tyrannical bastard

I think one of the big reasons the WQCW deal went down is because Excalibur's owner, Don Ray, was the longtime general manager of WSAZ, and even was a regional VP under Gray's ownership of the station. Once the deal goes down, I imagine that any efforts in programming WSAZ's "myZ" subchannel will shift to WQCW, including their prime time news. Since WQCW is technically licensed to Portsmouth, Ohio, It would be interesting to see if the efforts focused on Ohio and Kentucky....but I imagine it will be an extension of WSAZ's current focus on the Huntington side of the market with a taste of Charleston news thrown in there.

I bet you WBXX in Knoxville is next....either Gray gets them through Excalibur to pair with WVLT...or Media General gets them to pair with WATE....either way, Lockwood's days are numbered!

Tami Brehse, the former morning anchor pushed aside for Kelly Jones, has now left WPMI for a PR job in South Florida.

If only WLNE had never been sold by Freedom...then they would be a Sinclair station by now.....

http://www.tvnewscheck.com/mobile/index/article/id/70502 Citadel is selling most of their stations...sans WLNE, KLKN and a low-powered station in Sarasota to Nexstar...and Stainless is selling their Binghamton stations to Mission...

Former WKRG weekend anchor Lauren Vargas is now at KNXV in Phoenix (as a freelance reporter...per her Facebook page).

As for traffic coverage on the Mobile stations....WPMI has traditionally never had a dedicated reporter...they've lumped it into weather coverage in the mornings and as a bump shot on the 5pm news using the Alabama DOT cams that are made available to all media outlets. WKRG and WALA use a service called "Skywatch Traffic" that does reports on their morning shows. The WKRG contributor used to Skype himself to the station, but now only uses an audio feed. As for their handling of social media, WALA started doing this way back in 2008 during their 9pm news with their "Daily dot com" segments. They started with a dedicated reporter and now uses co-anchor Lenise Ligon for them. In the mornings, they have a tech segment that started out with Chasity Byrd and later Dani Dials when Chasity moved to the 4pm news. Over at WKRG, Lauren (Styler) Vargas was originally hired to do social media...after she was promoted to weekend anchor, others including Tiffany McCall and Avery Cotton took over duties. Now that Avery is anchoring weekends, WKRG is hiring for a new one...

WPMI launched their expanded morning and noon newscasts this past Monday. From what I've seen....they have some work to do on them..... To start things off on a positive note, Kelly Jones is a real win to the station. She is definitely one of the better anchors to have ever done the morning show there in the past several years. To put it nicely....the new social media anchor/reporter is an absolute trainwreck. It's like she's NEVER been on air before, and her delivery is horrible. To top it off, there are a lot of points in the newscast where all 4 of them (including Jordan) are on camera....she adds nothing other than ill-timed reactions and awkwardness. If I were in charge, I would immediately pull her off the show, or at the very least, KEEP HER OFF THE ANCHOR DESK and PRE-TAPE her segments so they don't look like someone stumbling through a bunch of words......Having her around could drive WPMI even further into the ground and ruin their attempt to even have a praying chance for their morning news. As sanewsguy pointed out about most social media reporters being vanity and "eye candy"....she fits the bill 100 percent... To make matters even more perplexing, for the new 12:30 segment, they have decided to keep current web content specialist Taren Reed to do exactly what she was doing before....REPORTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA! :bang: Unlike Jordan, she can actually read a teleprompter and does a decent job from what I've seen. At least they have a backup plan, or so we can only hope.... I'm hoping that Sinclair isn't bent on destroying a station that's already been in the dumper for practically it's entire existence. Whatever progress they have made since they went HD last year could be in serious jeopardy with Sinclair behind the wheel...

I must agree....most traffic and social media reporters are vanity positions for the inexperienced. I think that a good way to leverage social media is to try and seek out all of the "garbage" that people post, and either affirm it to be true, or debunk it with cold, hard facts. Social media in the wrong hands has done irreparable damage to us as a society since it gives anybody the power to spread anything, no matter how true it is. We can only hope that journalists haven't been damaged...because many of them could be just as gullible as us, and some have fallen for the biggest hoaxes. I have seen a police officer do traffic before....anyone remember Officer Mike Kilburn from WBNS in the early 2000s? I think he had a short stint at WCMH soon afterwards...

