tyrannical bastard

I guess time will tell how these stations will do until the affiliations are up. In a world where stations are adding newscasts left and right (with the decline of syndication and potential pullback by the networks in the coming years), a station like WPMI is doomed because of Sinclair's desire to "control" 4 stations in a market, and is limited by what they can put on their station (the 15% rule). What we could be seeing is the rise of NewsCentral 2.0. Didn't they already learn their lesson from this boondoggle 20 years ago? Instead of netlet and other weak affiliates getting a so-called local newscast, it's going to trickle down to a select group of Sinclair-run stations that can't cut it in their market. Now if they're really in deep trouble, it could trickle up to the larger stations as well.

And the hammer has dropped at WPMI in Mobile. https://www.lagniappemobile.com/news/deep-cuts-at-local-tv-station/article_52a2f324-ca89-11ed-accd-17afb130f97d.html (paywalled story) To sum it up, the 5-7 AM newscast, noon show and lifestyle program Gulf Coast Today will be cancelled. The National Desk will replace the 5-7 newscast with "local cut-ins" beginning on April 17th. The current 5, 6 and 10 newscasts, along with the 5 & 10 weekend newscasts will remain. Around 20 people were laid off. And yet, WEAR in Pensacola is seemingly unscathed, with no changes on the horizon. Sad, sad day in Mobile and for any Sinclair station that has gone through this, or is about to go through this. And as a sidenote, the Lagniappe (where the story came from) is now the only newspaper in Mobile (that still prints one). They have a reverse paywall where the print paper is FREE while the website costs $$$ to access.) The former "newspaper" AL.com ceased printing this past February, but they've been irrelevant since they Tegna-fied themselves a decade ago like most of the other Advance papers. The news void in Alabama continues to grow.....

And here we are when REPEATS of syndication are being kept on the air (Judge Judy) and prime time is reboots of old shows from the 80s and 90s. It makes the whole "season 9 was all a dream" that Dallas pulled off in the 80s with the death and return of Patrick Duffy that much more plausible these days.

So these are all the post-Roseanne episodes? Given her departure, those episodes will probably be permanently separated and likely unseen, unless someone like Fox Nation picks them up. In the past, shows with fractured histories like Valerie and The Hogan Family have always maintained their continuity as a series, but it looks like the producers are seeking to keep The Conners permanently separated from the reboot and continuation of the old series that spawned it.

This and other cutbacks could be ways to sell off other assets to raise some quick cash. The parts of these stations are likely more the whole package. Sinclair probably has them stripped so bare that no owner would buy them outright. In a place like Macon where Sinclair can't afford to keep the lights on yet Gray is buying a station could make for a quick sale of an affiliation contract or two. And if Sinclair's ties to Diamond being in bankruptcy can constitute an "out", then we could see ABC and/or FOX on WPGA again. When WGXA is no longer worth Sinclair's while, they sell off the license to any willing party. If it gets stripped of it's networks, it will be like one of the Howard Stirk stations running the low-rent diginets from a broom closet out of another Sinclair station, since the main studio rule is no more. Aside from Mobile/Pensacola, Charleston and West Palm Beach, this part of the country is a virtual no-mans land for Sinclair and their stations are spokes with little local content on them. What is "local", is piped in from another market. Macon supplied content to Albany, and when that came to an end, so did the local content. Now with Macon potentially losing the ability to produce local content, the void grows larger, and where will it come from?

In Macon, I wonder how much of their news they cut. WGXA has traditionally been the #2 station far behind WMAZ, I wonder if Morris' WMGT has surged ahead. And now with WPGA being traded to Gray, its practically a station set up to get its last laugh, if they succeed in luring away ABC and/or FOX from WGXA.

Cable and Satellite TV by design are obsolete unless they've converted to an IP-like delivery rather than the channels occupying spectrum space. But all of the exclusivity they enjoy (cable) is tied to local franchises and the infrastructure they built to serve their customers. That alone gives them the power to charge franchise fees to their customers. And they use their monopoly to charge to Infinity fees related to their service such as installation, equipment, and now retransmission fees on top of what it all costs. Sooner or later, they're going to have to get out of the "cable" TV business because in essence they're just using their local infrastructure to beam an IP service to their customers (unless they're actually delivering true cable TV which is probably as extinct as landline phones). I wonder what's stopping them from expanding behind their physical boundaries to become virtual MPDs within their DMAs. If that power was granted to them they could serve a lot more customers, so customers who are stuck with Mediacom as their only option could subscribe to Xfinity and vice versa, or pick one of the existing virtual providers. Customers with subscribe to their local service just for the bandwidth, and have the option of picking a television provider. Of course, cable companies with chime in by offering a "discount" to those who choose to subscribe to their own service, and charge a "penalty" or higher rate to a customer who picks the rival service on their home network.

FTVLive is getting reports that layoffs are going down at Sinclair stations....including WGXA and WACH. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/3/17/just-in-layoffs-going-down-at-sinclair-stations Earlier, all local newscasts were cancelled on sister station WFXL in Albany, so could this be the end of local news in both of these markets as well? Now that the Bally Sports joint venture has filed for bankruptcy, I wonder how much Sinclair is on the hook for....

I blame Nexstar for the rate hike on YTTV! (Well not really, it's a myriad of factors but likely due to inflation and CBS/Paramount and other companies wanting more money for their precious content.)

