CBS The Pat Sajak Show...

Late Show with David Letterman ended in 2015, as did Worldwide Pants' interest in Late Late Show after Craig Ferguson departed.

22 minutes ago, MD TV said:

Especially since much of NYC is served by Spectrum, so if it wasn't resolved those customers couldn't even watch it on WABC-TV if they wanted to.

WKBW-TV is in Spectrum territory also, and they should be lucky they aren't an ABC O&O.

But this is/was all about making sure the game wasn't blacked out in Market No. 1.

15 minutes ago, Megatron81 said:

Aaron Rodgers locked the door and only unlocked it when a deal was reached LOL .

Legend has it that Pete Rozelle did it a few times when he was NFL commissioner.

Maybe Aaron shared some of his magic mushrooms with the negotiators and they "saw the light".

11 minutes ago, nomadcowatbk said:

wouldn't be surprised if they 700 Club got the most viewers on Freeform, and they probably aren't even the target audience

One has to wonder what the CBN braintrust is contemplating right now in their Virginia Beach bunker. Gordon Robertson will definitely have something to say about this.

The real question is who blinked first, Disney or Charter.

And yes, I absolutely believe Monday Night Football–on ESPN and ABC–and featuring the New York Jets–had everything to do with it.

On 1/6/2023 at 4:45 PM, news2me said:

Just pure curiousity on my part... 

If KCAL9 has higher ratings/profile... why not move the CBS affiliation from Channel 2 to 9? 

If I remember correctly, didn't FOX do something similar in Minneapolis, moving their network from Channel 29 to 9 because KMSP had a higher ratings and better news legacy as an UPN affiliate.

Much different situation.

KMSP-TV was a top-rated VHF independent when it joined Fox as a charter affiliate in '86. But the station (and its then sister KPTV in Portland OR) voluntarily left the network in '88 because Fox's Saturday night schedule drew far fewer viewers than what KMSP programmed independently pre-Fox. Fox was forced to move to a UHF, KITN-TV.

Fast-forward to 2001. Fox purchases KMSP and KPTV's parent Chris-Craft/United. Both are now UPN stations with strong news departments. Fox waited until fall '02 to make the logical move and bring KMSP and KPTV back into the fold. Pre-digital transition, but still working with the New World mentality–better to be on VHF in a major market.

52 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

Also pictured: George Stephanopoulos slowly dying on the inside

This should last about as long as "Dandy", the New York Yankees' attempt at employing a mascot from over 40 years ago.

Remember this? I didn't think so. Not that a team like the Yankees needed a mascot to begin with...

But Good Morning America has done something like this before. I recall when they started using "You Gotta Be", the song by one-hit wonder Des'ree as an unofficial theme. I don't think that lasted very long either.