mrschimpf

Could be limited-framing on purpose to hold back all the bells and whistles and the other part of the set once the season actually starts.

In that case, has to be to get a 'big number' for The Big Leap. Even though "La Brea" seems to be the bona-fide 'winner' of the always-shaky 'America's #1 Rated New Show' title in the first week of the season (and as usual it has Nickelback 'someone actually likes this?' Syndrome), Fox seems to want to add some spare viewers to the pilot cumulative number for The Big Leap. It helps that nobody no longer cares about fast nationals and more about the 1 week/3 week/month cume as a true mark of success.

Nothing is going to change with any Univision station until the Televisa sale closes (if it does, of course). They also have coverage gaps in the market due to systems preferring the revenue the local breaks the national feed offers for them over WQHS carriage, so that would also have to be addressed.

Watching The National Desk in primetime for the first time; I think it'll take a bit to get used to the format, but things like having weathercasters in each region do the weather instead of just one guy is a unique feature, and it seems a lot more focused on basic news (with the caveat of Hunt Valley's interference) than NewsNation, which is starting to feel like HLN when they began to slip away towards 'big news only'. And while we're here; Sinclair's out of the radio business with the Seattle stations officially sold off.

Is it the same space used for Law & Crime? No station airs his shows around here (and I avoid Mediate and their sister sites because their ads are obnoxious), so I have no reference.

Gotta get that Gray trademark on everything (WBAY launched a "First Alert Fastcast on Facebook" this morning, which I'm sure Jeff Laurence loved to say )! I'm surprised the smoke alarm company hasn't challenged them for dilution despite their different industries.

Going by what it was before WRNN bought them out, this looks like a good-faith purchase; the programming statement from Allen basically says ShopHQ is gone the moment the sale goes through, and they'll try their best to restore the old Filipino/Japanese schedule. I really hope this is a good sign that RNN is beginning to realize that throwing home shopping on their stations isn't doing anything for their bottom line. And going by this last note on their website where KIKU's staff basically threw them under the bus (rightfully so), Richard French and friends will not be getting a friendly Aloha out the door from the people actually staffing the station. And for all that we feared Byron would start a court-show only network and ditch major network affiliations, he's been a good steward and been wise about where and when to put his shows on these stations otherwise.

The duplicate 'Pittsburgh's graphics throw me off; why not just have a one-use "CBSN on Pittsburgh CW" logo?

Related to this, WISN's generated ticker on ATM/GMA is also utilizing the new logo version as the between-headline divider, so it's across all of their generated logos, and likely for others that overlay the national ATM/GMA ticker. Because WISN's current logo took gloss notes from the '13 logo, having that gloss and then the flat ABC ball in the color version just clashes somehow. It's slightly less apparent with WBAY because of the more subtle gradient within their 'circle 2'.

It looks like affiliates will also be rolling out new after-break logos during network time, at least. WBAY and WISN changed theirs today.

Probably less that, more to allow it to actually air since 4 p.m. CT has seemed to become the place for live news conferences since local news is now in the 4 p.m. slot for many stations.

It's parallel to the left edge of the '4', which means it'll be used for the dynamic/moving part of the branding.

I'm wondering if they've tried to sell out their rights to other networks, and failed as their program mix skews very old and there's no true place they can go outside Pop. And they can't go to Rewind because they're cable-only rights.

What a waste of channel bandwidth. If there weren't 1A implications where the FCC can't kill a station based on poor content, WRNN's use of their spectrum auction funds could be considered a betrayal to the American taxpayer. You have Weigel, who used their WMLW spectrum sale to expand MeTV to wide main-channel coverage and their sister networks...good use of their money, along with WVCY grabbing full-metro radio stations from poor/terrible owners to expand their reach; don't agree with some of their views, but their heart is in the right place. Then there's WRNN and Richard French, which are wasting wide main-channel coverage in major markets on ShopHQ, infomercial feeds, and low-tier networks (not counting the ethnic networks that existed on them before purchase, which just tail along on the RNN spectrum and actually do good compared to their owner).

As we discussed the Gray fine...GCI was coming close to their 'drop dead' date of September 3 to light up KTVA again or have the license auto-cancelled. They did; although it's not noted on the network's affiliates list, 11.1 is currently running Rewind TV to keep the license going. Whether this is just for a week to warehouse the license, or just until the sale goes through eventually, is not known.

Noting that the shillfest The Balancing Act was somehow picked up by WBBM in Chicago for two episodes as late-night filler...surprised they aren't repeating ET in late night like most other stations do or just filling it with an hour of paid programming. They probably grabbed it because Montel Williams was added, but it's a 'lipstick on a pig' situation for a show which mainly fills mornings on CW/MyNet affiliates.

Update to WITI: Turns out what we thought was cancelled (Real Milwaukee) was just in mothballs for the spring and summer. Their local show will return on the 27th to fill the 10 a.m. hour. The Wendy site says Wendy then moves to noon, airing back-to-back with Nick Cannon at 1.

Will note this elsewhere...but Real Milwaukee isn't actually dead! It comes back at 10 a.m. on the 27th, now led by Rob Haswell.

Huh...that's the same one which popped up during Steelers pre-season games, so there's a change in the making for sure.

The FCC has never really specified, but going by the WPLG/WTVJ example, it can be merely a month. There was another example where Tribune wanted to buy KTVI in 2013 as part of the Local TV purchase to make the duopoly official with KPLR, and had to time the purchase to a time where KPLR was fifth; usually the CW affiliate can be purchased easily, but with KDNL in the market, they flip-flopped #4 consistently. Once KPLR had a lousy ratings month, Tribune could switch from the Local TV LMA to an outright purchase.

If they go by date of closing (June 27, 2016)...it's possible that KYES was ahead of KTBY, when Fox is in repeats and its sports output was limited to Saturday MLB games. Remember the attempted WPLG/WTVJ merger where they tried to justify that WTVJ was sixth in the market due to Univision and Telemundo, likely picking out a time where the latter two's soccer schedule was strong and just before or after the 2008 Beijing Olympics where WTVJ was at a ratings nadir.

This probably explains why WITI or KCPQ hasn't switched weather graphics from their Trib packages; why do it when the Fox Weather package would be coming after a few months anyways?

Every big network logo refresh, Wikipedia gets folks who have to be 'first' to update a logo...and then upload terrible 'point at 80s TV' screenshots, fakes, or tiny 40px versions of the 'new logo' that nobody can really use, or Logopedia-sourced garbage from those false television station wikis that think WNBC was founded by Sony or something. Trying to say 'no, ABC isn't going to revoke an affiliation because a station didn't update their logo' is like taking to a wall with them.

Another article said it was where they 'had channel space in legal states'...which makes no sense, because if that's the case, they'd be voiding their contract with Weigel to get Movies! off KLAS-DT3 and getting it on there at launch to get on the big casino screens in Las Vegas. That, or they're playing a long game with the rollout; roll it out too fast and it might catch the attention of state authorities and the FCC, then the channel has to air multiple state gambling PSAs and can't make money. And going by an uncensored "Pat McAfee Show" on the Pluto feed...yes, it'll be a bit different.

KTLA is in hot water for not giving one side of the SAG-AFTRA national elections equal time as Sam Rubin is campaigning on a certain slate, and had candidates for that side on the "Morning News". If the other side doesn't get equal time, SAG-AFTRA could redo their election and force Nexstar to pay for it.