Recovering Producer

Less than three months until the change, and WSVN/Sunbeam is asking the FCC to return to only broadcasting in ATSC 1.0 and ending its channel sharing agreement with WPLG. Currently, the WSVN spectrum has WSVN and WPLG's ATSC 1.0 channels, while the WPLG spectrum has WSVN and WPLG ATSC 3.0 channels. No similar filings from WPLG/Berkshire Hathaway to request a return to ATSC 1.0 transmission that I could find. Likely just a matter of when that is filed.

When the audience is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, there's no good way to spin them. Put out a press release that says "we won at 6pm with a 5 share!" means you're tacitly admitting at least 80% of people watching TV in that time slot are not watching local news over linear TV. The sales model has shifted away from selling on past show ratings to actual ad impressions which means specific newscast ratings are less relevant to the financial picture for a station and ownership group. In 2012, a manager at a station meeting said "flat is the new up" - I assume by 2025 it's now "not bleeding out viewers is the new flat"

I hope even if they call, he has the good sense to say no. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming back. I hope Leon finds peace, sobriety, and health in his next chapter. As someone who spent 15 years in a newsroom, for every person who has a public/visible fall from grace due to alcohol or other substance abuse, there are just as many, if not more, who battle it silently or are in denial about it and manage to fly under the radar. There's no way to quantify the why - but the combination of odd hours, lack of balance, constant bad news content, and high-pressure work environment all likely play a role. Candidly, it's a big reason why I got out when I did. I saw the life outcomes of unmarried or divorced men over 40 who stay in TV news. The odds are not in your favor.

Sun Broadcasting/WXCW Naples-Fort Myers (and sidecar to Fort Myers Broadcasting/WINK) President Jim Schwartzel is running for the U.S. House. I can't quite figure out how he got this glowing profile on WINK. It truly is a mystery.

The tactic of a TV station group encouraging people to call a MVPD when they can't reach a retransmission agreement has been a major cringe of mine since it became a thing. Trying to get your viewers to cosplay federal lobbyist by posting messages with growth and investment as a euphemism for consolidation on the site formerly known as Twitter is several steps worse than that. If a company wants to advocate for itself, great. Find something authentic to demonstrate how deregulation benefits people who aren't named Perry Sook. A low-energy social media astroturfing campaign where they don't explain what they want is pretty weak. Especially considering the biggest hurdle to stop it from happening with the current balance of power in DC is it gets put on the back burner and forgotten.

Apparently this spot is for this week only - full studio in a week. https://people.com/find-out-where-kelly-ripa-and-mark-consuelos-will-film-live-before-they-premiere-new-set-11708730

Jane Pauley and her agent can do the funniest thing ever... (I kid, I kid)

A lot of stations have installed in weather centers the abiility to interrupt for a cut-in and a mini switcher for meteorologists so they can control what makes air during a cut-in without a director or a crew. Because hub operators are running multiple stations at once, it is a lot easier for a station to call up and say "hey, we're at a risk of severe weather, activate the interrupt switch in the weather center at (call letters) so we can get on air immediately if we get a warning" and they will - so it isn't a game of telephone for the meteorologist to get on air quickly. After the cut-in, the call likely serves a couple purposes. On the technical side, they likely have to reset the switch if there's a chance of another cut-in, or deactivate it if the risk is over so a rogue elbow bump doesn't disrupt programming. Operationally, it is likely standard operating procedure to call so the hub operator can make sure the discrepancy report is accurate for the times of the cut-in and what ads were missed and need to either be made good or have billing adjsuted.

