SS8609

No, a courtesy. But if the FCC were to somehow impose the degree of which stations can serve the public interest to such an extent, it would likely result in the scenario I mentioned where after the late night shows conclude, the stations will simply defer to their network's overnight news feed, and it's important to note that the Big Three already have their own streaming news channels now on IPTV (ABC News Live, CBS News Streaming, NBC News Now).

Yes, I am aware that iCrime airs on the weekends on KTXH as filler material between E/I and movie or sports programming (primarily content that previously aired on KIAH before The CW added sports), thank you for the input @H-Town TV Fan! It also wouldn't shock me if it and Court Cam are being used as filler on KPRC overnight before weekdays to make up for NBC not having an overnight news program to fill the dead space between Late Night and Early Today (as KPRC does with Byron Allen-distributed programming, Funny You Should Ask being one such example). Ideally, the networks would be wise to simulcast their national news streaming platforms in the graveyard slot, as KPRC does in the 1 a.m. hour with Top Story, if not for the fact that some network affiliates (particularly in smaller markets) might fill the space with other syndicated filler to compensate for there not being a fifth or sixth station in a given market, and also given the instant $$$ some get airing infomercials in this period. It would also be nice for stations to use the dead space to do a "sign-off" legalese after the last scheduled non-infomercial or non-overnight news program of the day + a "sign-on" before the early morning newscasts, but even though Gray and Nexstar have done so, others probably won't do that either unless the FCC or NAB/NCTA find a way for broadcasters to effectively serve the public interest in harmony with the Constitution (which itself rendered the Television Code moot in the early 80s). And even there, with 200+ streaming channels, services, etc. these days (though some I would say are relatively useless, particularly on linear cable), that would be an onerous task for any broadcaster to fill.

Not to mention the painful, crushing injury a player may get on the field (though since high school football players for the most part are minors save for a few older kids, that may be controversial since some news orgs have policies against releasing the names of minors without permission). As for using iCrime as a buffer, that isn't surprising since it is for the most part filler programming just like most if not all of Trifecta's syndication product.

TEGNA is probably waiting on the syndication market to improve before they even consider the possibility of turning KTBU into a true independent similar in format to what KUBE was before it chose to go "shopping". Also important to note that Houston's sports media landscape is for the most part secure as the Astros and Rockets took over AT&T SportsNet and turned it into Space City, the Texans probably have a long-term deal with KTRK for the long haul and have for years, and the Dynamo are exclusive to Apple (for now). They may get a shot at the NHL should Space City pass them up (which may not be likely given Tilman Fertitta is the runaway favorite to own Houston's eventual NHL team and will likely want it on Space City, even if it means relegating them to a secondary feed at times). As for what team is most likely to be poached by TEGNA for a sports broadcasting deal, I would say the Rockies are the favorite since they can use the closing of AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain as an opportunity to acquire the Rockies rights and build KTVD around the Rockies (perhaps even changing the calls to something more suitable), as opposed to fighting for airtime with the Nuggets and Avs on Altitude even though the overlap between MLB and NBA/NHL is relatively minimal since the start of the baseball season coincides with the winter sports' playoff schedule now almost exclusively on ESPN/TNT.

Just decided to do a little channelsurfing before I go to bed: * Comics Unleashed on KHOU has a young (likely stuffed full of Jack in the Box tacos) Billy Gardell. Good, we know you eventually made it! Next… * Late Night with Seth Meyers on KPRC has Jim Gaffigan on from the beginning of last March when Trump and DeSantis were tied for the GOP presidential nomination and everyone was watching college basketball tournaments for (mostly one and done unless you’re Fairleigh Dickinson) March Madness auto bids. Next… * KTRK is airing a repeat of Live with Kelly & Mark from this morning with the lead in The Golden Bachelor. Next… * KIAH is airing a repeat of KTRK’s 10pm news. Likely with the first innings of a baseball game the Astros just won over the Mariners. Next… * KRIV is airing Person, Place or Thing. Wouldn’t be shocked if this is doing the most well at midnight even if the ratings are hashmarks considering the weak syndication market and the strikes (one of which thankfully just ended). Which more than justifies sister station KTXH airing a repeat of the Isiah Factor Uncensored that aired 90 minutes prior on the mothership. It’s Hump Day on the last week of September. This is not even close to a dream. Just waiting on the nanny from The Nanny to make a deal…

