EVVTV12

Matt Laubhan (or as he better knows as Spann Jr), left WTVA on Monday. He has started his own weather business called Mississippi Weather Live. The storm chasing team that was partnered with WTVA is following Matt.

The 18.1 signal will be used mainly for cable and probably satellite services.

As long as the journalists don’t have a non-compete or can be let out it, I’m sure one of the stations will soon.

Paxton owns a number of newspapers in the Evansville area: Princeton, Vincennes, Dubois County, Warrick County, Perry County, Spencer County just in Indiana alone; Owensboro, Madisonville, McLean County in KY, and a newspaper cluster in the Illinois Tri-State counties. Hard to tell what would happen there.

WTWO announced today it has hired former WTHI anchor Patrece Dayton as a part time reporter. Dayton was part of the massive layoffs at WTHI/Allen Media earlier in the year.

This also comes right after the state of Indiana made cuts in the budget that go after Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations. Depending on which IPBS member stations in the state, it will be anywhere from 4-17% of budgets over the next two years.

As part of adding more news than hours in a week, WPLG is hiring a reporter for the state capital. Surprised they didn’t do this years ago.

I wonder if Disney wanted to buy WPLG, but someone in Omaha said no or wanted more money.

WRSP (Fox, Springfield), WCCU (Fox, Urbana), and WBUI (CW, Decatur) are all owned by GOCOM Media with an JSA/SSA by Sinclair. Unless that gets tossed out, not much will happen.

Nightly is the flagship newscast for NBC News overall, where Top Story is the flagship for NBC News Now. More than likely, he will step away from Top Story once they find a replacement for him there. Other wise, nights when they may to redo Nightly live for the Mountain Time Zone, it will be a mess.

Tom Brokaw was 64 when he left Nightly News in 2004. (I thought he was old then.) John Chancellor was 55. Lester wanting to step away now is just really part of the trend in tv news. Both Brokaw and Chancellor still did stuff for NBC after leaving the Nightly chair and Lester is also. As Walter Cronkite said, “Old anchormen, you see, don’t fade away; they just keep coming back for more.”

Turned on KAKE right when Jay Prater started talking about Reagan National and did a good job explaining the airport layout since he is a pilot himself. KSN is streaming DC News Now on their website, but not anything local cause Nexstar rules.

Well, it is FTVLive… CBS could do 100% what Uncle Walter did during his time and still complain.

Guess I’ll add also. Watching it, it felt more like something from the BBC. The fact they didn’t have a “breaking news” cyron up speaks volume to what they want with this newscast. I think the tease being gone is just something they are testing and we will probably see it back, but will be short to just two or three stories. We will probably see changes happen in the next few months before something more permanent happens. Let’s hope CBS doesn’t mess up anything else.

I’m still a little upset CBS hasn’t decided to do an hour of news in PrimeTime. The US is the only major country from my knowledge that doesn’t have a network newscast during that time period. Canada has Global at 6:30(?), CBC at 10, and CTV at 11. UK Channel 4 at 7, AUS The ABC at 7:30. To be honest, I’m surprised no one tired this during COVID lockdowns.