Their brand is far more (I know this is no longer reality) <Scott Chapin voice> 7 News </Scott Chapin voice> than anything else with the word Fox in it. So that’s not a huge deal. At the end of the day, when there’s an impasse with BH/WPLG and ABC, Mickey Mouse decided getting some money from an established Sunbeam WSVN operation on a .2 benefited them more than the cost of them establishing or supporting some other broadcast company scrambling for a solution for ABC to air on a much lesser known UHF OTA PSIP .1 and that station would be short on programming to fill off network hours. The network affiliate is a smaller piece of the viewership pie than it was, so Disney/ABC will take the money they can get from linear TV while it still has some value to them rather than spend to build their own as streaming tries to run out the clock in its fight against broadcast. Sunbeam saw a viable path to a second substantial South Florida revenue stream with minimal effort at least to start on a few months notice in a TV business reality of limited syndicated programming and less of it available every season. It’s an almost turnkey operation for weekdays if you just run ABC programming and 7news/Deco Drive simulcasts. I believe the only current gaps between the start of World News Now and the end of Nightline would be 3 to 4pm and 7 to 7:30pm. Even if they run the cheapest paid programming in those slots, it’s still revenue they weren’t generating before. WPLG’s plan come August is the most fascinating current unknown to the public part of this to watch moving forward.

I’m old enough to remember when NBC tried to sell WTVJ to what was The Washington Post company at the time to form a duopoly with WPLG in 2008, which would have been the first top 20 with two of the big 4 English language networks under common ownership. That felt wild and ominous for the future of the business then. 17 years later the business model is so dramatically different this feels like a “yeah something like this was bound to happen in a market that size eventually” moment. Yet another network switch in a market where change has been pretty constant.

Feels like there aren't a lot of legacy Nexstar stations that have their own choppers to begin with. Most of the ones that do have them came from Tribune or Media General purchases. Of those: KTLA for car chases and fires and KFOR for tornadoes stand out as the two biggest examples of their stations in markets that have helicopter coverage as a viewer expectation and would put a station at a significant competitive disadvantage without one. The other question is, does this include ending their participation in multi-station helicopter shares like Denver?

Chapter 7 liquidation is always a last resort. Nothing is impossible. But that's an disastrous outcome for everyone - even creditors. If there is a bankruptcy filing, Chapter 11 reorganization is the path they will try to negotiate with creditors - even if the end goal of the reorganization is reduced debt and a better balance sheet to make the company more attractive to prospective buyers. Think the final decade of Tribune's existence. Everything they did from bankruptcy until the deal closed with Nexstar (minus the whole Sinclair debacle) was done with the intention of getting the most money out of a merger. The print spinoff unloaded a financial problem, the LocalTV LLC Merger gave them scale. Scripps will just need to move at an accelerated pace because they don't have money to grow, they already spun off print, and the clock is ticking with the imminent ownership deregulation. There are considerable financial benefits to a seller with a sale structured as a merger with one company (and the buyer spins off any properties that regulators won't allow them to keep) rather than parts of the company being sold to multiple businesses.

Last update I heard from a former coworker from my time there was hopefully early Summer 2025. No explanation why. I'd guess the 1-2 punch of Ian in 2022 and Milton in 2024 means construction crews in Southwest Florida are in high demand. (Which gives me flashbacks to the economic meltdown of 2008/2009 when Southwest Florida's heavily home construction based economy driven by 2004/2005 hurricane season rebuilds and massive growth collapsed hard and Lee County turned into Foreclosure Land USA for several years.)

On the people side: There's a lot of coordination between government meteorologists and broadcast meteoroglists during severe weather events. They share information with each other like damage reports, condition observations, etc - so there will be fewer people to help spread that information. Information wise: NWS/NOAA also distributes a large amount of data, forecast models, and other information meteorologists use in making forecasts. If a NWS radar site goes down it will take longer to repair and that means alarger areas with weak or no radar coverage. (Many stations that once had their own radar units in the 90s/2000s "everyone gets their own radar" days have scaled back usage or didn't upgrade them as NWS radar technology improved.) None of this should have been a surprise. It was literally in the book. The failed nomination of Barry Myers, the (now former) CEO of Accuweather, to be the head of NOAA in 2017 made intentions clear.

