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Sinclair Broadcast Group - General Discussion


Smitha A

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On one hand I'm really surprised Sinclair fired him, he seemed like a perfect fit for Sinclair culturally and clearly had no problem following the company talking points.....on the other hand when you threaten to "ram a hot poker" up a teenagers butt it's really hard to defend that person and keep him employed.

 

Not to be a SBG apologist, but at least they made it much easier on themselves by basically leasing the timeslot and Allman having to arrange his own facilities to tape. Easy to cut everything off right away.

 

On the other hand, whoever is the web person there is being easy on him; content for the show is still not pulled from the website. And according to tweets from viewers, the show still aired tonight at 10! Who announces a firing and then decides 'well he has one more show in the can' rather than cutting ties and grabbing the nearest Gimme A Break! rerun?

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On one hand I'm really surprised Sinclair fired him, he seemed like a perfect fit for Sinclair culturally and clearly had no problem following the company talking points.....on the other hand when you threaten to "ram a hot poker" up a teenagers butt it's really hard to defend that person and keep him employed.

 

My guess is that Sinclair will just take a "wait and see" approach by not replacing Allman with anything significant and hope that the Tribune merger is approved and KTVI can start producing news for KDNL (or where ever ABC affiliation in St. Louis ends up).

 

Exactly. His whole program was a right-wing opinion based talk show so obviously Sinclair had no problem with that. But it's hard to defend someone when they threaten a high school student.

 

But to be fair, I live in St. Louis and I didn't even know he made those comments. His program on KDNL is so low on the radar that if you asked 10 people in St. Louis about his show, 8 wouldn't know it even existed. I wouldn't be surprised if whatever is on KPLR at those times beat KDNL in the ratings.This was another sad excuse for Sinclair to satisfy their news requirements for their affiliation agreement with ABC.

 

Now Sinclair has to hope that they are able to get KTVI or else they'll have to scramble to come up with another half-ass version of Plan B.

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I wouldn't be surprised if whatever is on KPLR at those times beat KDNL in the ratings.

 

KNLC got MeTV in February. I would not be shocked to read a ratings report and see that Carol Burnett & Friends reruns on that station cleaned Allman's clock (and ABC must seethe seeing their 9pm lead-in just plunge at 10:00:00 exactly every night). And with Weigel having good relations by maintaining WBND in South Bend, ABC affiliating with KNLC (and a move of Me to DT3 with a state-of-the-art multiplexer) is a possibility too; despite Weigel's many issues, they have built out from scratch no-wave news departments before, and they'd do it again in St. Louis in a heartbeat.

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On one hand I'm really surprised Sinclair fired him, he seemed like a perfect fit for Sinclair culturally and clearly had no problem following the company talking points.....on the other hand when you threaten to "ram a hot poker" up a teenagers butt it's really hard to defend that person and keep him employed.

 

My guess is that Sinclair will just take a "wait and see" approach by not replacing Allman with anything significant and hope that the Tribune merger is approved and KTVI can start producing news for KDNL (or where ever ABC affiliation in St. Louis ends up).

 

 

I think Sinclair really didn't have much of a choice since Boris's butt puckered up too....

 

A hot poker....really?

Are we heathens?

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On one hand I'm really surprised Sinclair fired him, he seemed like a perfect fit for Sinclair culturally and clearly had no problem following the company talking points.....on the other hand when you threaten to "ram a hot poker" up a teenagers butt it's really hard to defend that person and keep him employed.

 

My guess is that Sinclair will just take a "wait and see" approach by not replacing Allman with anything significant and hope that the Tribune merger is approved and KTVI can start producing news for KDNL (or where ever ABC affiliation in St. Louis ends up).

 

replaced by Family Fued and Modern Family reruns

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Exactly. His whole program was a right-wing opinion based talk show so obviously Sinclair had no problem with that. But it's hard to defend someone when they threaten a high school student.

 

 

Now Sinclair has to hope that they are able to get KTVI or else they'll have to scramble to come up with another half-ass version of Plan B.

