Recovering Producer

Both can be true. His numbers can be a fraction of what he saw at CNN. And they also can be higher than when he started at NewsNation. I have no reason to question the 25% increase in viewers since he started, but a big percentage increase with the disappointing numbers NewsNation has still is not a lot of viewers. Same goes network wide with their marketing as the fastest growing cable news network. The reality is, NewsNation has the platform of being distributed on nearly every MVPD and has 200+ local outlets promoting it relentlessly on broadcast and digital. But, they're still struggling to find an audience. There are two pieces of data I'd love to see, but know I never will: what they are charging for spots, and which local markets they perform best in.

I can only assume the contract with whichever companies are designing/building the set was signed before the sale and likely merger with WAVE was announced.

Total rant here: the cognitive dissonance of TV news consultants telling anchors, reporters, producers, and writers (correctly) to write conversationally like you’re talking with a friend… But also, here’s the shining example of how you should write, which is an ABC World News Tonight cold open filled with dropped linking verbs, excessive false present tense, reversed sentences that sound like Yoda in Star Wars, and clunky urgency phrases like, “as we come on the air tonight” really is infuriating. And that Local 10 World News cold open does all of those things. It’s like they asked ChatGPT to replicate WNT.

Rumor is that was they tried to do 20 years ago when Emmis was getting out of TV. No idea how close they got, but what is now WXCW was likely their plan B.

Loud whispers: All of this requires more money, planning, and thinking than making existing underpaid and overworked producers, anchors, meteorologists, and directors add additional newscasts that sound nearly identical to the previous hour to their existing responsibilities. This would take investment at a level very few station ownership groups are willing to do in 2025 and beyond. Great idea in a vacuum. I'll believe it when someone tries, appears to succeed, and the new programming lasts multiple budget cycles.

Whole heartedly agree with this. They would not do this deal if they knew they would get it all. It absolutely sucks for a lot of talented, smart, hard working people who are just salaries and benefit expenses on a spreadsheet for Nexstar. But, the election results in November made it just a matter of time before it happened. Sinclair thought they could do this with their attempted purchase of Tribune, frankly, it is still surprising they didn't pull it off, a lot of the credit for that goes to Deadspin and John Oliver. But the guardrails that prevented that deal from closing are gone. A TV group takeover is, on average, the 342nd most chaotic thing happening on any given day where the federal government has a role in the outcome right now. I've said it before, I'll say it again... IF there are spinoffs, it's all sidecars, or license only to spectrum speculators and godcasters. If you want a laugh, there is someone on the broadcasting subreddit who posts rambling, delusional, incoherent, baseless speculation on divestures and other future mergers and clearly has no understanding of the business. Things that make the speculatron on its worst day appear measured and calm. Like, groups voluntarily splitting up existing duopolies, groups like Disney/ABC that haven't bought stations in 30+ years going on mass buying sprees. The level of confidence in those posts are amusing. Not even worth fighting with common sense.

And a partridge in a pear tree… and Gulfshore Life Magazine, The Naples Press, and a few smaller one-off publications. Not to mention they are spending an obscene amount of money on an updated facility that was supposed to be done a year ago after their existing building got flooded by Hurricane Ian in 2022. ($18.5 mil alone for the building + renovation and equipment) Without revealing too much about myself, I worked on the TV side as a first job a very long time ago. It was a great place to start, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. Going from a one off operation to a big group was a culture shock. Whenever one or both companies decide to sell, that’ll be a complicated transaction. But buying more radio properties makes me think they’re nowhere close to cashing out. (And if I was a betting man, won’t accept an offer that values WINK-TV for any less than the adjusted for inflation price of what WBBH sold to Hearst for.)

Tribune sold 100 E. Speer to get cash before selling and signed a long-term leaseback, Tegna still owns 500 E. Speer, which can easily be sold to pay off debt and cram everyone into the KDVR/KWGN building. There is no reasonable way to think they keep three brands of news, who knows exactly how that shakes out, but there are two studios/control rooms at KDVR/KWGN. If they need space for more people, the solution is to move the Denver Master Control Hub to another city and repurpose that space. Doing that solves two problems for Nexstar: the union that Nexstar doesn't want to deal with and the stupid decision they made to put a master control hub in a VHCOL city with Nexstar salaries. Parking is the only potential headache.

I have nothing of substance to say that hasn't already been said... but the fact the CEO of the largest operator of TV stations in the United States is wearing an AirPod (from one of the big tech companies he's bemoaning) and not a real IFB for a network TV talkback...

This week on Tegna acquisition Love Island… A hot new bombshell enters the villa… WSJ: Sinclair proposes merger with Tegna

Listings for some newscasts on their website starting tomorrow show a microscopic version of the new logo. The Sunshine Skyway cables being the focal point of the logo is a nice local touch. The ABC sticking out is weird.

