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The best (and likely) option is for WBD/Paramount to keep a very small stake in the The CW with a majority owner (running the day to day, etc..) with the option to buy out WBD/Paramount in 5 years. I don’t think there’s going to be a bunch of upheaval (changing affiliations, buying/selling stations, etc..) unless Nexstar is required to do so. The easiest thing is to keep as much as you can the same while trying to fully monetize what you can.

Considering Nexstar's "success" with NewsNation, does anyone think if Nexstar does buy the CW, they could have any success? Call me skeptical. Regarding Nexstar buying CW stations, there is no increase in ownership caps. They are already close to being maxed out. Unless they sell a bunch of stations, how could this happen? At some point over use of sidecar sham ownership like Mission all be scrutinized, as it is long overdue.

The goal here is to remake CBS News as a collective of the O&Os, so unified branding on all platforms is a necessity.

The CW essentially functions as a hybrid linear network/AVOD service. Putting a paywall on their content would be a mistake.

The trades consistently report that Paramount and Warner will retain a minority stake in the network post-sale and continue to supply programming. Most of the shows that were killed off this season were tied into the old Netflix deal and thus The CW was unable to monetize the stacking rights for AVOD. That won't be the case for the new crop of shows. THR reports that Nexstar is particularly interested in that revenue.

Still looks way better than literally every single Gray package in this thread. WOIO is the only one even close and that was technically made pre-Gray even though it debuted after Gray bought them. Although I will say, even the current Meredith look isn't as good as this was, such a shame this got dropped after only 2 years

69420%, of course.

Pete Williams will retire from NBC News as its long-time justice correspondent in July.

Hopefully CNN can go back to some more credible, hard news journalism that has been 'zucked up' in the past few years.

NEW: CNN is launching a block called ‘CNN Sunday’ this fall that will include longform shows, including Chris Wallace’s former CNN+ show. Licht also says their morning show will be “reimagined” this fall.

Plus it always gives you a backup when you need to push off programming for breaking news or push the bombs off the main station's schedule. Duopoly stations may be the last thing anyone wants, but you're glad to have them not competing with you, or to have a place to put in-house shows. Plus public places or parties still need shows on their TVs during the day that won't annoy everyone and it's free ad money for little outlay.

Fox has picked Greg Olsen to call Super Bowl LVII with Kevin Burkhardt. Guessing this also means he's also keeping the seat warm for Brady throughout the season until he retires.

Paramount Global is not the former CBS Corporation. They’re sinking money into developing newscasts for their CW outlets based at KXTA, which I would consider as core. There is no reason why Paramount will sell those stations when no buyer exists. Nexstar can’t take them and is too stubborn a company to unload dead weight. The CW is losing a majority of their scripted fare this off-season as Paramount and Warners are cutting their losses. It’s being killed off in plain sight. Perry’s buying a stripped-down frame of a car, which is enough of a mistake to begin with. But he should know a thing or two about mistakes: he launched NewsNation.

Pete has to be one of the oldest employees still working for NBC News, so I'm not surprised about his retirement. I wonder who might replace him? Best of luck to him.

Today (5/19), the FCC announced the ten qualified bidders who have advanced to participate in Auction 112, which will begin on June 7. BEK Sports Network, Inc. Gray Television Licensee, LLC Major Market Broadcasting of North Dakota, Inc. Marquee Broadcasting, Inc. Radiant Life Ministries, Inc. Sinclair Television Group, Inc. SJL Television Inc. TV-49, Inc. Ventura Media Communications, LLC Venture Technologies Group, LLC The ones listed as not qualified are Estrella Television, RxDIO.com, LLC, Renard Broadcasting, and previously-announced Redwood Empire Public Television. Also to mention, four entrants have claimed a "New Entrant" bidding credit. BEK Sports, Ventura Media & Venture Technologies have a 25% credit. And SJL have a 35% credit.

My guess is that this is a reaction to the fact that the SPC's 1am CT outlook today had a 10% hatched area for tornado risk, which SPC walked back as of the 8am CT update and moved it back down to a 5% risk area. TWC's decisions on pre-emptions this year seem to be based on hatched tornado risk areas. If there's a hatched tornado risk; they'll pre-empt, but if there's not a hatched tornado risk area, they don't pre-empt. The tornado risk areas last week that they refused to pre-empt programming for were standard 10% risk areas without the hatched area. IMO, those should be taken as seriously as a 10% hatched area, specially like last Thursday when there was a huge 45% hatched straight-line wind risk, but TWC hates covering straight-line wind events because it's not as dramatic as tornado coverage.

That could be true what about WRDC? I guess Univision could but that up. And yes I think Rupert Murdoch and is jealous of WRAL that’s why they may want to keep FOX50 WRAZ.

Fair enough, if they want the affiliation bad enough. They have already lost ABC and Fox in the past so I could see them fighting to keep CW as long as they can.

Maybe they should move all the opinionated shows to HLN. It'd be better than 19 hours a day of Forensic Files.

