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Scripps - General Discussion


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Message added by Weeters,

Thread Note: Since Scripps has indicated they intend to run ION Media as a separate entity from their existing (mostly) news-producing stations, ION discussion has been relocated to a new thread.

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1 hour ago, Weeters said:

 

I'm pretty sure the reason they're relocating has more to do with space for people than equipment. Most stations technical cores are surprisingly empty these days - where you'd once have three racks filled with VTRs (which take up the space one 2" VTR took up 50 years ago)  you now have one rack with two servers doing the same exact job as those tape decks. ParkerVision was a product of the time period in which equipment space needs were peaking. You can now fit multiple switchers and automation servers into a single rack.

 

 

 

They haven't moved yet and they will likely be putting a new building on the same lot.

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End of an era in Milwaukee...master control for WTMJ/WGBA/WACY is now at WRTV in Indy (and KMTV in Omaha is now out of WTKR/Norfolk).

 

With the Good Karma Radio stations beginning to plan a move downtown and no more HQ uses, Radio City is going to have the reverse problem from KMGH...too much room, but the space gained is likely way too small for personnel and television studio uses.

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1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

End of an era in Milwaukee...master control for WTMJ/WGBA/WACY is now at WRTV in Indy (and KMTV in Omaha is now out of WTKR/Norfolk).

 

With the Good Karma Radio stations beginning to plan a move downtown and no more HQ uses, Radio City is going to have the reverse problem from KMGH...too much room, but the space gained is likely way too small for personnel and television studio uses.

The best-case scenario for the old Master Control space (it's a fairly large room) is converting it into a new control room. The existing control room was built in the 80's and has not been updated much. They did move things around a few years ago when they automated, but it's still pretty tight in there (especially since they simultaneously moved the robotics control from the studio floor into the control room).

 

They might have to wait until Radio moves out, though. At some point, the control booth for the radio networks got moved into the TV MCR, in a small closet-sized booth partitioned off from the rest of the room. 

 

Transmissions is also in the MCR, but that could probably be moved elsewhere.

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32 minutes ago, Glimmer said:

So... what was the point, then, of shutting down Ion Plus and Qubo? Knowing it was in the planning stages of launching two additional diginets, Scripps management should have kept Ion Plus and Qubo operational temporarily until its new networks bowed, and repurposed their transponder space to transmit DefyTV and Doozy.

 

At this rate, it seems like the only place to put Defy and Doozy on the Ion/INYO stations is on the slots housing HSN or QVC, or just cut deals for the new networks to replace the duplicate Katz Networks affiliations on the non-Scripps and non-INYO stations in markets where either group owns an Ion station.

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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On 3/1/2021 at 2:04 AM, mrschimpf said:

End of an era in Milwaukee...master control for WTMJ/WGBA/WACY is now at WRTV in Indy (and KMTV in Omaha is now out of WTKR/Norfolk).

 

With the Good Karma Radio stations beginning to plan a move downtown and no more HQ uses, Radio City is going to have the reverse problem from KMGH...too much room, but the space gained is likely way too small for personnel and television studio uses.

 

The way Scripps does master control, hubbing doesn't free up any real space. The same equipment is sitting there in Milwaukee or Denver, it's just controlled remotely.

 

Someone mentioned how tech cores are surprisingly empty. I guess it depends on what kind of a station and what the responsibilities are locally. If you're hubbed in a way where you are central casted and you have basically a newsroom, sales, staff, and a transmitter, sure, probably. But a lot of stations today have as much or more gear as they have ever had and most of the engineers I know at stations are constantly trying to find room to put more racks because they have to add more IRD's, encoders, TVU Grid receivers, servers, and they're now housing newsroom automation, and general IT infrastructure for the rest of the station.

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And it looks like the Lighthouse are going pack it in with eight streams (Ion & the 7 subs) on the Ion spectrum (once those contracts from the other distributors run out). As what Lisa Knutson said:

Quote

“By creating compelling new network programming to distribute through ION’s spectrum, Scripps is expanding the ways it creates value from our ownership of ION and its powerful distribution platform.” 

