tyrannical bastard

Caught some of the WEWS 4:30am portion of Good Morning Cleveland and it was basically an edited series of packages with a little weather in between. Most likely, the future of Scripps newscasts. In another thread, someone likened this approach to news like the Al Schottlekotte approach WCPO used until the 80s. This was later copied by WIAT for their "42 Daily News" relaunch in the late 90s. Back when Al Schottlekotte did it, it was unique and driven by his personality. Now with Scripps launching this approach at their stations, it's cheap, lazy, and basically throws the concept of live news out the window. And in Cleveland, WKYC has once again seemingly come to their senses after "normalizing" their newscasts and it's WEWS once again that's gone off the deep end. Meanwhile, despite Nexstar taking hold of WJW, their dominance still remains and WOIO is now owned by a major broadcaster seeing how Gray has leaped ahead of both Scripps and Tegna.

ABC and/or FOX likely in Macon if one of them walks away from WGXA.

With them starting a statewide sports network in Georgia, this could expand to other nearby states, especially ones where they own stations in every market (or close to it). And a big focus in these states could be high school sports.

Since The Simpsons have taken their fair share of jabs at Rupert & Co..... Here's another question....

WFMJ is another station that airs Live! at 9am delaying the other 2 hours of Today to 10am-noon. On the other hand, WPMI in Mobile aired Today in pattern for years, but aired Live! at 11am until 2019. It's since moved to WEAR and airs at 9am.

We have a battle in St. Louis headed to the courtroom.... Gray is suing Tegna for using the phrase "Weather First Alert" on KSDK while KMOV has been using "First Alert Weather" https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/kmov-sues-ksdk-over-branding-for-weather-alerts/article_032d25a6-5668-11ee-ad8c-1b6661b82814.html

At least back in 1984, CBS affiliates had that time slot to themselves. So many crap shows are on the air simply because the networks won't return time to their affiliates.

Johnny Carson and Tom Snyder are spinning in their graves right now. Putting Byron Allen on CBS is like giving up Saturday Morning TV to Litton.

Had Akron & Canton succeeded in getting other network affiliates on the air in the 50s and 60s, they could have been a stand-alone market as well. They were slated to get a VHF frequency on Channel 11, but that was held up in the freeze, and later was re-assigned to Pittsburgh and became WIIC (WPXI). That could have been WAKR, but they opted for UHF and soldiered on as an second ABC affiliate for the market, at WEWS's dismay, but allowed them to take some levity in their schedule while WAKR generally cleared everything. Ironically, the only part of WHIZ's original ownership is the 102.5 frequency, which originally served Zanesville as WHIZ-FM, but was moved to the exurbs of Columbus to become part of that market. It served as an automated country format, the new home of WWCD (after getting displaced from 101.1) and is now a hispanic station. The current WHIZ-FM was sold to Marquee along with the other stations (AM & TV) as well.

At this rate, both sides may as well be...

Not the biggest fan of the new WLBT logo. I have a feeling that many of the Gray stations are going for this "overlapping letters" look. On the other hand, the new WIS logo looks great and really stands out with the new look.

Meanwhile, most viewers in Colorado with DirecTV or UVerse have been unable to watch Coach Prime and Colorado on FOX, since Nexstar has ties to all of their owned FOX affiliates. On the other hand, viewers in Grand Junction can watch FOX on DirecTV, but NOT on Dish!

There are so many things better than having to resort to Byron Allen for a NETWORK timeslot..... Color Bars. Test patterns. Tower Cams. A black screen with soothing sounds. Anything readily in the public domain. Infomercials (of any kind) Any 1980's first-run syndication (bonus points for She's the Sheriff or Small Wonder) I give TV as we know it until the end of the year unless someone reaches a deal. And Stephen Colbert better have a long beard like Letterman did during the last strike!

The way these channels have been usurped by Disney+ and Hulu pretty much makes them obsolete. Consumers can watch these shows without commercials, visual clutter and all of the other tom-foolery that make up your average basic cable channel. Not to mention the programming blocks are pretty much grouped for the DVR to pick them up or (heaven forbid) someone to binge-watch in real time....

Looking back through my DVR recordings.... WEAR "Channel 3 News Extra" (the 2nd 1/2 hour of their 10pm show) had their last airing on August 31st. No fanfare, just a "we'll see you tomorrow night". "Prep Football Final", their 1/2 hr Friday night HS football show aired at 10:35 to round out the hour the following night. Regular 35 minute newscasts started on September 1st, and on the 4th, Jimmy Kimmel and Nightline began airing in pattern. The only exception for this is on Friday nights with "Prep Football Final" pushing the shows to 11:00 and midnight. Before, this show would AFTER the hour-long 10pm show, pushing Jimmy Kimmel and Nightline to 11:35/12:35 on Friday nights in the fall. And over at WALA, the new 3pm show will be called "Fox 10 Live" hosted by Shelby Myers and Lee Peck. It looks like it's going to be a soft-news show, without the paid features of "Studio Ten". They recently launched their version of the GrayOne package, but it's more of a cosmetic upgrade since they had the prior Meredith package it's based on.