MNTV is basically a turnkey brand for an independent station, that just happens to have a primetime schedule. Stations like these rarely exist on their own anymore, and are basically a duopoly partner with another broadcaster in a market to extend newscasts and to air syndicated programming geared towards a different audience or day part from the primary station. Many places have even cast aside the primetime repeats for something more useful like a primetime newscast (like what WXIA does with WATL). Unless there is some serious decay in the other "Big 4" networks, I don't see Nexstar (or any other owner) casting aside a major affiliation any time soon for the CW, (that is, if this rumored deal happens)...

I see CBS shedding all of their CW owned stations in the process of this sale.

Seems like a useless move. I get they are moving closer to DC since more money can be made in that area, but at the end of the day, it's still a rimshot signal most of the DC metro wouldn't be able to receive. I mean, can't they just stick WDVM on a WDCW sub and vice versa? Seems like a better use of spectrum to me and continue to give the people of Hagerstown some OTA broadcast outlet.

and being run seamlessly.

I've noticed WABC using the video wall behind the anchors to display graphics. That's from last week. Today they had Eyewitness News at Noon behind them.

You can pay to license it.

Hate to break it to everyone but "KDKA-TV 2" is already being deemphaized in favor of "CBS News Pittsburgh" and "CBS Pittsburgh". KDKA means radio, and Audacy has a rather sweet licensing deal with Paramount Global to continue using the call letters as a brand. Let them continue to use that name and lessen the confusion, like when people were complaining at KDKA-TV because of Wendy Bell flaming out at KDKA radio.

Hopefully, the money will be spent with a little more discretion than it has previously. New sets, graphics, and fleets of brand new live trucks that they got for some wild, unknown reasons (they rarely, if ever, do live coverage, let alone live remote coverage) do not contribute to the stories being told. That said, I'm not going to hold my breath that the $50 million isn't thrown away on a massive Clickspring set, a custom SAM music package, and other flashy stuff for their 19-year-old "anchors" to read CNN Newsource wire copy in front of, because the one thing NewsNet does well is look like it's a big name news outlet while operating like it's a Cadillac, MI local station.

WCBS had strong coverage today. Kudos to them. Nice to see experienced hands of Dana, Cindy and Maurice at the helm.

A few notes here in re: @Kenneth Kissel's comment. CBS has done something no other network does. They don't have a network news division and the local stations, they have News and Stations which are one leadership group and are integrated. This makes sense because, as O&Os, editorial responsibility for both lies with one company. It also makes sense given that both needed to do something different badly. CBS as a whole has gone big on a federal brand that is sprawling and consistent. News and sports share big pieces of their visual language with entertainment, etc. The local stations haven't yet had a revamp of their looks to integrate them into this, but that has to be coming (watch for Detroit later this year). Also, why city name? It helps distinguish the social media pages from other stations that are also CBS affiliates and it improves search and app rankings if people search for, say, "Pittsburgh news" or "Denver news". This is especially apparent with the NBC, CBS and Fox groups in re: websites and app names and branding, but you'll see increased city/region name usage across a lot of station groups—"ABC15 Arizona", the "Very Local" OTT channels from Hearst, etc.

I still remember when Pax tried to go it alone as "i" without any studio partners...it took at least eight years to undo the damage from that "i for infomercial' era pre-Ion where they had one original production that was gone after eight weeks. In 2022, the last thing broadcast needs is another older-centric network where they only take the 'safe' Associated Television "World's Cheapest Viral Video We Could License" filler on the CW that's the lowest in every weekly ratings report or just grab everything cheap Canadian networks offer. If Nexstar (or God forbid, Sinclair) buys the majority stake in the network, they both need guaranteed studio partners and high-profile programming, because slumming it only imperils both their entire affiliate base, and independent/MyNetworkTV stations in general. There's also The CW+ to consider in this deal; you still have to market a full 168 hours per week to your smaller market affiliates along with those existing syndication deals, and the other station groups will simply walk away if you switch that to "NewsNation Annex" or "The National Desk+" outside network hours or worse, get an anti-trust case slapped on you because you swipe it from other station groups wholesale for your own. This isn't ditching MeTV for Antenna TV because it's in-house, but something that needs to be navigated with care. Also...in before anyone else goes 'finally they can restore cartoons to broadcast TV and ditch the E/I block'...no, nothing will change there no matter who buys it. Litton/Hearst will throw money at whoever buys out the network to keep the E/I deal for One Magnificent Morning and its elderly demo happy, along with their monopoly on the market, plus Hearst has CW affiliates so they have that leverage on the new owner.

I'm not usually one to advocate for cost cutting, but....helicopters are a huge expense, and it makes a lot of sense in many ways to pool that sort of resource together. Chopper sharing has been going on now in Denver for well more than a decade. Can anyone point to a story that would have been better served with more than one chopper there? Also, is KDVR still part of the pool or what? I know they were, then they dropped out. I thought they were back in?

And now WTNH had got its news open.