Except WISC, WKBT and WBKB are all CBS on the primary end and WJFW is NBC and licensed to a city in the northern reaches of the Wausau market. Though it is not impossible to envision such a scenario as WBOY in Clarksburg, W.V. was NBC in an otherwise all-CBS West Virginia Media Holdings prior to the Nexstar buyout (and ironically the only station to lead its market as well). But there is also the question of what happens to Rockfleet's other two stations in Bangor, Maine (ABC affiliate WVII and Fox LPTV WFVX)? Does Morgan Murphy expand into New England? Or do they sell off to Hearst which already has WMTW in nearby Portland Poland Spring?

And it wound up being roadkill for Oprah anyway. Name one station that even bothered to carry Oprah at a time other than the afternoon or early evening...especially during this period when she came to really dominate what had become a saturated talk show mine field. Or the aforementioned Crimetime After Primetime to tide them over until the strikes end, possibly at least the WGA by the end of this week or next for sure. But if anything, who misses the days of CBS News Nightwatch? Forget what eventually happened to their longtime host, but it's hard to argue that if Charlie Rose (again as I said) kept his pants zipped, his PBS interviews would likely be airing on CBS as filler.

That would be absurd. Disney is not just going to sell ABC without ESPN. Because a big chunk of ABC’s ratings are tied to ESPN and the sports department runs as one joint unit, it would be impossible to sell to Allen in this sense without causing a mass disruption of the sports media market. The most ideal situation for ABC and ESPN would be Hearst teaming with Berkshire Hathaway (just like the latter funded Capital Cities’ purchase of ABC long ago) to buy the networks and perhaps National Geographic which could be collapsed into the A&E Networks structure. I would however consider Freeform instead of FX though - since FX is still in form a Fox network at heart airing Fox repeats, even if they are no longer a News Corporation Fox entity. All that Hearst can then do is turn its ABC affiliates into O&Os along with WBAL in Baltimore (which Hearst has owned from day one in 1948), and sell most of the rest of its stations to Scripps. It’s not that Byron Allen isn’t capable of pulling off a big acquisition, but to me him acquiring a significant share of Gray and playing a key cog in further investing into the Atlanta media scene where the likes of Tyler Perry and Steve Harvey have had a sizable presence (and Allen already has links to CBS via TWC and NBC dating back to his days with Real People) would make more sense. Atlanta is already home to TWC as well and has been since day one.

It’s too bad that because of Worldwide Pants you can’t have old Tom Snyder repeats from back in the day with the iconic David Sanborn theme music. It’s also too bad that because he couldn’t keep his drawers zipped some years ago, we can’t have repeats of Charlie Rose and his own iconic theme and presentation as well. It’s even too bad it’s not anywhere close to the 2024 presidential sweepstakes - if it were, CBS could have had extended presidential coverage in the presentation of the old CBS News Nightwatch. At this point, anything is better than continuously rerunning James Corden. I’d even go with a reboot of Crimetime After Primetime at this point just to kill time until the damn strikes end! Except I think it’s baloney. Antenna TV should just suck it up and make a deal with NBC to air Carson repeats as they originally aired - complete with the Ed McMahon intros and Carson’s monologues. Especially since a lot of their affiliates are NBC affiliates themselves on the primary end. And for Letterman? Nexstar has Rewind TV now and they could use that to air vintage Letterman from the NBC era, maybe even the CBS era without modifications. Gen X and even elder millennial parents should have the opportunity to show their kids what comedy was like in their days. It’s not like they’re trying to rip off NBC as if the trademarks are so sacrosanct (Bud Melman/Calvert DeForest has been a bag of bones for several years now - like NBC is worried about Nexstar profiting off of airing old Letterman repeats as they were intended?).

