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Nexstar...again


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1 hour ago, PhillyWatch said:

Suddenly independent WJMN will reportedly begin airing NewsNation's "Morning In America".  Interested to see if there will be an additional roll-out to stations with smaller news profiles in their portfolio to provide a morning news block.

It would be a smart addition to their netlet (especially MNTV) stations, especially if they're in markets they do not have a local morning newscast from 7-9 or already have a station doing local news at the same time....cough cough...WMYT....cough cough.

Edited by tyrannical bastard
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9 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

It would be a smart addition to their netlet (especially MNTV) stations, especially if they're in markets they do not have a local morning newscast from 7-9 or already have a station doing local news at the same time....cough cough...WMYT....cough cough.

I said the same thing on Discord about WMYT. All they would have to do is cut out a run of Divorce Court and Relative Justice and shift everything accordingly to 10am-1pm.

Edited by Nelson R.
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Not an insider here, but I live in the markets. Two more Nexstar stations are getting made over, at least on sets, but not sure about graphics.

 

Though...can't imagine why they wouldn't, seeing as what the two stations are: the other two major stations that Nexstar got from the WVMH buyout. They redid WOWK 13 in Charleston, WV. 

 

Now it's the other two stations' turn. WBOY in Clarksburg, WV, and WTRF in Wheeling, WV. One of the WTRF weather broadcasters posted some images of the old set being taken down in place of the new one

 

To me, I don't know what will come of these stations' new sets, though I'm glad to see at least Nexstar is getting rid of one of the last remnants of the WVMH days for those stations. I know the general consensus is that Nexstar's money isn't exactly burning holes in their pockets, but ANYTHING is a step up for these stations from what they had when WVMH took them over. The first package was HORRENDOUS. Not sure what they were thinking they were doing with those graphics when they had a ready made package that WOWK had that looked ten times better - and WOWK's was downgraded to that thinking that was somehow better. The HD graphics (the ones they use now) were a step up but have outlived their usefulness. I think you can see if you look at one of WTRF's newscasts that their lower thirds are a mess of things because they don't know where to put things. 

 

Not sure about the Clarksburg market and where WBOY is there, but I'm hoping Nexstar is looking at WTRF and sees how it has played second fiddle to Sinclair owned WTOV in that market for YEARS and has had to get beaten up both in ratings and in WTOV's promos always taking shots at them. Maybe a chance for a bigger name behind them than they were ever used to having will be what they need.

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Traditionally, WBOY has led the market, and was the only former WVMH station with a market-leading presence.  That may have changed now that Gray owns WDTV and the WVMH look has indeed gotten stale over the years.

 

Up in Steubenville/Wheeling, WTRF mortally wounded themselves years back even before Benedek owned them.  WTOV has ruled the market since.  Not helping matters was the affiliation swap in the '80s when NBC began rising from the basement to  a dominant #1 in the late 80s while CBS continued sliding.

Edited by tyrannical bastard
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New Question…

 

Just wondering… Has Nexstar started replacing the homegrown proprietary equipment in former Tribune stations (Brutus, Opus, etc.) with standardized and industry compatible equipment? Or are former stations still contending with Tribune white elephants? 

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4 hours ago, MetroCity said:

New Question…

 

Just wondering… Has Nexstar started replacing the homegrown proprietary equipment in former Tribune stations (Brutus, Opus, etc.) with standardized and industry compatible equipment? Or are former stations still contending with Tribune white elephants? 

 

Opus is long gone. Stations converted to ENPS pretty quickly after the sale. Master control stuff is taking a lot longer to implement.

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On 2/11/2022 at 2:19 AM, darkpowrjd said:

Not an insider here, but I live in the markets. Two more Nexstar stations are getting made over, at least on sets, but not sure about graphics.

 

Though...can't imagine why they wouldn't, seeing as what the two stations are: the other two major stations that Nexstar got from the WVMH buyout. They redid WOWK 13 in Charleston, WV. 

 

Now it's the other two stations' turn. WBOY in Clarksburg, WV, and WTRF in Wheeling, WV. One of the WTRF weather broadcasters posted some images of the old set being taken down in place of the new one

 

To me, I don't know what will come of these stations' new sets, though I'm glad to see at least Nexstar is getting rid of one of the last remnants of the WVMH days for those stations. I know the general consensus is that Nexstar's money isn't exactly burning holes in their pockets, but ANYTHING is a step up for these stations from what they had when WVMH took them over. The first package was HORRENDOUS. Not sure what they were thinking they were doing with those graphics when they had a ready made package that WOWK had that looked ten times better - and WOWK's was downgraded to that thinking that was somehow better. The HD graphics (the ones they use now) were a step up but have outlived their usefulness. I think you can see if you look at one of WTRF's newscasts that their lower thirds are a mess of things because they don't know where to put things. 

 

Not sure about the Clarksburg market and where WBOY is there, but I'm hoping Nexstar is looking at WTRF and sees how it has played second fiddle to Sinclair owned WTOV in that market for YEARS and has had to get beaten up both in ratings and in WTOV's promos always taking shots at them. Maybe a chance for a bigger name behind them than they were ever used to having will be what they need.

There are a LOT of places in the Northern Portion of West Virginia (Wheeling and  Morgantown) Along with Steubenville Ohio that can also get the Pittsburgh PA locals OTA as well. If WTRF/WBOY wants to compete. They have to not only look at WTOV and WDTV but also KDKA-TV, WTAE, and WPXI. 

