tyrannical bastard

Nexstar's bulk deal with CBS is also up at the end of this year, and with CBS losing the SEC games, the affiliation in these markets is much less attractive than it was before. I think NBC would be willing to affiliate with Nexstar in certain places and let CBS jump to the Sinclair station. And one of these markets is Mobile.

NBC is probably their weakest link. Despite them owning stronger stations like WJAR, WCYB, WTOV and WJAC, they have weaker stations like WOAI, and self-created abominations like WPMI, WTWC, WEYI, WNWO and WNBW. Despite WNWO and WTWC being the only ones Sinclair owns outright, it's a black eye on the markets these other stations serve. NBC can't be too happy with them these days. Even MSNBC recently eviscerated David Smith's recent purchase (and Sinclair in general) on Alex Wagner's show the other night. While the whole group going away is unlikely, it may be like what happened with WJMN in Marquette. If there's a more willing station to take on NBC and provide a better path, NBC would happily oblige. It happened years back (pre-Sinclair) to WRDC when Outlet plucked the Peacock to their-owned (at the time) WNCN after decades of failure in Raleigh-Durham.

Which network is up next for renewal? I believe NBC is up at the end of this year. LOTS of affiliates that Sinclair has never helped, or helped to drive into the ground, or FURTHER into the ground.

And the tragedy in that is these local newsrooms and network affiliates. Despite being run by Sinclair and pushing out all of their garbage, there are still a lot of talented, competent journalists they employ who know how to cover their communities, and are great at breaking their own stories that often uncover actual corruption.

Now that he'll be anchoring newscasts, will he still be doing his packages? Or in this case, nodding in a camera as each station cuts to him "live" ?

David Smith is a prime example of someone who has too much money and no idea (or malicious intent on) what to do with it. While the rest of the world is scraping for pennies trying to keep oligarchs like him from ruining anything they touch with all of their money.

Amazon will buy a minority stake in Bally Sports, making Prime Video their primary method of DTC distribution, and Sinclair will pay $495 million to settle their (mis)management services of Diamond Sports Group https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-diamond-sports-investment-reorganization-sinclair-settlement-1235790585/

He needed something to do after giving the keys to Chris Ripley to blaze his own trail of incompetence and greed.

May have been isolated to Sinclair. WPMI aired a 7pm CT newscast and WTOV aired one at 8 ET, pre-empting the special.

A sad day in Baltimore, since the Sun was a vocal critic of David Smith and his escalation of Sinclair into a national powerhouse of propaganda. Given their current state under Alden, it sadly may actually be an improvement, since the paper is once again under "local" ownership.

So does this make "the" one of the forbidden words that employees are no longer allowed to say at a Nexstar station?

I"m curious...how many NBC affiliates (or station owners) opted not to show the pre-game special for the Miami/Kansas City game that's exclusively streaming on Peacock?

It's pretty sad that a company as deeply rooted as Scripps is doing this at their TV stations across the country.

And Nexstar found a way to weasel their way back into the Phoenix market. Because trying to work out an arrangement with KASW would have been too obvious... Since they picked them up in the KTVK/KPHO merger and sold them to Scripps when they needed cap space to dump for the Tribune merger.

It definitely has the FOX O&O vibe, at least with the font. Once this package gets to the other markets (especially Pittsburgh and Charlotte) it will be a major improvement. Both of those packages probably go all the way back to their launch in HD, which seems like an eternity.

Also depends on how the channels are sold to advertisers. If it's purely "added value" on a primary investment....

Operationally, how different are these actual cable channels compared to the FAST channels? They have to be operated similarly as automated video jukeboxes playing a "list" of content from the master log. All it takes is someone to ingest the stuff so it plays at the right time, and maybe a producer or two producing the promos and interstitial content. It's not like the TV of old where it actually took manpower to run a channel. And since channel capacity is a thing of the past, what actual cost savings would this realize? Satellite space? A power bill on the server? Or just another bloated excuse to cull back content because it's too "expensive"...

Tonight was Alan Sealls' last night at WPMI NBC 15 in Mobile. https://mynbc15.com/weather?video=99b41c27ff6d4c6ba650a81d2687b878

Because after being taxed to death by the NFL and college football (well, sort of through rising TV rates and such) all America needs is another football league after the season is over, right?

Imagine this...a Sinclair station adding a morning newscast, replacing TND! https://triblive.com/aande/movies-tv/tv-talk-morning-local-newscast-launches-on-wpgh-tv-next-week-fox-readies-grimsburg/ (spoiler alert: It's WPGH and it's produced by WPXI. Still, surprised that WPGH is playing along!) Most likely, WPXI wants to keep up with KDKA and WPKD. I'm sure Cox would gladly snatch up WPGH if they could

Any word on the ratings for CW's airing of the Barstool Bowl? Probably suffered a little bit due to the absolute beatdown Georgia did on FSU. That, and it was pretty much the same awful telecast as last year.

Univision also carries the parade in Spanish as well. Not sure if KTLA still has a local broadcast. Seeing as the organization is non-profit, they're probably very liberal with their TV rights. It's not like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which has an exclusive arrangement with NBC, leaving CBS to broadcast the parade in the public domain as it's on a public street in New York.

Gray also reached a deal to air select New Orleans Pelicans games across their stations in Louisiana (KALB, KPLC, WAFB, KNOE, KSLA, WVUE) Mississippi (WLOX, WDAM, WTOK, WLBT) and Alabama (WALA). https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/12/31/fox10-gray-tv-stations-reach-deal-televise-10-this-seasons-pelicans-games/

It's probably been brought up in this thread already, but is there any difference between CNN on cable/satellite and their "Max" feed other than the CNN bug and ticker? Pretty sad that CNN has slipped to this, but it was inevitable to it being nothing more than added value to Max, which I still get for free via my AT&T internet service.

I'd be very, very surprised to see if Gray drops the "Fox" branding from their stations. I don't think Fox would stand for it, and the way that most Fox stations are branded, anything else would be very disorienting to a lot of viewers.