Scripps should simply make a move on KXGN and spin off the radio stations. If anything, I think that the Billings and Glendive markets, as well as Great Falls and Helena, should be merged since KXGN and KTVQ are essentially one and the same minus the separate KXGN operations that can easily be collapsed into the Billings mothership, and which wouldn’t be any different from Cowles acquiring KYUS from the Marks estate and merging it into KULR, for which KYUS is already a semi-satellite, since KYUS’s COL of Miles City sometimes gets associated with Glendive. As for Great Falls and Helena, since CBS, ABC and Fox already have full-power signals in the former and LPTV satellites in the latter, with the reverse being true for NBC especially since the old KTGF went bye-bye in 2009, it would also make sense to combine those two as well. Nielsen can easily replace the voids where Glendive and Helena disappear by splitting Waco and Bryan-College Station into two markets, since Waco is a Baylor and Cowboys market and BCS revolves around Texas A&M and is closer to the Texans (BCS viewers also get most of the Houston stations on cable, whereas Waco has long gotten DFW stations from cable including WFAA and KERA), and also splitting off the Lewiston/Pullman and Moscow areas into one market with KLEW and KWSU. This could, however, result in some interesting circumstances in the Palouse with Daystar’s KQUP potentially either attempting to move north to Spokane or sell off to a commercial operator such as Cowles or Morgan Murphy with intentions to expand one of the Spokane stations to a semi-satellite of either KHQ or KXLY (and both groups already control the NBC and ABC duopolies in central Washington). And in Waco, there would be no PBS station, which may prompt KERA or KLRN (or perhaps even Baylor which long abandoned KWBU) to look at buying or converting a station to a PBS satellite in central Texas. And if Puerto Rico becomes a state, Nielsen can accommodate the vast San Juan market - likely to be in the top 25 or at least the top 30 - by collapsing Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, whose stations somewhat feed off one another corporate-wise, into one market. This could trigger some potential sales here though as well as terrain issues given that both Shenandoah Valley markets are split by the Blue Ridge mountains and Shenandoah National Park, though combining the two may give ABC/ESPN more market leverage for ACC football telecasts involving UVA, maybe not as much as Roanoke with Virginia Tech, but certainly just as much or more so than smaller SEC markets like Columbus, Ga. (Auburn) or Columbus, Miss. (Mississippi State). Of course, this all remains speculation, but it could very well be a possibility down the line.

But it looks like KPRC did pick up Fast: Home Rescue off of The Weather Channel for the 1AM hour late Sunday night. The ET weekend hour (now airing at 1AM late Saturday night) will still re-air afterwards at 2AM when all of H-Town is asleep to prep for the morning commute…

Some additional observations from Houston on the purgatory known as non-sports weekend programming… At KPRC, Impractical Jokers is DONE, and their usual time slots this coming Saturday are listed on Xfinity and TVPassport as “To Be Announced”. The Saturday schedule has the weekend Entertainment Tonight run airing at 1:02am and Byron Allen’s The American Athlete running at 2:30am - on BOTH late Saturday AND late Sunday night. A new locally produced foodie show, Eat Like a Local from noted Houston chef Chris Shepherd, will re-air Sunday night following their long-running Sports Sunday; this program will primarily air at 10am Saturday mornings between KPRC’s Saturday morning filler newscasts and various NBC sports and E/I programs. KHOU remains virtually unchanged save for The Equalizer replacing the now canceled Magnum P.I. on the CMV weekend block, slotted at 12:30am Saturday night and 1:30am Sunday night between fellow CMV warehouse stablemate SEAL Team and non-CMV Murdoch Mysteries repeats from the CBC. And at KIAH, much like fellow truTV import Impractical Jokers, The Carbonaro Effect is also DONE, as the weekend reruns of The Big Bang Theory will take the Sunday night 1am slot. Pawn Stars and Storage Wars remain where they are now in the 2am and 3am hours, and Major Crimes appears to be airing in the Saturday night 2am slot instead of a run of PS. The rest of the weekend outside of CW, CW Sports, a few local shows, Nexstar must-runs and some smaller-tier HBCU football games will be a hodgepodge of movies and reruns, but after some 25 years or so Friends will not be one of them. Call this year The One Where We Got Kicked Out of Houston…“We” referring to those six lovable roomies from a now-bygone era lounging on the couch at Central Perk. No significant weekend changes at KTRK, KRIV or KTXH.