 

WTRF and WBOY has a great chance to take over their markets with this revamp if Nexstar does it right because both WTOV and WDTV haven't updated their sets in a while. 

Edited by Kenneth Kissel
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I'm pretty sure WBOY is a dominant #1, and WDTV has changed their logo a bunch of times in recent years, if I'm not mistaken. WTOV, as mentioned above, is a dominant #1, I don't think viewers care that much about sets.

 

I don't think they need to worry about what the Pittsburgh stations are doing, they don't have nearly the same resources as them and the Pittsburgh stations don't really cover WV much to begin with (I know Morgantown is part of the market).

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1 hour ago, cg41386 said:

I'm pretty sure WBOY is a dominant #1, and WDTV has changed their logo a bunch of times in recent years, if I'm not mistaken. WTOV, as mentioned above, is a dominant #1, I don't think viewers care that much about sets.

 

I don't think they need to worry about what the Pittsburgh stations are doing, they don't have nearly the same resources as them and the Pittsburgh stations don't really cover WV much to begin with (I know Morgantown is part of the market).

The DTV era pretty much gave markets the ability to fill themselves out with subchannels.  Since ABC was not represented (fully) in Clarksburg/Fairmont and both ABC/FOX in Steubenville/Wheeling, WTAE was piped in both markets and WPGH provided Steubenville & Wheeling with a FOX station on cable. 

 

In the analog era, KDKA was easily receivable in Steubenville, so this likely stole viewers from WTRF when they went CBS.  That, and the absolute mismanagement of WTRF under Adams and Brissette before Benedek picked them up.  And this was one of the few stations that Gray did not get from Benedek, so it was ripe for the picking for Bray Cary and his West Virginia Media Holdings...

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  • 2 weeks later...
7 minutes ago, TheRob said:

Nexstar is offering the NewsNation live feed to its stations for live Ukraine coverage. I don't know if any stations took it.


I think this is a good idea. However, this got me to thinking this question: What if Nexstar made NewsNation available on a subchannel for their TV stations?

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31 minutes ago, TheRob said:

Nexstar is offering the NewsNation live feed to its stations for live Ukraine coverage. I don't know if any stations took it.

 

I get the impression that NewsNation isn't thought of too highly at Nexstar stations...

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1 hour ago, TheRob said:

Nexstar is offering the NewsNation live feed to its stations for live Ukraine coverage. I don't know if any stations took it.

Queen City News is.

 

1 hour ago, channel2 said:

 

I get the impression that NewsNation isn't thought of too highly at Nexstar stations...

 

18 minutes ago, sanewsguy said:

I've talked with enough people connected to Nexstar who would agree with that assessment.

 

Nexstar forces the stations to push NewsNation programming competing with their own broadcast affiliates. They demand additional packages but pay the staff no more for it. Nexstar throws tons of money at NewsNation but continues to let their stations suffer.

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As much as Nexstar is hoping for their "Peter Arnett" moment with NewsNation, they're still going about this wrong. 

(For anyone who doesn't know, he was the star of CNN's Gulf War coverage that pretty much put them on the map as a legitimate news source all those years ago!)

 

Instead of trying to ram it down the station's throats as an alternative to regular programming, it needs to be an addition.  Put it on a sub-channel.  Get it out there on OTT.  But don't pre-empt your own programming for what could be redundant coverage (once the networks kick in)...Thankfully, few stations are going this route and wisely are sticking to their regular programming.

 

And ironically, NewsNation is in usual morning mode right now, being their former WGN America self at the moment (with In The Heat Of The Night)

Edited by tyrannical bastard
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2 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Instead of trying to ram it down the station's throats as an alternative to regular programming, it needs to be an addition.  Put it on a sub-channel.  Get it out there on OTT.  But don't pre-empt your own programming for what could be redundant coverage (once the networks kick in)...Thankfully, few stations are going this route and wisely are sticking to their regular programming.

 

Or, ya'know, buy a network for sale *cough* the CW *cough* and ramrod NewsNation down all affiliates whether they god-well-damn like it or not, because everyone loves a mandate.

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10 hours ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Or, ya'know, buy a network for sale *cough* the CW *cough* and ramrod NewsNation down all affiliates whether they god-well-damn like it or not, because everyone loves a mandate.

Sadly, that's probably why Nexstar is pursuing them in the first place.  And if they succeed and go through with it, expect a lot of the remaining "affiliates" to drop the network as soon as they can.

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13 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Sadly, that's probably why Nexstar is pursuing them in the first place.  And if they succeed and go through with it, expect a lot of the remaining "affiliates" to drop the network as soon as they can.

 

And go indie? That would be a lot more expensive.

Also, this will allow CBS to unload 8 stations, allowing Nexstar to enter 5 key new markets and develop 2 new duopolies:

 

KMAX would become a duopoly with KTXL.

KBCW would be a duop with KRON.

 

Plus they could flip their MyNetworkTV holdings as well, to become CW O&Os.

 

It would certainly allow Nexstar and NewsNation to access a larger percentage of households, demanding larger control of the linear news market, and most importantly, shaping the news conversation. Remember, they who have the widest distribution have the most say. I guarantee this is Sean Compton's thinking. He cares little for true news. NewsNation is GOP state television.

Edited by ABC 7 Denver
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10 minutes ago, Requiere said:

Maybe CBS would keep WTOG and turn it to a CBS O&O?

I doubt it, I believe that should CBS ever decide to unload WTOG, it would either go to FOX or Standard, should their acquisition of WTSP be successful.

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