TVSpy has some more news and details on the new newscasts coming to WPMI and WJTC in Mobile: Pat Greenwood will anchor the 4:30am newscast solo. New co-anchor Kelly Jones will join him from 5am-7am. He will also continue to anchor the noon news, but the noon news will be expanding to a full hour and Kelly Jones will be anchoring the new 12:30 portion solo. These changes will happen on September 9th. Greg Peterson will anchor the new 6:30 WJTC newscast solo but.....WJTC is ALSO adding a 9pm show on September 23rd which will feature both Kym Thurman and Greg Peterson. This will be the THIRD 9pm news in the market after sister station WFGX (WEAR) started one in August and WALA's long-established 9pm show. WPMI/WJTC GM Bobby Totsch also hinted at ADDING a 10:00 news on WJTC, but with no details. (I'm thinking that they could possibly simulcast WPMI's newscast since doing a separate live newscast from WPMI/WJTC's facility would be next to impossible.) Removed from the TVSpy story....I thought it was highly unlikely anyways. WPMI/WJTC also hired two new reporters, Stephen Quinn as a field reporter and Jordan Early as a social media reporter. Here's the story....http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/wpmi-and-wjtc-adding-news-and-talent_b102505

The article didn't specify her status with WPMI...she may just be leaving the morning show and going back to reporting. She took over the spot when Angela Martin abruptly left last year, so it may have been an interim move all along. She was back on the air this morning as well. The morning show (and the station in general) has had A LOT of turnover over the past 7 years. Pat Greenwood moved up from being the longtime sports director to the morning anchor in 2007 when Scott Walker departed for WESH. Kym Thurman was promoted to primary anchor after the primary anchor they hired (Raquel Eatmon) left after three months, rumored to be backlash from the Peter Albrecht-Drexel Gilbert-Kim McCrea purge that happened several months before. Varion Walton took over and lasted until 2010, when she was let go and replaced by Angela Martin. Through it all, Kelly Foster has remained the constant, until now. One of the things that stood out was the quote that Lance Crawford made his time in Mobile. He claimed that "I’ve done 15 years in the Mobile market — 10 years at Channel 10 and five years hear. It looks like my Mobile TV career may be ending,” Could it be a typo? or something that slipped through the spell checker? Add to the fact the reporter obviously had no clue that UPN hasn't existed since 2006 and that WJTC is referred to as UTV 44 (but was UPN 44 until 2006)

Even more news out of WPMI (and even WJTC...their sister station) as reported by Mobile's Lagniappe newspaper Sports Director Lance Crawford's contract is not being renewed, leaving Clement Townsend as the sole sports anchor/reporter. Weekend anchor Andrea Ramey will take over his spot on the station's "Law Call" program on Sunday evenings. In addition to Kelly Jones being hired to replace Tami Brehse, insiders claim that Deitra Tate will now be the morning meteorologist, and current morning meteorologist Kelly Foster will be moving to weekends. Deitra has been filling in this week with Pat Greenwood, minus Tami. They will also be adding a 4:30am newscast, becoming the 2nd Mobile station (and third since WEAR added one last month) to do so. No start date was indicated. WJTC UTV 44 (referred in the article as UPN 44...even though they've been independent since UPN went away) is also ADDING a 6:30pm newscast. Sister station WFGX (run by WEAR) added a 9pm show last week. Like the 4:30 show, no start date was indicated as well. Here's the story: http://classic.lagniappemobile.com/article.asp?articleID=6703&sid=18

I think Nexstar will find a way to make these stations work...they do have experience running independent stations (KOZL, WTVW & WFFT). A MyNetwork station is basically the same thing, but with the My branding throughout and filling two hours of primetime. Detroit is also tied at the hip with their Fort Wayne stations since they not only produce newscasts that air in Detroit, but master control comes out of Fort Wayne as well. Jacksonville is another market where Nexstar seems out of place, but runs a very successful CW station that they acquired from Media General back in 2009. They've added local programming to that station and could do the same in San Francisco and Detroit.... If Nexstar wants a station to divest.....they should consider dumping WDHN in Dothan, AL.