If WKMG’s sister station in Houston (KPRC) is any indication, the weekend edition of ET will probably air right before WKMG flashes over to the CBS Overnight News since KPRC (which ironically was WESH’s sister station under the ownership of the Hobby family and even once shared WESH’s “2” logo that originated at KPRC in 1985) airs it at midnight late Sunday following the 10pm news as well as Sports Sunday, The Texas Bucket List and The Winning Walk (Dr. Ed Young’s sermons from Second Baptist Church in Houston). As for WFTV passing on ET and choosing to air Court Cam, there is basically no room there since they’re not giving up Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! anytime soon, also considering it’s a cornerstone affiliate of ABC (along with WSB and WSOC) which already carries its celebrity and million-dollar championship editions in primetime and will be doing so as long as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are feuding with the executives and AMPTP. And that’s another thing, also considering Disney’s outsized economic role (and also role as a political punching bag) in central Florida as well as Court Cam being off-net from a quasi-sister network (A&E) co-owned with WESH’s parent company. Also, on another note KRON is about to gain some leverage in the college sports ad wars on the weekends in the Bay Area - the ACC just voted to accept Cal and Stanford into their conference along with SMU in Nexstar’s home base of DFW beginning in 2024.

From Houston... KPRC (Ch.2/NBC): The 11am news moves to 10am with Hoda & Jenna's part of Today moving to the former timeslot. There will also be a new 3pm news with the ET rerun following after. Funny You Should Ask airs a double-run in the 2am hour, followed by Court Cam at 3am and iCrime at 3:30am. KHOU (Ch.11/CBS): No changes. KTRK (Ch. 13/ABC): No changes. KTXH (Ch.20/a certain zombie "network"): 48 Hours enters syndication at 11am after The 700 Club. Judge Judy reruns at 1pm, a game show block from 3pm-5pm - Who the Bleep is That?, Pictionary, 25 Words or Less and People Puzzler, three straight hours of Family Feud after that, and The Simpsons at 9pm followed by Access Hollywood are the only highlights. Both the Isiah Factor Uncensored and The Nightcap will rerun at midnight at 1am after first running on the main KRIV (see below) at 10:30pm and 11:30pm, respectively. Modern Family remains at 8pm for a double run, as does the zombie MyNetworkTV feed from 10 to midnight. KRIV (Ch.26/Fox): Nothing has changed, not even the Judge Judy reruns at 4pm. TMZ will now air at 6:30pm in place of the now-departed You Bet Your Life - the first major competition to Entertainment Tonight on KPRC for the entertainment news show audience in Houston in perhaps years if not decades since ET's only competition historically has been from Wheel of Fortune and KTRK's 6pm news. An hour of Person, Place or Thing will air at Midnight following The Nightcap, with the actual first-run versions of Extra and Dish Nation airing in the hour after for insomniacs. KIAH (Ch.39/CW): A double run of Hot Bench will replace Judge Mathis in the 10am hour - the first daytime appearance of the show since KUBE (Ch.57) went shopping. And as already reported by @H-Town TV Fan, The Big Bang Theory moves from KTXH to KIAH in the 6pm hour as a rather appropriate lead-out to Young Sheldon in the 5pm hour and The Neighborhood in the 4pm hour. The rest of the lineup - including KTRK's 9pm news and CW programs including the newly moved Inside the NFL, as well as the reruns from 10pm-3am that are there now - remains unchanged save for the entire 60 minutes of The Drew Barrymore Show now airing at 3am and Judge Mathis repeats at 4am. Will check back later for what the stations will be airing on the weekend barter lots...

