dman748

Now union members are looking into legal action against Sinclair over the layoffs https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2021/3/12/the-union-looks-at-legal-action-in-regards-to-the-sinclair-layoffs

To add further insult to injury for Sinclair, Moody's just downgraded its Diamond Sports unit yet again https://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2021/03/09/moodys-downgrades-sinclairs-sports-networks-again.html And the most troubling part of all is this quote The fact that Dish will be dropping the NBC RSNs does not give me full confidence that the Sinclair RSNs will ever be back on Dish even if Sinclair and Dish came to terms on the local stations side of things.

This 1 million times over. It really proves that in 2021, trying to start a cable channel of any genre is just not a wise idea.

I smell something similar to this happening this time around. I don't think its impossible for somebody at a Sinclair station to suffer what WPGH suffered.

I will say yes and no. It will all depend on the level of cuts Sinclair makes at the stations, I will say the ones that suffers the biggest cuts will in all likelihood see newscasts being hubbed elsewhere, those that doesn't see the biggest cuts will probably see their news department remain in tact.

Actually what I meant to say is that there are at least several Fox affiliates owned by Sinclair that fits into the WZDX type of stations I consider KDNL/WXLV to be Sinclair's equivalent of WATN/WOI without a full scale news department.

We can consider many Sinclair stations to be in that category.

Keith Taylor (a big name in the Tulsa market) got the axe, WZTV's sports department wasn't the only ones that got hit hard, the Sports department at WTVC was all but pretty much wiped out, Heather Mills, Gerard Ramalho, Jerry Brown and Amber Dixon all of KSNV all of them victims of the layoffs. There's so many of them it will be difficult to A. Mention all of the ones laid off. B. It would become a list thread. I may need to create a new message thread with you about this discussion.

On that 1st one, I think Sinclair would deserve to be hosed by the same people who hosed them for buying the RSNs in the first place. On the 2nd one I see it as a mix of Granite and Clear Channel/iHeart however I see it as more like Granite than Clear Channel as I think Sinclair is way too big for one owner to take on all 160+ stations, I see it as more like the type of deals they just recently made with KBSI/WDKA.

I can definitely see that point as well, one has to wonder where Sinclair might've been at if it weren't for Deadspin exposing them for their "extremely dangerous" script. I'm definitely going the conservative route in saying only the RSNs getting sold by Diamond as part of that network's reorganization and even with that I might've underestimated how much worse this could get in not just the weeks ahead but in the months to come.

As I said before on Discord and I will say this here as well. Honestly I think the cable TV bubble and the pay TV industry as a whole is about to burst and burst HARD. Sinclair is going to have no choice but to let the RSNs go bankrupt and reorganize itself into a new business model (it's got absolutely zero choice but to do so), they "might" sell a few stations here and there other than that Sinclair is going to have no choice but to do the layoffs and just let the RSNs go under. It's going to happen anyway.

Hate to bump up a thread that hasn't been posted in nearly a month but.. The remaining NBC RSNs are being dropped by Sling starting April 1st https://thestreamable.com/news/sling-tv-to-drop-remaining-nbc-sports-rsns-ahead-of-mlb-season We can sit there and say "Charlie is being cheap" all we want but unfortunately, like the Sinclair RSNs, him and his team are absolutely correct about the RSNs This was from a recent interview when asked about bringing the RSNs back to Sling That right there is the reason why we may never see the RSNs return to the streamers or even on cable, they need to come up with either a DTC plan or offering it to customers on an a la carte basis, so far the networks don't want to do either one and we will have to wait until '22 before Sinclair comes out with it's own DTC service.

I probably didn't read the article very well then. I thought it said something about being able to watch like games directly on that service.

Sinclair's DTC service isn't expected to launch until 2022 https://thestreamable.com/news/sinclair-wont-bring-rebranded-fox-sports-rsns-direct-to-consumer-until-2022 The fact that they're looking into making it available to even those who don't have a way to authenticate their satellite/streaming services to the RSNs is.. a rather interesting proposition here.

Or longer. Something this "easy" (in reality its hard due to logistical-related stuff) for sports leagues to figure out that cable isn't in the team's future has become extremely difficult for them and eventually, they will pay the price for that. Heck it's taken the leagues this long to realize that OTT is the future of TV

I think many sports leagues and teams are eventually going to have to consider moving to OTT. I think that the recent news about MSG possibly taking its RSNs to OTT is a good example of what I see coming to the RSN genre as a whole

I would assume that KFDX doesn't have a backup generator to keep the power at the station going. It's also possible that KFDX might not have a generator either and for a market the size of Wichita Falls, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they didn't have one at all.

Which I've been seeing promos that Live is moving to KOKH at the same time.

Not sure how we missed this but KWTV is launching a 9am newscast (competing against KOCO for news in that timeslot) beginning January 18th: But the changes doesn't stop there and I'll share more details in the 2020 syndication news thread once I find the link to it.

Or Meredith goes piecemeal. Either of the 3 will be the only way how Nexstar gets Atlanta.

Plus Kansas City (WDAF vs KCTV/KSMO). Either way there's a ton of conflicts in the Meredith deal that it only makes sense for Nexstar and Meredith to swap out each other's stations.

I had to reread the FTVLive article the 2nd time and it appears to me that uncle Perry only wants Atlanta and only Atlanta which tells me that he might be willing to depart a market or two in order to get Atlanta without needed to have the entire Meredith chain. I'm not sure Meredith is as willing to depart the broadcasting biz (other than splitting the company up into 2) as what we might have initially thought when the talks that Meredith "might" split started to prop up.

Thanks to Mr. Sloan we have more OKC TV stuff uncovered. First we go to the Station "Where the News Comes First.. 24 Hours a Day.", that's KFOR in 1992. This one is one of the 2 interesting transitional periods that took place at 444 East Britton Road throughout the 1990s and this was one of them. In this instance they have dropped "News Team 4" for "News Channel 4" but kept the same theme song they've used (at that time) since the 1990 callsign change. And yes that is Bob Bruce before he left for what is now known KSAZ in 1992. Next up, KOCO and KWTV (and yes this was during Jon Slater's first stint here in OKC prior to going up the Turner to Tulsa):

Sadly 2020 and Pancreatic Cancer just had to take another precious life away from us. KWTV Chief Photographer Greg Blackwood sadly passed away and Morning Anchor Robin Marsh posted the sad news on Facebook.

The dispute between them and the FSNs are a prime example of that. The difference between OTA stations and Cable channels is that the latter isn't as much of a "must-carry" the OTA stations are and that might explain why the Cox stations were able to get back on Dish in somewhat of a timely manner and why still over a year later the FSNs aren't on Dish.