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hour long version of NewsNation...That's what I said! I said it before and I'll say it again. How about an hour-long version of NewsNation? Or, even a half-hour version? Air that version on Nexstar-owned FOX, CW and MNTV affiliates that DON'T HAVE a national nightly newscast. It would be like the days of the Independent Network News. Produced by WPIX New York, and distributed to independent stations without a national newscast, even indies owned by Tribune back then.

A nice update, but I would prefer the 3 sided rectangle triangle mic flag for the logo to perfectly fit well instead of a condensed FOX5 into a cubed square.

Keep in mind that Dothan is market 170-something, so that alone plays a part on how much they can spend on an upgrade. I'm amazed at how far WDHN has come over the past several years, to the point it's finally added morning news and taking over the news for WDFX.

I personally love these graphics for WTVY. Very immersive and also modern.

I don’t know how anyone can look at this and think this is what a modern media operation in 2021 should look like.

Hopefully the hold up is that there is pushback on these below-par graphics.

The ones to watch are in San Antonio and Mobile/Pensacola. San Antonio is easier since it's all in one place, despite the recent addition of WXLV's newscasts. Mobile and Pensacola each got a taste of it last year thanks to COVID shutting down each station. WPMI did WEAR's newscasts for a few days when they had an exposure and the opposite happened when WPMI had a case...WEAR produced the news for both stations and WPMI personnel filled in where they could have in the field. It's probably safe to say that the days of a market Mobile/Pensacola's size having four distinct news operations (2 of which Sinclair runs) is numbered.

The Pax TV—i—ION metamorphosis is very interesting to look at in retrospect. You could argue that Pax TV was a diginet 25 years ahead of its time with a lineup heavy on reruns (albeit with a few new productions) and in which the affiliates all but carried the core schedule with no deviations whatsoever. Problem was, Pax TV was a money loser from the get-go, so much so that they turned to NBC for a capital investment that wound up with NBC suing Paxson a few years later for a redemption of their investment (and vice versa) with an NBCU board member succeeding Bud Paxson as chairman. Indeed, i had a programming deal with WBTV for a number of sitcom reruns but it clearly didn’t last long at all, as the lineup became nearly subsumed by infomercials near the end of the 2000s. Rebadging as ION and focusing on procedural reruns has given them an identity they never had prior, and it now adds a piece to the overall pie of genre channels that Scripps/Katz aims to offer.

It may take a year or two but I gotta believe that the ION stations—both Scripps-owned and Inyo-owned—will ultimately follow the same subchannel mux, with any co-owned stations that use the parent station’s spectrum filling in any gaps. For example, WDLI 17.1 as CourtTV transmits over WVPX’s spectrum, which has a 23.3 subchannel missing (but RF wise is over a 22.9 subchannel). But definitely, Doozy and Defy look to be in-house replacements for HSN and QVC. And for those ION outlets with only one of those shopping channels currently, they can carve out 480p subchannel space to accommodate.

Sinclair is a bit different. They built themselves on Fox and netlets, not the other way around.

Some of the Scripps-owned ION stations did dump QVC in early January, including WPXN and KPXN. So it’s starting to look like the bulk of the HSN and QVC contracts run out at or near July 1.

I see your "FITZ! SANCHEZ!", and raise you a "FITZ! SANCHEZ! DANIELS! LOVETT!":

They probably would have kept Ion Shop if it made them money too. You know somewhere in Scripps, there's someone who currently has a lot of regrets they didn't keep Shop at Home or the O&O stations that used to make up that network (along with viewers, since most went to the RNN infomercial/one talk show network or TCT).

It's about money. If they looked at the books when they were making the Ion purchase and saw that Qubo and Ion Plus were losing money and HSN/QVC were in the black, then guess what they keep.

Yeah that was nice to see her on the program again. Yeah Shirleen is going to be huge. I honestly don't see her staying at WABC I can see her going bigger than that too. She's such a class act at what she does, kinda like how Sade is.

Another program that got a new look this week is Canal 13's Telenoche. The revamp has been promoted on-air for several weeks as one of "the biggest in its history", but ended up being a complete dissapointment. The rendition of the classic theme is horrible and doesn't sound good: the L3s are too big. The set is quite decent, but the couch is unnecessary. Anyway, here's tonight's broadcast:

This is 1985; I believe the Bill Meeks Spirit of Oklahoma package was created in 1987. (Tracy Carman/Media Preservation Foundation uploaded the sales demo to Soundcloud, from the master reel, and it was dated 11-Nov-1987, so this KLTV news package must predate it.)