It's fair to say that the big winners on Saturdays come next year - local fanbases notwithstanding - will be the ABC affiliates in the South (WSB, WFTV, KTRK, WGNO) and the CBS affiliates in the Midwest (WBBM, WBNS, KCCI, KDKA) and West Coast (KCBS, KFMB, KIRO, KOIN). Fox will also get great ratings in Big 12 markets (KSAZ, KRIV, KDVR, WXIX, WDAF) assuming they are the biggest antenna broadcaster (i.e. not ESPN) in that conference, and B1G Saturday Night will be a boon to NBC affiliates in the Midwest (WMAQ, WTHR, WDIV, KARE, WCMH). If you're an ABC affiliate in the Rust Belt (WLS, WXYZ, WSYX, KETV) or a CBS affiliate in the old Confederate States of America (WANF, WIAT, WWL, WCSC, WKYT), you better have a Plan B ready for 2024. And even if CBS were to eventually get a robust piece of the Big 12 pie, KHOU may or may not get the kind of ratings for a UH game that KTRK will definitely get for a UT or A&M game, since UH may still have issues filling TDECU Stadium as opposed to DKR or Kyle Field. As for the first night of NBC B1G action, I won't be shocked if the biggest winner for NBC's first Saturday night of B1G action is WPXI, since WVU and Penn State are literally in the orbit of western PA. But it really does come down to market by market. If Wisconsin is on Saturday night for instance, WTMJ will probably get good ratings. And when UCLA and USC join, most certainly KNBC and KNSD. And that's not even counting Notre Dame games involving the B1G which certainly will get big national ratings, and most certainly explosive ones for WNDU and possibly WMAQ & even WTHR. But if one were to find a major downgrade anywhere - even in this era of max cable penetration and streaming - it would be in Bryan/College Station. The SEC will be going from full-power KBTX to low-power KRHD. Not that it matters since whichever outlet is airing the Aggies - broadcast or cable - will win Saturday anyway, regardless of whatever game ABC does air on its SEC package.

Until the WGA and SAG strikes are over, Jay Leno is pausing production on YBYL in solidarity with the workers. Some will argue that the writers and actors did it to themselves and could care less if Hollywood sinks into the ocean, while ignoring the FACT that Americans of all political stripes would identify more with the everyday writers and others than with the execs who are more hated whether from a left ("Hollywood executives are too greedy!") or right ("Hollywood executives are too woke!") perspective. At one point, they will have to break bread because it's hard to imagine a situation where we're perpetually watching unscripted programming (some deliberately made to fill voids in the fall schedule) or repeats of Hallmark movies well into the Christmas season. And for the record, as cliche as it sounds, Fox affiliates (especially O&Os) are on a better footing from a syndication perspective than the others. The others have to literally replace Dr. Phil, some of the non-Byron Allen courtroom shows and maybe at least one or two of the off-net shows that are no longer in production (Magnum P.I.?) for which The Conners is apparently the only newcomer.

As long as Donald Trump is doing something weird or in court, Biden has another presser on Ukraine, Mitch McConnell is on death watch and the threat of "hot hot heat" (and I don't mean an indie rock band) or "return of COVID" looms, expect daytime breaking news alerts to become the network norm unless syndication somehow regains its luster - of which it hasn't at least unless you're a Fox O&O (Sherri, J-Hud, YBYL, TMZ), ABC O&O (Live!, Tamron Hall) or carry Wheel of Fortune and/or Jeopardy! Nothing yet for the greatest city in the world (and it's not the one Alan Kalter talked about every night post-9/11)...maybe my fellow Houstonian @H-Town TV Fan can fill me in with what he has about Houston since it's been awhile since I last commented on here! Only change of note - whoop-de-doo - is that "Houston Life" on KPRC got a new co-host (Tessa Barrera from radio rocker KTBZ's long-running "Rod Ryan Show"). Given that KTRK calls themselves "The Most-Watched Streaming Local News Channel in America", I'm shocked they still have the news on the linear channel 13 at 6:30 p.m. Guess they're waiting for Ryan Seacrest to take over before they pounce on taking Wheel of Fortune from KHOU, even though the latter is going to remain with TEGNA (for now) since the Standard General deal (and resale to Cox of KHOU + WFAA + KVUE) got called off.

