MD TV

KGO starts at 5am. Plus WFXT moved from 4-10 to 5-11 during the pandemic (they've since restored 4:30).

Michelle Rotella (who usually splits the PM slots) is on maternity leave. In fact, she just gave birth: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/michelle-rotella-welcomes-baby-girl-alexia-celeste/3568713/

Sam Zell, onetime owner of the Tribune Company, dead at 81: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/sam-zell-billionaire-investor-called-grave-dancer-dies-at-81

An NFL Wild Card game next season will be exclusively on Peacock (outside of the markets of the teams in the game):

This seems embarrassing:

Well LIV was cut off in progress across seemingly every CW affiliate:

And here's their sendoff: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/honoring-brian-thompson-a-sendoff-for-news-4s-intrepid-and-beloved-nj-reporter/4307872/

I really doubt WATL wants to give up 90 minutes of programming with 100% local ad revenue. It's not like KRON, where they probably have no choice due to ownership.

Or Baltimore where Sinclair runs all the non-big 3 stations. Cable-wise they could pipe in WDCW, but that's an even tighter situation otherwise.

Scripps signed a deal for the Vegas Golden Knights to have every locally televised game on broadcast tv: Games will air in Vegas on KMCC, which is currently an Ion station. As a result, Ion will get a new home in Vegas, as KMCC will be rebranded.

Nexstar has an agreement with Hulu to continue carrying all of their big 4 stations and NewsNation, plus the addition of their MyNetwork TV and independent stations: https://www.nexstar.tv/nexstar-reaches-multi-year-agreement-with-hulu/ It doesn't say anything about their CW stations, though.

Jessica Faith just started this past Friday on WRC-TV after working for WPXI:

In Tucson, it'll be on a newly-created subchannel of KOLD: https://www.kold.com/2023/04/28/new-network-bring-suns-mercury-games-southern-arizona-viewers/

KTVK and KPHE are the new flagships for the Suns and Mercury, with affiliates in Tuscon and Yuma to come: https://www.azfamily.com/2023/04/28/arizonas-family-announces-transformative-broadcast-partnership-with-phoenix-suns-phoenix-mercury/

Apparently the wave of layoffs this week won't involve on-air talent.

Ion will air a weekly Friday night WNBA game starting this upcoming season: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/wnba-scripps-ion-friday-night-basketball-1235589597/

The 24th it is: https://deadline.com/2023/04/newsnation-expanding-24-hour-weekday-schedule-newsnation-now-block-1235329514/ The 1-5PM block will be known as NewsNation Now.

After one year in DC, WTTG's Claire Anderson is going back to Seattle: Also, WTTG added Shomari Stone :

Reporter Brian Thompson is retiring May 5th: https://www.adweek.com/tvspy/longtime-wnbc-reporter-brian-thompson-to-retire-in-may/247960/#

Sinclair signed a deal with Youtube TV to add the Tennis Channel, T2 (a free Tennis Channel spinoff channel), Charge! and TBD starting June 1st (during week 1 of the French Open). The deal also extends carriage of their CBS and MyNetwork TV stations: https://sbgi.net/sinclair-broadcast-group-announces-distribution-agreement-with-youtube-tv-to-add-carriage-of-tennis-channel-t2-charge-and-tbd/

New hire coming:

Look, you'll never get positive opinions for those kinds of changes on social media. If they can survive forecasts without the Jim O'Brien cloud, they can survive this.

Here's Pat Lawson Muse's goodbye from WRC-TV: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/the-news4-team-salutes-pat-lawson-muse-as-she-retires/3312704/ Also, one more wrinkle about mornings there: Tony Perkins has an afternoon radio gig, so I don't blame him for wanting an extra hour of sleep.

Isn't Amber Lee due back soon from maternity leave?

Today was Eun's last day doing mornings: And this is Pat's last week.