Well, color me surprised. Not that they'd completed the sale of WSIL earlier today (1/15), But the fact that the FCC has "accepted" the filing of its consummation notice tonight. Since early January, they've only accepted the filings of certain applications relating to the spectrum auction & repacking (i.e., the move of channels/frequencies, etc.) This is because of the prolonged partial government shutdown.

September 10th of last year.

From the NY Post, a source told the paper that the DOJ might allow Disney to "spin-off" the Fox RSNs into a brand new entity where Disney wouldn't have operational control, instead of going through a fire sale process. This would be better than giving the entities directly to Sinclair.

At this very point, I would be surprised if the suits at 30 Rock don't fire Andrew Lack because of all of this.........

Fox is now saying that it won't bid to buy back those RSNs.

TVNewsCheck states that WWL-TV evening anchor Natalie Shephard will become the new evening anchor for WDJT., She will start in late January.

That is my biggest pet-peeved right there.

Alot of affiliate renewals among the station groups this week. On Monday, Tegna Media renewed it agreement to carry ABC in nine of its markets. On Tuesday, Scripps renewed its agreement to carry NBC in five of its markets. And on Wednesday, Gray renewed its agreement to carry ABC in 25 of its markets (that includes eight of the former Raycom markets)

At least they're giving viewers alot of time to prepare for the rescan. And the change won't happen during the February Books.

Probably a split between David Tillman & Myers? Something tells me that they're not going to hire a new fifth weather anchor in the near term.

After over 82 years, the Duhamel family has decided to exit the broadcast business by selling its five radio outlets in Rapid City to Riverfront Broadcasting for $3.6M. This was the same Duhamel family that signed-on KOTA-TV in 1955. The family sold the station (and its satellites) to Schurz in 2014.

It will be very interesting to see how Gray will integrate the Raycom outlets. Like what they'd announced yesterday in the first order of business since consummation. Gray's practice of handling ad sales in-house to its legacy outlets, will be extended to the now-former Raycom outlets, as it will be terminating its ad sales rep agreement with CoxReps, which represented the Raycom stations. Also, I did not know until now that RSA (who took that paper firm from Raycom) have an 11% interest in the newly-combined Gray, as said here: .....and Gray will keep the Raycom offices in Montgomery as said here: And finally, before Gray started its own M&A craze five years ago, remember when former executive Bob Prather left the company, and later started his own venture Heartland Media. Well, for the first time since started that venture, he now has a new. interesting competitor in Huntsviille. 15/54 - Nexstar 19 - Tribune 31 - Heartland 48 - Gray

And to no surprise, it's Herzog that's the new Chief at 13. KTRK's morning meteorologist Travis Herzog will replace the retiring Tim Heller as the new Chief Meteorogist at the station. He'll be weather anchoring the 5, 6 & 10pm shows starting one week from Monday. Elita Loresca will take over Herzog's morning spot.

There's a 90-day post-closing transition service agreement between Gray & Marquee. So the operations of WSWG pre-closing is a status quo (that means all the WCTV shows that are airing on WSWG are still airing right now) during this transition phase. That would give Marquee enough time to plan their own independent operations. They could also extend TSA past the 90 day period if its agreed to by the parties. The transition agreement is on page 54 of this PDF.

The Graycom deal wasn't the only thing that closed..... SagamoreHill has completed it sale of WRDE to Draper. It was consummated on Tuesday (1/1). WRDE is now part of the WBOC family.