 

my guess is Tim Jones, the current fill in host on 97.1

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KNLC got MeTV in February. I would not be shocked to read a ratings report and see that Carol Burnett & Friends reruns on that station cleaned Allman's clock (and ABC must seethe seeing their 9pm lead-in just plunge at 10:00:00 exactly every night). And with Weigel having good relations by maintaining WBND in South Bend, ABC affiliating with KNLC (and a move of Me to DT3 with a state-of-the-art multiplexer) is a possibility too; despite Weigel's many issues, they have built out from scratch no-wave news departments before, and they'd do it again in St. Louis in a heartbeat.

 

how does KImmel do in STL compared to other places?

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how does KImmel do in STL compared to other places?

 

If it's like all the other ABC shows, very poorly. All ABC shows perform poorly in STL. KDNL is one of the worst performing affiliates in the country.

 

But the reason ABC doesn't do anything about it is because Sinclair bundles KDNL's affiliation agreement with ABC with it's better performing affiliates like WSYX, KATU, and KOMO (the affiliation agreement was made prior to them buying the Allbritton stations).

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If it's like all the other ABC shows, very poorly. All ABC shows perform poorly in STL. KDNL is one of the worst performing affiliates in the country.

 

But the reason ABC doesn't do anything about it is because Sinclair bundles KDNL's affiliation agreement with ABC with it's better performing affiliates like WSYX, KATU, and KOMO (the affiliation agreement was made prior to them buying the Allbritton stations).

 

ABC should have made fixing KDNL's performance woes a requirement, or at least forced Sinclair to negotiate a separate agreement for it.

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If it's like all the other ABC shows, very poorly. All ABC shows perform poorly in STL. KDNL is one of the worst performing affiliates in the country.

 

How did ABC do on KTVI? A good number of ABC shows were preempted or delayed on KTVI before they switched to FOX.

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Sinclair is a big ABC affiliate, plus ABC hasn't been a player in St. Louis since the affiliation went from KTVI to KDNL back in 1995 (prior to Sinclair owning KDNL)...that's nearly 23 years now. ABC essentially not mattering in St. Louis has become the status quo. The ratings and potential money ABC has lost over the years because of a lousy St. Louis affiliate apparently hasn't mattered too much. To my knowledge, ABC has never made even a halfway serious attempt to find a new St. Louis affiliate. In defense of ABC, the station deck in St. Louis has been stacked against them: No way KMOV or KSDK were going to switch; KPLR was owned by Acme for a number of years and tied to the WB; KPLR became the CW affiliate and Tribune is heavily tied to that, etc. Add to that, if the Sinclair-Tribune deal goes down, ABC will be dealing with Sinclair anyway. ABC's best hope would be to end up on KPLR with the CW being sent elsewhere. The only real alternative outside of Sinclair would be for ABC to strike up a deal with Weigel, who just bought KNLC and made the station a full-power Me-TV affiliate. I really can't think of a logical reason why ABC's ratings would be better on KNLC than KDNL.

 

ABC apparently tried harder to get off of KTVI back in late 1988 or so when the network was upset about KTVI's lousy ratings at the time (plus ditching the 6PM local news for "Geraldo"). ABC had a meeting with Koplar (then-owner of KPLR) in New York that was supposedly about the technology of interactive TV, but the subject of an ABC affiliation for KPLR was apparently on the table. ABC didn't realize just how bad things were going to get just a few short years later.

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How did ABC do on KTVI? A good number of ABC shows were preempted or delayed on KTVI before they switched to FOX.

KTVI had lousy news ratings in the late 1980s, as stated in my post above. I'm not sure how well ABC programming performed, but ABC's St. Louis ratings must have been a bit of an issue for ABC to talk to Koplar.

 

KTVI nearly lost the rights to "Nightline" around 1990 or 1991. KTVI had just gotten the rights to "The Arsenio Hall Show," which KTVI planned to air at 10:30 (or 10:35). Paramount (Arsenio's syndicator) came out with a companion show to Arsenio called "The Party Machine with Nia Peeples," which was designed to follow Arsenio. KTVI planned to air the Nia Peeples show at 11:35, delaying "Nightline" to 12:05. However, ABC had a made a rule that ABC affiliates could not delay "Nightline" by more than an hour. KMBC in Kansas City and KSAT in San Antonio (and maybe one or two other stations) were granted exceptions because those stations had aired "Nightline" at midnight since the show's inception.