Because the cord-cutting and reliance on a dwindling pool of willing subscribers to pay a "regional sports fee" on top of an already inflated bill is the final straw. National networks can pass this off with their broad reach, and their hands in the viewer's pocketbooks are much less apparent than the RSN's have ever been. Bottom line, sports has gotten too expensive. Viewers are tired of paying for it through high pay TV bills. Providers don't want to drive up the cost of their service too much by agreeing what the RSN's want to charge (which is the high price the leagues pass on to the RSNs). And seeing what it really costs, no one wants to pay $25 a month to watch their team on an RSN app. Covid and cord-cutting exacerbated this trend. Sinclair took the bait and paid dearly for it, especially when they lost most of the providers that carried it.

Sinclair's agreements are up either this year or next on beginning on August 31st and going into the same day next year. This could potentially mean a phased shift depending on when the contracts are up. Basically, if an affiliate contract is up then they could potentially move the network in house without penalty, correct? The trend seems to be even if a contract expires, that things continue status quo until either a new agreement is reached or if somebody else inks an agreement after the original one lapses. One of the groups has an agreement until 2026.... I think it's Tegna but I'd have to double-check. I even looked at WUAB's public file... Their current agreement with the CW only goes through August 31st of this year. This was after they were able to get it from WBNX when they defaulted on their agreement. (most likely linked to the foreclosure proceedings surrounding the Ernest Angley ministry)

I'm just glad that OG WGN will be available (in Chicago) when I "visit" ! This move may be a prelude to some of their non-CW stations switching to the CW. Many of their affiliate contracts are up this year, and there could be many opportunities for Nexstar to bring CW to one of their stations where it may not be already....

Well, to bring this thread up to speed, Bally has since breached one of their loan covenants and missed a payment to the Arizona Diamondbacks. They have a grace period of until March 17th to pay the Diamondbacks. Bankruptcy could be coming by then, finally. https://nypost.com/2023/03/12/mlb-to-stream-games-for-free-amid-looming-diamond-sports-bankruptcy-sources/ A side effect of what could be coming? MLB could be offering free streaming to customers of the affected teams.

I'm getting a Sinclair vibe with the lower thirds. The font is a little more refined than the "Din" Sinclair uses, and the "LNL" is a dead ringer for the "TND" they use for The National Desk.

Another OTT dispute. Hulu has dropped all of Sinclair's ABC stations... https://cordcuttersnews.com/hulu-drops-sinclair-owned-abc-stations/ With the bad relationship between Fubo and Paramount (with certain affiliate groups dropping their CBS stations and Fubo replacing with a network feed), retrans disputes like this could be much more common, especially if station groups get their way like they do with other pay TV providers...

With all of the mega-groups and their "locally produced content", I'm surprised no one group or set of groups has tried the "Evening/PM Magazine" approach to create shows around regional or sharable content, suited to a particular market or region, yet marketable as a single brand. Now that the tide has turned on syndication, it seems like the next way for stations to make their mark on both fronts.

Soo Kim needs to move on and buy another distressed retailer. Look what happened to Radio Shack under his watch.

That's surprising for the population estimate, since WMDT's signal barely reaches into the Annapolis area and the fringes of DC and Baltimore. Using RabbitEars Longley-Rice readings that factor in terrain and elevation, Muskingum County can easily pick up WHIZ. Surrounding counties, the going gets more difficult with the hilly terrain, and it's a crapshoot in Columbus unless you live in one of the swaths of red or orange (which would require extreme means of pickup unless atmospheric events make the signal travel further. There's some swaths in Southwestern Franklin County (in orange) that may pick up the station with ease if someone has a directional outdoor antenna.

The WHIZ signal reaches into the surrounding counties around Muskingum (Perry, Licking, Coshocton, Fairfield, Hocking, Morgan and Guernsey). Muskingum County is the sole county in the Zanesville DMA, but WHIZ is available in some places on cable in surrounding areas alongside WCMH.

I'll bet you 50 bucks the next sports push Nexstar makes for the CW is gambling-related!

With the amount of time that has passed on this deal, Soo Kim should have found a new backer other than Apollo. That alone would have made this deal closed by now. But at this rate, he'll probably bring it to a hearing, plead his case all over again, and lose. Tegna would probably spiral into bankruptcy and get auctioned off piecemeal to the highest bidders. At some point, maybe we'd get a new company or two out of it. Someone else to possibly bail out Sinclair, Gray and Nexstar down the road when they have to pay their debt down...

If AT&T and Bally disappear, other than NBC Sports, who's left?

Mathis Court....do they only take cases that involve Johnny Mathis? Basically, any of these daytime court shows that come out of Entertainment Studios are very low-budget in appearance, even down to the courtroom "set" that looks like the walls are cheap doors they purchased at Home Depot on the cheap. Case in point, the backdrop for Justice with Judge Mablean...

Too bad Lionel Hutz is no longer with us. He alone would add another 20 years to the Simpsons parodying all of the legal tricks and ads since Phil Hartman's passing.

So Judge Mathis will become another time-filling (insert court type) court with (insert Judge name) host in the Byron Allen media empire? I can''t tell the difference between any of his shows. Probably even use the same "plaintiffs" and "defendants" as well as audiences.