 

1 hour ago, T.L. Hughes said:

At this rate, it seems like the only place to put Defy and Doozy on the Ion/INYO stations is on the slots housing HSN or QVC, or just cut deals for the new networks to replace the duplicate Katz Networks affiliations on the non-Scripps and non-INYO stations in markets where either group owns an Ion station.

I'm surprised they didn't eliminate HSN/QVC while they canned Qubo & Ion Plus over the weekend.

 

Edited by CircleSeven
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On 3/1/2021 at 2:18 AM, Weeters said:

The best-case scenario for the old Master Control space (it's a fairly large room) is converting it into a new control room. The existing control room was built in the 80's and has not been updated much. They did move things around a few years ago when they automated, but it's still pretty tight in there (especially since they simultaneously moved the robotics control from the studio floor into the control room).

 

They might have to wait until Radio moves out, though. At some point, the control booth for the radio networks got moved into the TV MCR, in a small closet-sized booth partitioned off from the rest of the room. 

 

Transmissions is also in the MCR, but that could probably be moved elsewhere.

Aren't there a ton of spaces at Radio City that have been barely (if at all) renovated, some since the building was built? I've seen pictures that look like early era radio studios that have been just repurposed to hold equipment or serve as storage rooms.

 

It's a shame that Radio City is losing the radio folks, but it does seem like an opportunity for a major renovation/revitalization (if Scripps wants to spend the money on it). 

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51 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

And it looks like the Lighthouse are going pack it in with eight streams (Ion & the 7 subs) on the Ion spectrum (once those contracts from the other distributors run out). As what Lisa Knutson said:

 

I'm surprised they didn't eliminate HSN/QVC while they canned Qubo & Ion Plus over the weekend.

 

It's about money. If they looked at the books when they were making the Ion purchase and saw that Qubo and Ion Plus were losing money and HSN/QVC were in the black, then guess what they keep.

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1 hour ago, Surplus Engineer said:

It's about money. If they looked at the books when they were making the Ion purchase and saw that Qubo and Ion Plus were losing money and HSN/QVC were in the black, then guess what they keep.

They probably would have kept Ion Shop if it made them money too. You know somewhere in Scripps, there's someone who currently has a lot of regrets they didn't keep Shop at Home or the O&O stations that used to make up that network (along with viewers, since most went to the RNN infomercial/one talk show network or TCT).

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Yeah, just looking at all this, you get the feeling that the decision to dump Qubo and Ion Plus (and Shop) was less about not wanting more channels and more about not wanting to deal with the headache of migrating those networks into the Katz operations, since they just went ahead and started two new dignets anyway.

 

That being said, I remember Adam Symson mentioning in the same webcast where that one user raised the question about Qubo and Ion Plus that he was glad to lower the average viewer age of his networks to being below that of the alphabet networks, if still older than streaming. But considering much of the programming on the existing Scripps networks plus these new ones, I get the feeling his words about "younger audience = better audience" were nothing more than the usual press fluff to get the panicking investors off his back, because I'm pretty sure 90% of these shows skew older.

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3 hours ago, Surplus Engineer said:

It's about money. If they looked at the books when they were making the Ion purchase and saw that Qubo and Ion Plus were losing money and HSN/QVC were in the black, then guess what they keep.

 It could also be contractual; HSN and QVC could possibly have long-term carriage contracts with less than favorable termination clauses. (But more than likely, you're probably right, it was a financial decision.)

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21 hours ago, LoadStar said:

Aren't there a ton of spaces at Radio City that have been barely (if at all) renovated, some since the building was built? I've seen pictures that look like early era radio studios that have been just repurposed to hold equipment or serve as storage rooms.

 

It's a shame that Radio City is losing the radio folks, but it does seem like an opportunity for a major renovation/revitalization (if Scripps wants to spend the money on it). 

