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Posts posted by Rusty Muck
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6 minutes ago, dkipcl said:
I really don't think iHeart cares. Matt Shearer from WBZ Newsradio went on WBZ-TV's morning show to talk about his shortform content. I think both stations are fine with each other (and even being mistaken for each others news departments). And as long as the Sports Hub doesn't start calling itself WBZ Sportsradio I think they're happy.
You may think that iHeart doesn't care, but they do. They easily could defect to WCVB or WBTS for news and weather partnerships if they can make more money off of it just like KYW radio did with WCAU. There is nothing binding WBZ with WBZ-TV, especially if a better content sharing deal comes forward. And what does WBZ-TV do then? Continue to share the same branding as a competitor or get with the times and distinguish yourselves for once?
And honestly, the biggest mistake Les Moonves made during the sale of the CBS Radio stations was making that brand licensing deal with the shared call signs which forced this rebranding effort among the O&Os in the first place.-
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4 hours ago, nycnewsjunkie said:
Wendy McMahon basically said that the approach to the rebrand would be conducted on a market by market basis.
There exists no such thing as "opt-in mandate" or "flexible standardization" or "unlimited freedom". This seems to be putting words in her mouth and making assumptions that her rebranding efforts -- which is reconciling the disparate brands of over a dozen stations in the entire group -- fell apart because of "unlimited freedom".
4 hours ago, nycnewsjunkie said:There were some assertions made that WBZ and KDKA would drop their brands entirely because of the radio stations that share those call letters; as we know now, those assertions were inaccurate.
Recycling voiceovers on KDKA from the prior package while the on-air appearance blasts you with "CBS News Pittsburgh" is not proving anything. Same with "WBZ News" being recycled here for the short term. I at least give Paramount Global credit for keeping their carbon footprints in check.
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9 hours ago, patsx3 said:
It’s strange, if the plan is to eventually rebrand all stations as CBS (city name) then I wonder why WBZ is now promoting their website as wbz.com. The bottom of the screen reads “The news is always on WBZ.com. It’s the first time their website has been promoted as anything but cbsboston.com in probably a decade.
Who knows why this interregnum is taking place, but tbh, the presence of two unrelated stations in the Boston market that both identify as "WBZ" is completely untenable. iHeart spent a lot of money to get WBZ radio and got an obscenely favorable brand licensing deal. You think they're happy about sharing the same brand as a TV station that is fighting for oxygen in the digital stratosphere?
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5 hours ago, ColumbusNewsFan said:
That 3 is real as there is some station swag that someone posted on this site showing that exact 3.
It's not terribly expensive to make station merch. Just saying...
/sarc
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2 hours ago, 24994J said:
Welllllllll...you're kind of correct. This logo has been plastered over on the station's creative services channel. While it hasn't launched, and could theoretically still change, it appears that the '3' isn't going away, entirely.
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It looks like someone dug up the old WRCV logo which was used before NBC got yeeted from owning channel 3 in 1965.
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16 hours ago, nycnewsjunkie said:
With all due respect, I doubt their ownership situation had anything to do with their ratings. Most viewers don’t know or care which station group is being sold to whom. I’d attribute it to WANF gaining traction in the market with their new product.
I’d pay more attention to WSB, now under the control of a disinterested private equity firm and with little incentive to have the station progress from being perpetually stuck in 1993.
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1 hour ago, jase said:
I assume WCBS kept their branding to differentiate themselves from CBS News given they are both based in NYC and to prevent viewer confusion.
That runs entirely contrary to the core point of the restructuring, to merge CBS News into the O&Os. Plus WCBS-TV and CBS News have been tied at the hip since the days of Jim Freaking Jensen.
The easiest explanation here is that WCBS management utterly and royally botched the rebrand. There is no excuse to keep any references to CBS 2 if the station outside of newscasts rebranded to “CBS New York” anyway. For the network flagship, this is just downright embarrassing.
1 hour ago, jase said:In KDKA's case, the call letters/branding coupled with the gold/black color scheme is synonymous with the station that it made sense for it to remain.
Wouldn’t be surprised if CBS gave KDKA the option to change the color palette to see if it could even be possible (and potentially incentivizing the graphics package as customizable to affiliates). And that’s pretty much it. In a few months, “KDKA-TV News” will be retired in favor of “CBS News Pittsburgh” (which is what it already is referred to in a visual sense).
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“From CBS News New York, this is CBS 2 News at 9” … god I felt sorry for Brian Lee having to read that sludge. And they didn’t rebrand away from “CBS 2 News” but the station is now “CBS New York”!?! How does THAT happen??
If I’m Wendy McMahon, I’m getting all the execs at WCBS-TV together and telling them, “You’re the flagship of the network. ACT like you’re the flagship!!”
19 hours ago, NYNewsCoverage said:According to this video, they still used the Enforcer cut as a close:
That file likely didn’t get cleared out of the master control automation in time. Not an uncommon occurrence after a rebrand.
