mrschimpf

The Brewers do a lot to help stations plan for their opening day coverage too; every single year since Miller Park opened (even the first year) they were all over the place making all the TV and radio people comfortable and set in wherever they're positioned and coordinating things (alumni appearances, sausage racers, 5am lighting of the field, scoreboard playouts). Most teams do the same in their markets, and I'm sure the Braves were doing the same since the ballpark opening needed to be perfect, especially when the Cobb County funding controversy and I-85 issues are still in the news. These two Norma Desmonds definitely overthought about everything involving their liveshot and maybe could have just had the ND send off an email to the Braves with a few questions. For the most part, Opening Day should definitely be ad-libbed for most of the time and it shouldn't be as canned as these anchors think it should be.

Eh, I've read and heard much worse from radio station contest rules, especially from stations who treated having to dole them out as a minute-long announcement with utter and hateful contempt (there's nothing that ruins a day more than an awful morning host trying to make contest rules 'funny'). One of the best FCC rules of the last ten years was allowing a 'see the website' disclaimer and leaving it at that. I will admit though, I play a 'text-the-keyword' contest daily with their local TV station during sweeps. The station is very comfortably #1 in the market and it's for a trip, so it doesn't bother me as much as desperate 'please justify our purchase of Modern Family reruns by being caller #56 to win a $45.29 Jimmy John's gift certificate' contests.

I don't know where some stations will be able to commit to this; WTMJ already has their advertorial and The Real (the first thing that might stick for them in the ex-Santa Barbara timeslot since Montel) and that's it, unless they decide to give up RTM to another station and shove The List to after-Carson Daly territory. The problem is if Ben Aaron can make this work; his co-host was driven off Crazy Talk three months before its cancellation (we still don't know why but it can be inferred 'we hit the wrong demo' easily) and it basically got killed when he decided 'enough' and followed his wife to Dancing with the Stars. If he's going to do this, it has to be until May this time.

It really doesn't; most days it played like a non-aware parody of other talk shows. I only saw one interview with an actress I actually knew and they were hiring actresses as co-hosts at probably good salaries. Hopefully they can pawn off the Hollywood/Vine studio lease at a good price. It's no wonder that the moment WBAY and KWQC got their MCs moved to Gray they were easily able to justify that infomercials made more money than a late night playing of a talk show from noon.

I'm sure they're extra wounded whenever someone reminds them they're a UHF subchannel of a MyNetworkTV affiliate, rather than their heritage position because Sinclair couldn't bear to part with the latter's license.

Not related to Nexstar now, but WBAY has had their web backend switched to Gray's from the old MG system, along with iOS users having to upload new Gray-managed station apps due to Apple security issues not allowing a transfer of the existing app to Gray (it was seamless on Android). They also immediately pulled Hollywood Today Live from late night now after Friday's show now that they're not under MG/Nexstar ownership (replaced by infomercials); now it's just a matter of how long it takes before WFRV is forced to take HTL themselves (which would also replace infomercials).

As someone who watches a lot of YouTube, it's fine, although it's a bit easy to flip when something uninteresting is on. Plus, it's an escape from the worst garbage YT pushes, so the curation is appreciated. It did do one good thing, it finally killed off any hope Retro TV had of getting any stations with actual signals back; the last three of five RTV stations with actual network affiliations were Sinclair; it replaced it in Toledo, Roanoke and Reno. KEYT in Santa Barbara and WKTC in Columbia, SC are it now. The sooner their sad idea of 'retro' is gone (AKA public domain offal, bartered Canadian crime drivel and "Crosswords"), the better (and they're also holding the rights for older Doctor Who episodes, which is annoying people who wanted it on the new US BBC/ITV Britbox service that was launched today).

It's pretty much 'fill the space to the pixel' for the local ticker; font doesn't matter. And from what I've seen, the T/T bug works off the same system as the affiliate logo system; you'll never see both elements appear at the same time.

WBAY does it too, but ABC was strict in the past about 'carry it at 1/noon central' or do so the next day', which made time-sensitive episodes look out-of-date; ABC has thankfully waived that requirement since last season and now same-day tape delay is allowed.