 

KTVI initially stuck to its guns and planned to air the two syndicated shows back-to-back. Briefly, it looked like "Nightline" wouldn't be seen in St. Louis unless ABC could get the show on KPLR or KDNL (and that seemed somewhat unlikely). However, KTVI finally relented and stuck "Nightline" in at 11:35 between Arsenio and Nia Peeples.

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Sinclair is a big ABC affiliate, plus ABC hasn't been a player in St. Louis since the affiliation went from KTVI to KDNL back in 1995 (prior to Sinclair owning KDNL)...that's nearly 23 years now. ABC essentially not mattering in St. Louis has become the status quo. The ratings and potential money ABC has lost over the years because of a lousy St. Louis affiliate apparently hasn't mattered too much. To my knowledge, ABC has never made even a halfway serious attempt to find a new St. Louis affiliate. In defense of ABC, the station deck in St. Louis has been stacked against them: No way KMOV or KSDK were going to switch; KPLR was owned by Acme for a number of years and tied to the WB; KPLR became the CW affiliate and Tribune is heavily tied to that, etc. Add to that, if the Sinclair-Tribune deal goes down, ABC will be dealing with Sinclair anyway. ABC's best hope would be to end up on KPLR with the CW being sent elsewhere. The only real alternative outside of Sinclair would be for ABC to strike up a deal with Weigel, who just bought KNLC and made the station a full-power Me-TV affiliate. I really can't think of a logical reason why ABC's ratings would be better on KNLC than KDNL.

 

ABC apparently tried harder to get off of KTVI back in late 1988 or so when the network was upset about KTVI's lousy ratings at the time (plus ditching the 6PM local news for "Geraldo"). ABC had a meeting with Koplar (then-owner of KPLR) in New York that was supposedly about the technology of interactive TV, but the subject of an ABC affiliation for KPLR was apparently on the table. ABC didn't realize just how bad things were going to get just a few short years later.

 

Wow, this is absolutely fascinating.

 

I think a contributing factor is that St. Louis has very few full-power TV stations compared to other markets. Commercially, St. Louis has just seven stations — a very low number for a market of its size that I've never completely understood.

 

WRBU was only a commercial independent/netlet outlet between 2003 and 2013, and it only signed on in 1989. KNLC was religious for the longest time.

 

That meant that there were just few places to shop around and stations had a lot of leverage.

 

Weigel's conversion of KNLC to Me-TV is perhaps the most exciting change in the market in quite some time. If ABC wanted to leave KDNL, it only would have KPLR or KNLC as options. Consider that at the time of the affiliation switch in 1994, Koplar cited KPLR's sports programming as the reason not to affiliate with ABC. Koplar decided that the Cardinals and the Blues were worth more to their station than ABC and potential disruption of those relationships.

 

As to local news, I want to point something out that is forgotten.

 

When KDNL began local news in January 1995 (under the name "News 30 Now" and at 9pm), they were the first TV news operation to set up shop in the market since 1959. That's a long time, 36 years. And we're already at 23 years since another attempt was made at building a new TV newsroom in St. Louis.

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ABC apparently tried harder to get off of KTVI back in late 1988 or so when the network was upset about KTVI's lousy ratings at the time (plus ditching the 6PM local news for "Geraldo"). ABC had a meeting with Koplar (then-owner of KPLR) in New York that was supposedly about the technology of interactive TV, but the subject of an ABC affiliation for KPLR was apparently on the table. ABC didn't realize just how bad things were going to get just a few short years later.

 

And let us not forget that when the KTVI-New World switch was announced in 95, ABC had wanted to make KPLR (then still owned by the Koplar family) their new affiliate. If there had been a sixth commercial station to acquire KPLR's surplus shows (or if KNLC was apt to going mostly secular) we would likely now have ABC 11 and CW 30. That's probably the scenario ABC (and a lot of us here) wished should have happend.

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If you go to KDNL's Twitter account, they had to completely purge it because it was so linked to the Allman Report that it was basically a duplicate account. That's not good social media acumen, to say the least.

 

KDNL hasn't broadcast news for over 15 years. What else would they have to post other than Allman's rants?

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If you go to KDNL's Twitter account, they had to completely purge it because it was so linked to the Allman Report that it was basically a duplicate account. That's not good social media acumen, to say the least.

 

Check out their website. They also purged everything related to Allman and now the most recent stories are 2 years old.

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