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5 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:
Double posting, I know, but now it looks like Soo Kim is turning to the press: he wrote an op-ed article on Newsweek.
He’s basically begging Tegna and Apollo not to sue his sorry butt for breach of contract.
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10 hours ago, compubit said:
I also chuckled at Jim Benemann’s comment that the “graphics and music showcase our community” - generic graphics and nation-wide music don’t showcase the community. Music from a local composer (going back to the Jerome Gilmore days) more fits that IMHO…
As if the bland-o WCBS graphics and Enforcer were any better. The uniqueness of KCNC withered away when CBS stripped out the last of the NBC look back in 2003…
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15 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:
The columnist in question comes off as a lackey for large media groups. He seems to run defense for every M&A.
Even when the Sinclair—Tribune deal died, Jessell called for further deregulation anyway. He’s a clown.
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2 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:
Harry should know that there is no magic wand now that is going to be waved to save this deal. Let him debase himself with his “I never met a merger I didn’t like” stance.
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On 2/28/2023 at 9:06 PM, mre29 said:
Is he aware that the issues with the deal have absolutely nothing to do with Soo Kim being a POC?
Also, I think Byron Allen might like to have a word with him...
Byron bought his former employer (BNC) after they collapsed and used the distribution contracts (even on Pluto) for TheGrio.tv. So of course this comes off as payback and sheer pettiness on Roland’s part.
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On 2/28/2023 at 8:21 PM, Big Rollo Smokes said:
As a sidebar: Remember when I posted about Roland Martin's interview with Soo Kim a few weeks back?
It seems that Roland had more than a journalistic interest. He's advocating for the deal to get FCC-approved because there's a lot at stake for him and, in his words, all POC-owned media concerns.
So Soo arranged for multiple kickbacks with Roland, giving him multiple cross-platform crossovers with his own properties, and we’re just finding out about this?
Did Roland hope he could become another Armstrong Williams?
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19 hours ago, lanman said:
I'll also add this, since it was brought up. How much of a big deal is the Wendy Bell fiasco in 2023? It's been 2 and a half years since she was taken off the air at KDKA Radio. I don't follow her, I don't know if she's still on broadcast radio/TV or just on the internet. She's never going to be back on KDKA anything, ever. I would think by now many people have largely forgotten about her time on KD. I could be wrong, though, as I don't actively follow her.
This is an aside, of course. Back to the main topic.
KDKA radio carries a format where the hosts are likely to say outrageous things. It wouldn’t have mattered if KDKA radio and TV were under the same umbrella, but they are not, and it’s a brand sharing with underlying liabilities. So of course KDKA-TV is going to remove the call letter branding and go by “CBS Pittsburgh”. It’s the path of least resistance.
All this could have been avoided, by the way, if CBS ordered Entercom to change KDKA’s calls when it was sold. Sinclair made KOMO radio do just that when it was sold to Lotus, so nothing is sacred.
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28 minutes ago, lanman said:
On KDKA's "KDKA 2.0" special last night, Wendy McMahon emphasized the brand equity of the call letters, so hopefully that means they're not going anywhere.
It’s a brand that is shared with a now-unrelated AM station that created a PR nightmare for channel 2 when Wendy Bell was flapping her gums. “KDKA” became a liability then and it will when one of the other talkers on the AM station says something incredibly stupid and inflammatory.
14 minutes ago, Georgie56 said:
Consider the fact that KPIX is branding by their calls outside of news hours. No reason why KDKA and WJZ couldn’t.KPIX didn’t have a radio station sharing the callsign. That’s really why they kept the KPIX name for now. (WJZ will assuredly be doing the same as WJZ-FM doesn’t use the calls in their branding, but just have the equally boring black box logo.)
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33 minutes ago, mre29 said:
So here's a question I just thought of: If the deal falls through (as it should), what happens to the sale of Standard Media's stations (KBSI/WDKA, WLNE, and KLKN) to Coxpollo and Coxpollo's WFXT to Standard Media? Is that deal strictly contingent on the larger Tegna deal, or does Apollo have its own reason to sue SG for breach of contract?
It’d be hilarious if Apollo sued Soo. (Try to say that three times fast!)
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KXTA is getting a rebrand? That’ll be interesting.
Also the comment about “the star (in KTVT’s logo) is certainly the closest that we have to a logo across the group” by CBS’s VP for brand strategy and development… and it’s being RETIRED… that should really tell you something.
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19 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:
Given all the crap he's pulled, between his past ripping apart of companies, Sinclair-level shell company tactics, and shameless exploitation of historically marginalized groups as a shield against any and all criticism, he frankly deserves to lose the case.
Tegna as it has been in the past few years has been a mess, as a few people here have pointed out, but would letting the company fall into the hands of a Machiavellian bankster be any better for the stations involved?