Not helping was the garbage '43 The Block' branding (combined with an awful 'graffiti' logo), which basically screamed 'this is where your unemployed loser self watches Jerry and Maury and lousy lawyer and for-profit college ads, along with bad sitcoms'. I still remember Gaylord running these dominant regional superstations that either benefited well from the 1994 affiliate switches, or just got bungled into badly run stations when Gaylord abandoned them for the hotel business. WVTV in Milwaukee is finally recovering after being a red-headed stepchild for years over WCGV, for instance. The only issue likely would have been if "The Chew" was on a one-day delay; at least this addresses that. As long as GH and The Chew aren't broken apart it still all works and it gets that programming out of the noon-2pm CT 'pre-emption zone' that Washington loves to throw their big news conferences into; only an advertiser on SA Live is going to be sad if their gutter demonstration has to be called off a day.

6:30pm Friday on WFRV (I have to assume if the Packers were in the poor souls there would have been playing Mike Cube Theater all week in addition to their local responsibilities). You would think WPRI sent someone to Houston considering Providence is as equidistant from Foxboro as Boston, but it looks like one of the other pictures had a WPRI/WNAC cube too (and I see a WWLP cube in the FTVLive pic).

Color me surprised they're keeping Bitesize and Hollywood Today Live. It just doesn't scream 'local' but with all the money Fox has put in you have to assume they refused to just allow it to go dark (and yes, WBAY still carries it for now despite going Gray).

Already preparing for the inevitable announcement that those so-called 'capital bureaus' to get the merger approved are cut to death when the FCC isn't looking. The good news though; so far, they're sticking to the websites (Gray is keeping the MG sites for now with their logo in the bottom bar). With everything so connected to backends and apps these days it's going to take a while before we see KRON move to 'prideofthegoldengate.com' or something ridiculous. That, and LIN/MG is leagues better than anything they have, so hopefully their tech propagates to the other Nexstar stations.

All the transactions with Nexstar, along with the Alaska deal, have closed...just in time for them to be involved in Gray's carriage dispute with Dish Network, which thankfully ended an hour ago with zero pullings. To say that would have been an embarrassing way to ring in new ownership is putting it lightly.

I'm guessing it's more of a 'few people actually look at that' thing than anything; there's still plenty of Bank Gothic baked into some of their station promos at times. They still even use an element of the 2001 set for charity phone banks, but most of their efforts lately have been to clean up more outside the building and the lobby and make it look more like a TV station building near Marquette than a warehouse like it used to. And they keep everything, judging from Mark Baden posting a picture a few days back of old set-pieces dating back from the 80's and into the 90's (along with the "slanted-12abc" frontpiece for the anchor desk that was replaced two years ago).

Jeremy Nelson, weekend/fill-in meteorologist at WISN-TV announced on Facebook he's becoming chief at WJCL/Savannah, Hearst's newest owned station (and a WISN sister) at the start of February. Definitely a well-deserved promotion for him.

Another issue is that DCP's shows (including the awards shows) have been in a static state since the man himself died, still using Impact and Helvetica-like graphics (the Golden Globes won't change their look no matter what), and now hitching minutes of airtime to inane sponsors like Planet Fitness and whatever that sparkling wine was that replaced Korbel. It took them a decade to replace the old NYRE theme with something that already sounded dated the moment it was played. They keep Jenny McCarthy on despite the apathy/controversy she brings, Fergie is still hosting from Hollywood each year and in 2017 those segments are still taped before the holidays even though it would be much better live (Fifth Harmony broke up during the holidays. It was awkward to see them like they weren't about to go at it on Twitter the moment Camila Cabello's contract ended and yet...'watch their last performance together' said cheerily). It isn't 1987 any longer. Get with the times. To top it all off, the New Orleans countdown didn't get screwed up, but someone had the bright idea to put a nice new LG flatscreen with the show logo on in the background during a heavy rainstorm. Great job literally watching that $2,000 investment wash into a rain gutter as the pixels died one by one behind Demi Lovato. The other thing is the Times Square organization put on a better livestream this year than ABC did over-the-air. Rachel Platten was doing a great job with plenty of preparation on the stream and you can hear it in the background on ABC while Ryan was blabbing about nothing to DNCE and more Jenny McCarthy garbage. I flipped to the Org stream because I wanted to see her much more, and it was better than any network was able to put on. NYRE is basically hitting the same peak Guy Lombardo did, and they need to improve or else they'll be like MTV; out of the game and in a Ridiculousness marathon no sane person will watch. But there's also the wonderful trainwreck that is Chicago Rising from WMAQ. Well-produced for the most part, but with obvious 'here for the check' Chicago "Dick Wolf"-verse stars hosting, the blandest talent/bands ever, and hilariously tone-deaf segments like a person making a difference in poor neighborhoods being introduced during a very ritzy party, awkward Corona Extra drop-ins, the CEO of Corona's parent company leading the Chicago countdown, and all the complete live shot d**ches you could ever dream of in the backgrounds of parties. It was terrible, but still much better than NYRE for me this year.