Granite looks to be one of their next targets... http://www.tvnewscheck.com/mobile/index/article/id/69524

Just saw a promo on WEAR....WFGX is getting a 9pm newscast starting August 12th. Finally, WALA gets some competition at 9pm! I imagine it will be Pensacola based, just like WEAR. Could WJTC have something in the wings for Mobile by way of WPMI?

WEAR's morning news "3 in the Morning" now begins at 4:30am, becoming the 2nd station in the Mobile-Pensacola market to start news at 4:30. I wonder if (or when) sister station WPMI will do the same?

Here's an article from the Dothan Eagle http://www.dothaneagle.com/news/article_505bb1dc-b699-11e2-b32c-0019bb30f31a.html Gray will be launching a 5:30 newscast exclusive to the new NBC station. I'm surprised that WJHG has never done the same for WECP....and that WPGX still does not have a 9pm newscast! To compensate for Dothan viewers losing WSFA, they'll still get news coverage on WDFX.

Peter Albrecht has been re-hired by WKRG after an almost 6 year absence from the airwaves. He worked for WKRG until 2000 and then was hired at WPMI later that year. Peter anchored the primary newscasts until 2007, when he was one of the three anchors fired by management in an effort to bring up ratings. According to a newly created Facebook friend page (WKRG Peter Albrecht), he will be the 5pm anchor and do investigative reporting. Since he is technically replacing Jessica Taloney, who left last year, I wonder if Mel Showers will only anchor the 6 & 10 now?

Gray is purchasing WDON-LP in Dothan, AL from New Moon Communications... http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/64441/station-trading-roundup-2-deals-120000 At one time, they purchased several low powered stations around the country in markets where NBC did not have an affiliated station, with the intention of turning the stations into NBC affiliates. Methinks that Gray is going to follow through on the original plan to bring a low-powered NBC station to Dothan by way of WTVY, much like the way that Gray brought a CBS affiliate to neighboring market Panama City through the facilities of WJHG. WTVY in Dothan served as the CBS station for Panama City until WECP-LD's sign-on, and NBC has come in to Dothan by way of WSFA in Montgomery, and WJHG in Panama City.

LIN Media has finalized the purchase of New Vision's television stations. http://www.linmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/LIN-Media-Completes-Acquisition-of-Television-Stations-from-New-Vision-Television.pdf

WALA in Mobile will be the first station in the Mobile-Pensacola market to debut a 4:30am newscast on Monday, August 27th. I wonder if any other stations will follow them up on this lead....probably not since it took so long for this to happen. And with Hurricane Isaac on it's way to the Northern Gulf Coast....WPMI is "raining" on their parade by starting their newscast at 4am!

There are reports that Nexstar is selling KBTV in Beaumont, TX to Sinclair Broadcasting, who already owns competitor KFBM (purchased earlier from Freedom). http://blog.beaumont...angel-san-kfdm/ http://countybeerpar...communications/ Until I see something official from either Nexstar or Sinclair on the matter, I consider this just a rumor at this point... Seeing how Nexstar is looking to dump its smaller stations and that Sinclair and Nexstar share services in other markets ( i.e. Peoria, IL and Rochester, NY)...it could happen... CONFIRMED.....KBTV will be sold to Deerfield Media and Sinclair is expected to enter into an SSA with them. http://biz.yahoo.com/e/120823/nxst8-k.html

WKRG 5pm anchor Jessica Taloney will be stepping down soon because she is expecting her first child due in July. http://classic.lagniappemobile.com/article.asp?articleID=5347&sid=18 I wonder if WKRG will replace her with a cardboard cutout, like they did when morning anchor Devon Walsh was out on maternity leave last year

WEWS used the same cut of music (remixed with Catch 5) in their 1981-1984 open. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c76FPVObElg