1000% contract expirations. For Nexstar more control and assurances all CW programming gets aired as they expand beyond 8-10pm and deeper into sports. But even more importantly, it is likely the retransmission revenue they get from MVPDs from a CW feed is greater than the reverse compensation revenue paid by a non-owned affiliate. (Friendly reminder: if you look at financial reports Nexstar brings in more revenue from distribution/retransmission than ad sales!) And, honestly, if I was a non-Nexstar station operator in a market where Nexstar has an operation - I would have serious reservations about paying for the privilege of airing programming from a network that is owned by a direct competitor. Even if replacement programming options are limited.

This. There are no "good' (or heck, mediocre) companies that will get the scraps *if* there are parts of the merger that won't be allowed by the DOJ and FCC. Some strategic swaps that are mutually beneficial for big companies to minimize single station operations? Perhaps. But any spinoffs are going to be strictly to sidecars, spectrum speculators, and maybe some godcasters.

Babe, wake up, a new Nexstar hoping to buying Tegna report just dropped. https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/nextar-tegna-deal-talks-0e1d7524

September 30 is just under eight weeks away. That is an aggressive timeline to go from news director announcement to live product, even if they launch a light schedule with the CBS equivalent of a Scrippscast. While I am sure there has been a lot of behind the scenes work from an operational and engineering perspective, I'll believe newscasts in September when I see them.

Surreal to see the WBBH goes HD in 2007 or 2008 graphics are still in use somewhere in 2025. Perfectly fine graphics for the time, but they aren't hold on to for 15+ years great graphics either.

Corporate contingency plan. Likely a playbook written years ago, and refined with lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey flooding KHOU. Have a few strategic locations with fully functional second control rooms, studios, and a large enough of an operation where they have staff levels to support a sudden, unexpected addition without harming the host station’s product too much. Plus, MSP and ATL are both Delta hubs - so there are frequent flights between both cities to get talent there.

Nexstar's Hagerstown MD station cosplaying as a DC station, WDVM, switched at least part of their morning newscast to "Sunrise on the Hill" - with anchors Cory Smith and Hillary Howard. They're now airing The Hill's "Rising" at 9am as well.

Exactly this. The days of needing a 50k sqft purpose-built television facility are over. Do you have a space with high enough ceilings? You have a studio space. A massive high-ceiling, TV friendly newsroom where everyone has a cubicle and a row of edit bays for photogs are leftovers from tape to tape editing and limited live trucks. Should there be workspaces for field crews? Sure. But if your model is community reporters, the last place you want reporters is lingering in the newsroom. (Honestly, most newsroom shots are bleak these days because an empty newsroom is basically a well-lit Dunder Mifflin Paper Company) Do you need all the space for racks of servers that were necessary 15-20 years ago? Nope. The cloud and hubs shrink the technical operation space substantially.

As someone who was hired at KDVR/KWGN when they were trying to undo many of the choices made in the early post merger/deuce era - there were moments I heard stories about the previous leadership and decisions made where all I could think was "were they actively trying to fail? or did the altitude and/or the not recreationally legal at the time substance Colorado is known for just mess with their judgement?"

The thing is, CBS doesn't need to run WUPA well as a CBS O&O for it to be a financial success to stockholders, which is all that matters. It just needs a better balance sheet than WUPA as an independent. This paragraph is speculation, but the retransmission deal CBS has with pay TV providers likely is structured that so CBS gets more per subscriber for a station running CBS programming than an independent station. Plus, they get to keep all of it as opposed to negotiating a reverse compensation affiliation deal with WANF where Gray was paying CBS some percentage of the retransmission fees Gray collected. Syndicated programming costs will go down in the long-run since CBS network programming covers 11 hours per weekday in the time between CBS Mornings and Colbert. (Plus however many hours of CBS News roundup and CBS News Mornings they air overnight) There will be CBS programming where they can charge more for ads than they could with existing syndicated programming. They don't need to go big or expensive building a news department. That cost can be managed along with the expectations for it, and there is far more space to sell in a local newscast than in syndicated programming. Even if they attract lower quality advertisers, that revenue, ideally, gets made up in added availability to sell.

The other headline in this is CBS/Gray renewed their deal with every other CBS affiliate in the Gray group. So, no other shoes to drop with CBS/Gray, at least for now.

I'm just looking forward to the new CBS Atlanta rebranding itself every few years like the old one did. Hopefully, they'll skip the awkward "Clear News" phase 46 went through starting in 2000.

Before the piecemeal sale to operators who aren't buying speculation posts start, repeat after me: Byron Allen is going to want to sell to a single operator, structure it as a merger, and the buyer will divest assets they can't retain to minimize his tax costs and maximize the money made on the sale.

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.