Seems to be mostly a Fox thing, at least in Houston where all the tabloid shows sans ET and Inside Edition are on KRIV (KPRC airs the former of the last two, KTRK the latter). And even so, some of these programs air in the wee hours of the morning or get jettisoned to KTXH because of all the talk shows (Kelly Clarkson, J Hud, Sherri) + You Bet Your Life that air first-run on KRIV. At least KRIV is airing the block of talk shows with the celebs as opposed to KIAH which airs the obvious mixture of first run and repeat "Trash TV" shows out of the Multimedia Studios USA NBCU stable.

And talk about a waste of valuable TV real estate space at 11:30 a.m. - today airing an infomercial about a certain supplement from the waters of New Zealand once promoted by the late primetime star of a certain cable network based in Atlanta (hint: it's the one that promised at launch to be on until the world ended)! They could have used the hour either to broadcast a full hour of Atlanta & Company or even an additional hour of news, but they obviously didn't. All things said, this is pretty much a side effect of the malaise TEGNA stations are having while the Soo Kim takeover remains in waiting. It's also important to note that if Soo Kim actually had the carte blanche to do his actual intentions that he likely is hamstrung from doing under the current FCC, which would have been a full Standard General-TEGNA-Cox merger, WXIA would have been collateral damage anyway because in this scenario Soo is NOT giving up WSB at any cost. Name one person in Atlanta who sees the pretzel logic in Soo acquiring WXIA and/or even WATL... Eager to see that reboot, but I'm still waiting for What's My Line? to come back...Pair it with a syndicated offering of To Tell the Truth (30 minutes, not exactly one hour like the ABC reboot) and I'm chipper!

It is the same thing in Houston with KPRC on Saturdays at 6:30 PM, where unless Notre Dame or another NBC Sports property had an event going on, they would default to airing an infomercial advertising auto insurance from AAA or a real estate presentation show hosted by former KHOU anchor Lily Jang. As for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, I'd be open to the shows utilizing a checkerboard pattern where one market airs Jeopardy! first and another adjacent market airs Wheel of Fortune first, one example being that WABC would air J! followed by Wheel as they do now while WPVI would do the reverse instead of following WABC. However, I do not expect this to happen without significant blowback, especially considering WPVI historically took the mantra of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" very seriously (as in continuing to use hand-drawn weather maps well after home computers became quite the necessity) when it came to Action News.

Except CBS sold their Austin outlet (KEYE) long ago to the same PE firm (Cerberus) notorious for not saving Chrysler in the Great Recession...

Only mentioning if NBC wanted to pull the trigger early, but it's fair to say asides from New Amsterdam (thanks for your reminder) there isn't much for NBC to cut or outsource to Peacock if they were to make the move. Also depends on what CBS intends to do going forward with its blocks. If Dick Wolf wanted to go with dominating two of the four networks on one night he could, but he could very well be like Oprah Winfrey and not have his shows cannibalizing each other. If CBS keeps the FBIs on Tuesday and he decides against counterprogramming, the Law & Orders can go on Mondays or Thursdays, depending on which night NBC wants to use for non-SNL comedy to diversify the primetime lineup instead of being just dependent on serials, sports and reality competitions, because it's hard to justify writing off the laughter when CBS and ABC haven't had much trouble lately broadcasting sustainable sitcoms post-Friends & Frasier. On an unrelated note, I do miss the Cancel Bear...