Plus I've noticed that the CNN content (which is inanely part of the station Twitter feeds and has terrible headline writing) is severely edited down and never flags as coming from CNN any longer. And I'm not a fan of the entire 'read half the story and here comes the ad takeover' thing that has suddenly become popular.

So this basically is on par with what WKBW did in their most dire days before Scripps bought them, sub-contracting out master control to a company in Atlanta, but also reducing redundant news personnel. WNWO also hasn't switched to HD yet, so this is one way to finally get that done. It can only help; WNWO has been cursed since the Overmeyer days and with WDIV easily available in Toledo they've always had an uphill battle. The eight month carriage dispute with Buckeye where nobody batted an eye and demanded the station back also didn't help at all. Sinclair tried, but like Raycom, Malrite and Barrington before it, the station just will never move out of last place.

The parade's WGN coverage is getting a commercial-free WGN America simulcast tomorrow; I assume someone on the local side had some sway in finally getting some time from the America folks.

The problem was Journal tried to 'bureauize' WGBA as mostly run out of Milwaukee rather than having it stand on its own, which it was doing just fine pre-Journal, if not a full-throated effort (it pretty much matched WDJT's trajectory), and they really didn't spend a lot (until 2016 it was almost ran like it was in 1996 outside of paint and wallpaper coats on the set and LCD's replacing CRT's). It just stunted the heck out of them and come the Dark Ages of 2009 when it was run nearly in full out of Capitol Drive and the Milwaukee morning show was aired to no interested eyeballs and an all-infomercial afternoon, there was no point to doing more. I'm just glad Scripps is doing something to differentiate it from TMJ.

Yup, that PR offal got pushed onto WFRV's social channels and web too. The minimum I ask out of a broadcast group is to keep their CEO out of the news unless it involves death or a scandalous outing; Sinclair doesn't even do it, but Nexstar is like 'he's a pioneer!'. Surrre he is.

Someone got ALL the use out of that "2,500 fonts for $9.99" disc they picked up at Wal-Mart . And every darned effect they could find in their graphics machine. For me though, the ad for "96.9 KYSC FM" did it for me. Not even using the correct format KISS FM has, and not using the KISS FM brand name to make sure Clear Channel didn't discover it...yeah, that's real genius there. OMG, Crystal Bee split in half at the end of her weathercast! I hope she's OK...seriously, what A/V club failure thought doing that was a good idea?!

Likely part of the changes which resulted in Way Too Early being merged into First Look and becoming Morning Joe First Look. It used to both shows were produced together, but the 4am local news trend kind of switched up things which couldn't make that work as well (and because WTE became a pointless albatross without Willie hosting).

It also leads into primetime so numbers are going to be definitely better than the other stations where it's in mid-afternoon, and WTMJ has nothing to lose since it's basically a race to second with Wheel on WDJT leading everything, while WISN and WITI have their infotainment shows that are quickly losing mass appeal. It also helps that WTMJ is now a 'hard news first' operation on both sides of the camera rather than the tabloid Berra era, and of course...Packers coverage. On the nights Larry McCarren isn't holding court by himself or with Mike McCarthy pre-empting it, that alone keeps viewers coming in rather than 'today's viral idiot of the day'.