 

most of the original building has been renovated since 1941... most...

 

one corner has been mostly left to time... the walls and floors of the hallways are still original tiles...

 

the tv sports office and radio networks sales office are old radio studios (the "B" studios, B1, B2, B3, B5). tv sports was 620's studio (b1) until they built the studios in the old auditorium space in the 80s...

 

radio networks sales was one of the "big" studios (B2)... they put up drywall and a drop ceiling... scoot a tile aside and you can look up to the old studio ceiling and the window for the clients booth...

 

part of B2 was divided up in the 70's to make a WKTI studio (B5)... still there, gutted, as sports tape storage...

 

there's a lot of space on the second floor... unusable because there is no elevator up there...

 

a renovation would be $$$ but the building is still solid... lots of odd space they could reclaim by gutting it... they might still end up with too much space...

 

maybe they could share with someone else like KGO/KRON does...

Edited by Webovision
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On 3/2/2021 at 1:21 PM, CircleSeven said:

And it looks like the Lighthouse are going pack it in with eight streams (Ion & the 7 subs) on the Ion spectrum (once those contracts from the other distributors run out). As what Lisa Knutson said:

 

I'm surprised they didn't eliminate HSN/QVC while they canned Qubo & Ion Plus over the weekend.

 

Some of the Scripps-owned ION stations did dump QVC in early January, including WPXN and KPXN. So it’s starting to look like the bulk of the HSN and QVC contracts run out at or near July 1.

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9 hours ago, Requiere said:

So maybe they'll replace QVC and HSN with two new networks that launch that same day.

It may take a year or two but I gotta believe that the ION stations—both Scripps-owned and Inyo-owned—will ultimately follow the same subchannel mux, with any co-owned stations that use the parent station’s spectrum filling in any gaps. For example, WDLI 17.1 as CourtTV transmits over WVPX’s spectrum, which has a 23.3 subchannel missing (but RF wise is over a 22.9 subchannel).

 

But definitely, Doozy and Defy look to be in-house replacements for HSN and QVC. And for those ION outlets with only one of those shopping channels currently, they can carve out 480p subchannel space to accommodate.

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1 hour ago, Myron Falwell said:

It may take a year or two but I gotta believe that the ION stations—both Scripps-owned and Inyo-owned—will ultimately follow the same subchannel mux, with any co-owned stations that use the parent station’s spectrum filling in any gaps. For example, WDLI 17.1 as CourtTV transmits over WVPX’s spectrum, which has a 23.3 subchannel missing (but RF wise is over a 22.9 subchannel).

 

But definitely, Doozy and Defy look to be in-house replacements for HSN and QVC. And for those ION outlets with only one of those shopping channels currently, they can carve out 480p subchannel space to accommodate.

Well that’s quite a doozy...

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21 hours ago, DENDude said:

Do all of scripps stations have hubed master control?    And what stations are out of Indy?  & what stations are out of Norfolk?   

 

The Cordillera stations are not hubbed as well as Tallahassee and Waco. Norfolk has Richmond, KSTU, WSFL, WTVF, and KMTV. I think Indianapolis has the rest, including the Katz networks. 

 

Denver doesn't have a hub and MC is hubbed from Indianapolis. They were hubbed there when they were McGraw Hill. The Now and other news products come from Denver and Indianapolis distributes for that too.

Edited by Surplus Engineer
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I wonder if WXMI Fox17 was hub in Indy when Tribune owned them and once they became a Scripps TV station moved to WRTV.

 

I think it be smart for WZPX to try and get the subs of Doozy & Defy on Charter Spectrum & Comcast even if it's .5 & .6 unless they move them to .2 & .3 move the double Katz networks down. I know Fox17 is adding Doozy & Defy as well you could put one them on the .2 and move Antenna TV kinda surprised their is no double that network since Nexstar owns Antenna TV.

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