The way I see this, I think NBC would be wise to make this move partially, especially given the leverage Dick Wolf has now with two of his three signature franchises (Chicago and Law & Order; FBI is on CBS) buoying much of NBC's serial street cred and filling three hours each night. If NBC does go through with this, I see this happening: Friday and Saturday nights for sure will be truncated to two hours, especially given what little leverage the affiliates have now to broadcast local news especially due to Saturday Night Live and the impending college football deals (likely ACC and Big Ten with the existing Notre Dame a potential fold into the latter given the allure of an annual rivalry with Northwestern). NBC could then use Friday to program Dateline and movies or specials when live sports (college football, NASCAR, Olympic trials, etc.) is not a factor. It would also give the local affiliates more carte blanche to resolve whatever local news challenges they may have (at least compared to CBS and especially Fox affiliates). For example, KPRC in Houston airs a high school football program in between 15-20 minutes of the 10pm news and The Tonight Show, and with NBC dropping one hour of primetime, it would most likely expand the high school football program to a full half-hour at 10 p.m. with KPRC airing a full 9 p.m. newscast - all while keeping The Tonight Show to air on time at 10:30 p.m CT. Emphasis on Saturday nights, I shall mention that newscasts on this night are usually the least important. Borrowing a quote from @mrschimpf on the TEGNA thread, "governments are closed, the crime roll is shorter, and it's packed with stories where you basically have to get people out to go to festivals and funruns, and network/corporate must-runs, along with weekday junk you want to burn off ahoy". Though I do have to disagree with @mrschimpfabout Houston (where crime seems to make a bigger percentage of the A-block on weekends, if not for the historical role Houston's Fox O&O (KRIV) indirectly played in launching COPS for Fox). While I would expect more of the same (as in TWICE if not THREE times the amount of filler content), it would still be better than doing what KPRC has been doing for the most part in Saturday prime access which has usually been to air an infomercial or real estate presentation show usually associated with weekend mornings (though their post-SNL block of Texas Music Scene and Texas Eats is legit). A Saturday night interview program would work wonders, though, as would a sort of local version of SNL possibly involving local college students. And that's another thing - if KING wanted to bring back Almost Live! (sensing that midnight in Houston when SNL signs off is 10pm in Seattle), this would be almost the perfect opportunity to do so. If Dick Wolf wants to play hardball, the network should simply give him Wednesdays and either Tuesdays or Thursdays for his franchises. That leaves (assuming they do get renewed) La Brea and Quantum Leap for serials. Monday may be too important of a day to lighten up, so I'm guessing Tuesdays will be the day to shed an hour along with Friday and Saturday since three days without 10/9 programming may be too much for NBC's own liking if they were to go the partial route. If Tuesdays are shed to two hours, Law & Order can air on either Mondays or Thursdays, and La Brea and Quantum Leap can go to Tuesdays. Whatever remnants of NBC's non-SNL comedy offerings do exist can go in the spare three-hour block, with a new serial or unscripted program not named Dateline filling the third if not also the second hour as well. Either way, whatever comedies do get greenlit will have to compete with Chuck Lorre's comedy empire at CBS - Bob Hearts Abishola on Mondays, Young Sheldon on Thursdays. As for unscripted shows, just like non-sports Saturdays can be used to air game shows in the same way ABC does on Sunday nights during the summer, NBC can use the post-Sunday Night Football period on Sunday nights to carry The Voice and America's Got Talent, provided those don't go the way of Dancing With the Stars (in other words, moving to Peacock like what just happened to Days of our Lives and eventually Late Night with Seth Meyers). If NBC does go through with two hours across the board save for live sports on the weekends, Dick Wolf's franchises will have to be spread across three nights, most likely with the Chicago franchise taking turns to fill 36 weeks and crossover specials being limited to Sunday Big Events not unlike what NBC used to air in the halcyon "Loud as a Peacock" days under Fred Silverman, and also perhaps with Law & Order: SVU being moved to Fridays and paired with Dateline that would give the "Friday night death slot" a whole new meaning - as in a sort of scripted/unscripted, female-oriented true crime escapism that would compete with CBS's older-skewing Friday night serial block. Do note that NBC will want to debut at least one if not two new hours of programming every year as opposed to eventually ending up with a stale programming block. The big wild card in all this is the Capital One College Bowl, which usually airs around this time. More than likely, should NBC go forward with it after this year assuming it too doesn't end up on Peacock, this program would remain on Fridays before Dateline during the period between August and October, with NBC likely airing either an expanded Dateline or a serial such as the aforementioned Law & Order: SVU in the 8/7 slot. CORRECTION: Thanks for reminding me @NowBergenthat New Amsterdam is ending next year. Forgot about that...