I did not realize American baby boomers in prominent jobs were capable of stepping away on top and on their own terms. Good for Lester.

Not that the FCC pays attention to these things, but the WZVN Legal ID in this newscast open isn't exactly legal. It needs to say Naples first. Also, quite the unfortunate mispunch rolling the dead fish because of red tide VO when they talk about the new identity. Thank goodness smell-o-vision isn't a thing. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on Hearst's long-term unspoken plan is likely gradual consolidation through natural mid-market turnover attrition. Saturday evenings are the easiest place to test those waters because of low HUT levels.

Narrator voice: Given the reality of local TV revenue in 2025 and beyond, we'll see how long the separate newscasts last.

Most likely at the local level, the labor cost of the work it takes to clip and upload broadcasts to YouTube is greater than getting video up to existing on-demand platforms and YouTube has lower potential revenue for the station. There almost certainly ways for a sales team to generate ad and monetization opportunities for broadcasts on NewsOn/Zeam/station OTT channels, while YouTube wouldn’t generate much, if any, revenue for past newscasts on demand. Additionally, station group operated streaming platforms are likely easier to integrate into engineering and IT workflows so the clipping/upload of broadcasts there is semi, if not fully, automated and almost instant. Network likely has the bodies available to manually clip segments and remove any possible restricted video from a newscast before uploading the 30 minute broadcast, and they would upload far less broadcasts per day compared with local stations almost constant around the clock newscasts

That's one way to sit out a non-compete while still working and not having to move, considering the WBNS/WKYC common ownership.

I am struggling to track down where this is written into law or code, but I believe there is some language (or, more accurately, lack of language and failure to anticipate these circumstances) in retransmission law that allows any owner, in this case, Mission to assign a station's retransmission negotiations and rights to a third party, provided that third party does not own a TV station in the same market. That's why WPIX is covered under Nexstar's retransmission agreements with MVPDs.

At some point, the game of chicken between networks and station ownership groups will end in a non-amicable way, leading to a major shift in how a network distributes programming in some areas. Do I believe it is imminent? I have no idea. The incoming FCC chair's comments about station group and network affiliation negotiations might make a network hesitant to rip off that band-aid right now. That said, NBC has shown in the past that it will cut off an affiliate it is frustrated with (WHDH) and terminate relationships with stations that threaten even a tiny bit of exclusivity for its O&Os (WHAG, WMGM). They have the infrastructure in Peacock for streaming and Comcast ownership to potentially fill some coverage gaps for linear distribution. NBC's broadcast operations are just one piece of Comcast's revenue pie chart. ABC has a streaming infrastructure and ownership with diverse assets. CBS is in a world of uncertainty. FOX is small but also has a history of trying new things. Stay tuned... or... I guess streaming now?

The fact this video just vanished is... something. I have no idea what that something is. But most likely, Nexstar legal didn't want that dirty laundry to be aired publicly.

I don't have any insight or information, but having a new job and an ongoing relationship with the station makes me think this was a planned exit by him. A quiet and short notice without the pomp and circumstance is the ideal departure for many people. News anchors come and go, and maybe he didn't want to make himself the news or at least minimize the time when he is the center of attention. The tribute and retrospective PKGs are awkward and have no viewer benefit. Newsroom cakes and speeches are just painfully awkward.

Let's not start this game again. No ownership group planning to cash out of broadcasting, especially once the new administration, Congress, and FCC loosens or eliminates ownership caps on broadcast stations, will sell assets piecemeal. A company looking to sell wants one transaction, the biggest possible payday, and the financial/tax benefits of doing it all at once. Like every major merger we've seen in the past few years: Nexstar/Tribune, Gray/Raycom, etc... the surviving entity will divest any assets they can't legally keep to third parties.

That monitor on the noon is a few pixels away from being forced to air a Sinclair must-run with Boris Epshteyn.