Tegna has every right now to terminate the deal and sue him for breach of contract because the FCC issued this HDO. The buyout agreement actually contains that provision.
h/t @Samantha
QuoteSection 8.1 Termination or Abandonment. Notwithstanding anything in this Agreement to the contrary, this Agreement may be terminated and abandoned at any time prior to the Teton Merger Effective Time, whether before or after the Company Stockholder Approval (except as otherwise provided in this Agreement), only as follows (it being understood and agreed that this Agreement may not be terminated for any other reason or on any other basis): ...
(c) (i) by either the Company or Parent, if an Order by a Governmental Entity of competent jurisdiction in the United States shall have been issued permanently restraining, enjoining or otherwise prohibiting the consummation of the Teton Merger and such Order shall have become final and nonappealable or (ii) by the Company or Parent, if the FCC issues a Hearing Designation Order with respect to the Teton Merger or the transactions contemplated by the Contribution Agreement; provided, however, that the right to terminate this Agreement pursuant to this Section 8.1(c) shall not be available to a party if such Order was primarily attributable to the material breach by such party of any representation, warranty, covenant or other agreement of such party set forth in this Agreement; …So basically, Soo has next to no leverage against Tegna despite his huffing and puffing and crying and whining. They hold all of the relevant cards now.
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6 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:
I'm really surprised that the the order sending it up to the alj judge didn't specifically call out the ownership structure. There is precedent for attributing interests in many areas of the law, especially tax and securities law. If you own 10% of a company, your wife owns 10%, and each of the three kids own 10%, in many contexts the losses you own 50%.
I don't care whether Apollo has any saying direct day-to-day management or not, they still have a say by virtue of where they are parking their money and the profit they will be making from the Tegna stations in markets where they double up. They should not allow this deal simply based on that.
Rosenworcel didn’t explicitly say it in the order, but the retransmission fees mention does come off as addressing objections from the telecoms, in which they interpreted Apollo and SG as jointly benefitting from higher cable bills. All an ALJ needs to do is see the evidence and come to the conclusion this was an attempt to collude and game the system.
I’m taken aback by Soo bullying the FCC to vote on the deal. He’s given the D commissioners every reason in the book now to vote “no”, so it’ll fail in at least a 2–2 tie. Is he hoping for it to fail so he can litigate and cry that the system is prejudiced against him? Or is he consumed by delusions of grandeur? Or both??
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Incredibly, Soo is yelling at the FCC to vote on the deal anyway instead of sending this to an ALJ. Because that’s exactly what you should do, said no one ever.
Quote"A decision delayed is a decision denied," Standard General’s Managing Partner Soo Kim said in the statement. "Our proposed transaction is consistent with all FCC regulations and precedent. It is bolstered by a voluntary commitment to invest in local news, preserve newsroom jobs, and address purported concerns related to consumer pricing. But rather than rule on the transaction’s merits, as the law requires, the Media Bureau is attempting to scuttle the deal by ordering a wholly unnecessary hearing process, that if left standing by the Commission, would kill the deal.”
Bullying the FCC chairperson to vote for your deal when she tacitly rejected it in the ALJ order might be THE ultimate galaxy brain move.
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1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:
I'll bet you 50 bucks the next sports push Nexstar makes for the CW is gambling-related!
Poker After Dark reruns from 2008 should be available on the DFS Program Exchange
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41 minutes ago, TheRob said:
Looks like Greg Norman thought “Fool Us” was the CW’s slogan and not a show that actually airs on the CW.
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8 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:
To be fair, if Gigi Sohn’s nomination to the FCC Commissioners’ Board hadn’t been held up in the Senate for the better part of two years, the deal probably would have been denied anyway based on the conflicts and the related intertwining of Apollo’s existing interests in Cox Media Group and its proposed interests in Tegna.
Here's the thing. This deal would have failed anyway with or without Gigi: a 2-2 deadlock still sinks the deal.
Standard General and Apollo had one full year to get this right. Either party could have offered to divest market conflicts in Atlanta, Seattle and Jacksonville. Apollo could have asked the deal be amended so they don't get WFAA, KHOU, etc. Standard could have offered Graham an olive branch and their pick of a station or offered them a stake in the company. Soo could have shown the bare minimum of humility and self-awareness instead of saying the same boilerplate talking points over and over again.
This is a textbook case of how NOT to conduct an M&A. Soo came off as a belligerent novice in the field of business that for some inexplicable reason previously managed to merge Young, LIN and MediaGeneral out of existence.
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New CBS O&O Look Coming Soon?
in Graphics
Posted
A half-hearted rebranding that happened 15 years ago is not really applicable in the present day.
NBC-WBTS was a nightmare mess of a station until they got to piggyback on the WGBX spectrum, and even then, they downgraded going from "NBC Boston" to "NBC 10 Boston" (10 of what?). WFXT was taken over by ownership that knew nothing about the Boston area and they sabotaged themselves.
They're already pushing "WBZ News on CBS News Boston" both visually and contextually. It is very likely that the brand is slowly going to be phased out on a gradual basis until it is ultimately retired soon. The channel number is gone already.