Well if this deal is headed for a fall, Pelosi has until the new year since it's very likely that the Congress (or at least the House) is going to flip to the Republicans. In other words, expect an M&A scenario similar to what existed in the Trump era where you had Sinclair, Nexstar, etc. going on a buying binge, and perhaps not unlike during most of the Obama years where Sinclair began to mushroom. Rather interesting that Black and women advocacy groups have had some tacit interest in this merger considering the opposition from the CWA and especially over the Cayman Islands shenanigans... Prediction: If this merger fails, I see Cox likely being sold off to allegedly "more American" broadcast interests such as Hearst or Graham, though I am surprised the latter still chugs along knowing that the current MO for broadcast TV revolves around big broadcasting companies with more leverage in cable retrans negotiations.

While we're still talking about WANF/WUPA, and also considering the old CBS-Meredith contract ending in 2023 and the ongoing situation with Standard General and Apollo, I shall note of what could have been if not for the FCC + the Fed. If Cox and Tegna were to have merged together, formed a blind trust, compensated Byron Allen, whatever...CBS could have easily traded WUPA and WTOG earlier this year to the combined entity in exchange for Cox's KIRO in Seattle. This would have created the following: In Atlanta, Cox would have had a duopoly partner in WUPA that would have allowed WSB-TV to expand its Action News franchise into the morning (as in 7 to 9 am) and primetime hours, and provided not only direct competition for WANF/WPCH, but also WXIA/WATL and most especially WAGA which has pretty much cornered the market at these timeslots since December 11, 1994. (Most every other timeslot has belonged to WSB-TV since the days of kinescopes and 15-minute soap operas.) In Seattle, CBS would have had an O&O in the Pacific Northwest in KIRO, a CW affiliate with a restored news department + "Tacoma Bureau" in KSTW, and a "CBS News Seattle" streaming channel. As with Atlanta, it would also give KIRO opportunities to air newscasts directly against KING/KONG and KCPQ/KZJO. (KOMO has KUNS for their duopoly, but no direct English-language linear outlet to expand its franchise unless the FCC allows triopolies, dependent on whatever sort of "voices" test may apply.) And in Tampa, where CBS is not very likely to want WTSP given that it's apparently home to the TEGNA graphics hub (the master control hub is in Charlotte at WCNC), TEGNA would have a duopoly with WTSP/WTOG that would effectively compete with WTVT and WFLA/WTTA, and that's not even counting the possibility of WFTS making a swap with Hearst for WMOR (which is in the situation WFTS was in prior to becoming an ABC affiliate - when that station didn't even have space for a newsroom). There is a lot more of what could have been, but for now it is what it is, and the only question now, with the SEC going to ABC in a couple of years (which explains why WSB is very unlikely to want to part ways with ABC, if at all), is where does WANF go from here? Remember that the on-air graphics are effectively using the colors of the (rebuilding) Atlanta Falcons, with no telling as to how many Falcons games will indeed be flexed under the new NFL TV contracts, or even what the ratings will be compared to SEC Saturdays full of Chick-fil-A and Zaxby's tailgates (for which only the latter would be open during whatever Falcons games WAGA does not pick up on Sundays).