TVIntheDesert

Trifecta (the ones responsible for "Celebrity Page") is a "zombie syndicator." They distribute a lot of off-cable shows, but I scratch my head on how they're still in business. With the E/I rules loosened a little bit, there are other tiny companies (Telco Productions, do you read this?) who might be going extinct soon. Telco kind of uses a hybrid of the Byron Allen business model (just like Allen, their original productions are low budget) while still acquiring shows from Canada and elsewhere.

"Gary" is station owner Gary Cocola, who is the "king of Central Valley LPTVs." He leases most of those channels out to third parties.

They made the "Take Five" "newscast" from KUSK in Prescott, AZ in the '90s look professional.

In the case of KTVK, place "ET" back into its longtime home of 6:30pm (until Meredith brass decided to mess with something that had been working for decades). I would say Rachael Ray's talk show, which should have been axed in 2012. Also, has "Cheaters" produced any new episodes since its previous distributor passed away and the syndication rights were bought back by its creator?

There is no recorded evidence of this, but an LPTV in Phoenix tried to do its own local news in 1993, with News Director/anchor Jack Rebney (better known now for the viral video outtakes from a Winnebago dealers tape he did a few years prior). This was bad, but the "KDMA (K25DM) News" was probably worse. The previous Channel 53 in Fresno wasn't known for its high production values either:

INSP (and Weigel, which has been on an OTA buying spree for their diginets) know that linear TV skews toward an older audience. This might just be a start of a new trend of seeing these kinds of companies buy traditional affiliated TV outlets and turning them into something radically different, not unlike Educational Media Foundation has been doing in radio. We'll know once this reaches markets larger than Tulsa or Memphis. I'm quite surprised they didn't add Jacksonville to the sale, given how those stations tend to underperform.

Not to mention that KLSR, like most of the former Northwest stations they're offloading to INSP, doesn't have an in-house news department.

Just what I figured. WGBH's Caption Center did the Cosby captions (and used that "CC in the TV screen" logo). They were one of the "big two" closed captioning producers in 1986. Others like VITAC would come later and take away business from NCI and WGBH/TCC.

As a conservative, "family values" Republican in dark-red Forsyth County, GA -- and lost! He must have managed his campaign as well as he is managing his stations.

So, he's basically a politician. Just look at billfielder.com for proof.

Yes, they've been focused more on their cable/satellite/OTT networks (World Harvest and FETV) than running OTA stations. They've sold some, but not all, of their stations to like-minded ministry types. One of the exceptions, as you know, was selling their Denver station to what is now known as Estrella Media.

I've looked at the TV schedules for KTVK and KPHO for the next couple weeks, and it appears that they are slowly adding home-grown Gray programming ("Investigate TV" and "The Song") to the weekend lineups. No sign of the "Power Nation" automotive block yet. The Meredith mistakes of the past couple years ("People" and the like) have still yet to be downgraded or removed from the schedule. "Full Court Press" is still airing on TEGNA's KPNX overnights on Sunday morning, due to a previous syndication contract.

I highly doubt it. They're still owned by the same Pentecostal family that thinks CBS is "immoral" and "too liberal."

But they do have a point. TV stations are losing viewers fast, but want to be compensated even more every year. The NAB is ruthlessly telling their member stations to pursue that retransmission dough, even while extolling free TV options like ATSC 3.0. There's got to be a point where MSO's say "enough is enough, we're losing money."

The Casper stations were pretty much run as bottom-barrel operations prior to Coastal's purchase.

Kind of like Casper, Wyoming. Gray was basically running a news monopoly there because KTWO was a laughingstock, even before KYUR's owners bought it.

Scripps Howard was doing that with all their Fox-turned-Big 3 stations (note that KNXV launched news with the so-called "Fox attitude" when they knew they were becoming ABC). They didn't have time to change their game plan. It must have been a Pacific Northwest small market thing. I remember seeing KTVZ Bend in 1994 and thinking how low budget they were.

KPNX was #1 from the realignment until the late 2000's, as I recall them spitting out press releases up until then. Then Lin Sue Cooney left and they haven't been the same since. KPHO might be the #1 station sign-on to sign-off thanks to CBS, but KSAZ, love them or hate them, is the local news ratings leader. I've got a feeling that the market is still very hyper-competitive, with no station standing out as dominant during evenings and 10pm, while 10 has chipped away from 3's morning dominance over the past 15 years.

It's hard to tell, since KPNX doesn't brag about being number one anymore (they could be #4 now, given how TEGNA has treated all their properties, as well as their VHF OTA signal, seen as a disadvantage in the digital age. They're working to move to UHF, though). KPHO's strength is its CBS affiliation, not its news department (which benefitted by merging with KTVK, but Meredith's woes as of late might have not helped).

There are too many established entertainment news magazines out there. I imagine that the national syndication of "People TV" will be on the chopping block, and the older magazines rightfully going back to their old time slots.

Interesting point. Maybe UPN already had the contract with Channel 25 (KCNG-LP, later KTUD-LP, now completely defunct), and didn't want any breach of contract suit filed by them if they were to affiliate with KFBT. I suspect UPN would have wanted to be on KFBT instead of the low-power, which had a hard time getting on cable at first. Vegas was a strange market for Sinclair pre-KSNV. The stronger (at the time) Channel 21 decided to go with MyNetworkTV instead of The CW when all that went down 15 years ago.

The Vegas case was strange. Channel 21(KUPN -> KVWB), which was wholly owned by Sinclair, went from UPN to WB. Channel 33 KFBT, had just been sold to a company affiliated with ACME Communications (headed by then-WB president Jamie Kellner) and LMA'd to Sinclair. I think the ownership issue was the reason why they didn't pick up UPN, which ended up on low-power Channel 25.

Is it CBSN National or CBSN DFW?

Their schedule looks better today than they did under their later Media General days, when they were showing third-rate syndicated programming during network off-hours.

I see Scripps is standardizing their ABC stations to have their morning news named "Good Morning (insert city/market here)." Except that they can't do that in Phoenix because KTVK's morning show has been "Good Morning Arizona" for 25 years.