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Sinclair settles with Nexstar over failed Tribune deal


TheRolyPoly

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Interesting, so Media General held on to the land and tower after selling WTVQ to Morris?   I wonder if the same can be said for Chattanooga, where Morris bought WDEF from Media General.  Both were former Park stations.

WDEF was part of the "down payment" for the NBC O&O's they bought, and WTVQ was when they cashed out their smaller/weaker stations a year later.

Certainly adds some credence to a potential Nexstar purchase of Morris some day.....

 

And if Sinclair needs to cash out some more, Chattanooga is the perfect market.  They could sell their non-license stakes in WDSI and WFLI (giving the CW to another party).

 

There are likely lots more deals where owners held on to parts of stations they couldn't buy in the same market.  I know WMBB's tower was transferred to Gray in the Hoak buyout.  Gray couldn't own WMBB because they've owned WJHG since the beginning of time.  But WJHG moved their antenna on to WMBB's tower while WMBB itself was sold to Nexstar.  And WMBB was one of the MG stations sold alongside WTVQ in 2008.

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As a note, one of the people in one of the Mexico TV boards I read says this is the lineup for KGBT and KVEO:

 

4.2 Azteca
4.3 Comet
4.4 Estrella TV
4.5 Court TV Mystery
4.6 Grit


23.1 NBC HD
23.2 CBS HD

Apparently KGBT doesn't have a 4.1.

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9 minutes ago, Samantha said:

As a note, one of the people in one of the Mexico TV boards I read says this is the lineup for KGBT and KVEO:

 

4.2 Azteca
4.3 Comet
4.4 Estrella TV
4.5 Court TV Mystery
4.6 Grit


23.1 NBC HD
23.2 CBS HD

Apparently KGBT doesn't have a 4.1.

Sinclair may have just abruptly removed 4.1, or they're looking for a new programming source to place there.

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How will it work for news operations? Is KGBT just going to become the KVEO main news team? I know KVEO has only a limited operation (Independent KRGV dominates the English market in the Rio Grande Valley).

 

Re: subchannels, since Gray has no realistic pathway into the market, some of their subs could find a home as well if they are willing to find someone to work with.

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18 minutes ago, GoldenShine9 said:

How will it work for news operations? Is KGBT just going to become the KVEO main news team? I know KVEO has only a limited operation (Independent KRGV dominates the English market in the Rio Grande Valley).

 

Re: subchannels, since Gray has no realistic pathway into the market, some of their subs could find a home as well if they are willing to find someone to work with.

I think they'll be the KVEO team now as everything gets relinqushed over to KVEO.

 

This tweet from (now former) KGBT Sports anchor Amanda Atwell pretty much says it all.
 

 

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I wonder why Sinclair and Nexstar didn't agree to re-map 23.2 to resemble the old 4.1.   It would seem more logical to have the signal appear OTA as 4.1 since they still brand as "CBS 4".   At least on a temporary basis to easy the shock of viewers and maybe phase out 4.1 to appear as 23.2 later.  

 

In SW Missouri, I know that KY3 (on their full power signal) simulcasts the KSPR feed as 33.1, even though legally KSPR is just low-powered these days and the "full-power" KSPR is actually KYTV but re-mapping to 33.1.   So I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar to "CBS 4" by broadcasting on 23.2, yet appearing as 4.1. 

 

But I digress.

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22 minutes ago, TheRyan said:

I wonder why Sinclair and Nexstar didn't agree to re-map 23.2 to resemble the old 4.1.   It would seem more logical to have the signal appear OTA as 4.1 since they still brand as "CBS 4".   At least on a temporary basis to easy the shock of viewers and maybe phase out 4.1 to appear as 23.2 later.  

 

In SW Missouri, I know that KY3 (on their full power signal) simulcasts the KSPR feed as 33.1, even though legally KSPR is just low-powered these days and the "full-power" KSPR is actually KYTV but re-mapping to 33.1.   So I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar to "CBS 4" by broadcasting on 23.2, yet appearing as 4.1. 

 

But I digress.

They can just keep it on 23.2 and use "CBS 4" as a cable channel brand.

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9 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Interesting, so Media General held on to the land and tower after selling WTVQ to Morris? 

I looked again and I hadn't searched since last year, but looks like on 5/17/2019, they moved ownership of the tower from Nexstar to WTVQ, LLC. That is about time when they started to work on the "repack" process.

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7 hours ago, TheRyan said:

I wonder why Sinclair and Nexstar didn't agree to re-map 23.2 to resemble the old 4.1.   It would seem more logical to have the signal appear OTA as 4.1 since they still brand as "CBS 4".   At least on a temporary basis to easy the shock of viewers and maybe phase out 4.1 to appear as 23.2 later.  

 

In SW Missouri, I know that KY3 (on their full power signal) simulcasts the KSPR feed as 33.1, even though legally KSPR is just low-powered these days and the "full-power" KSPR is actually KYTV but re-mapping to 33.1.   So I don't see why they couldn't have done something similar to "CBS 4" by broadcasting on 23.2, yet appearing as 4.1. 

 

But I digress.

The way this affiliation switch was handled merits this quote from John Oliver:

 

Most affiliation switches have seen stations provide up to six months advanced warning of the changes (the New World/Fox switches was one of the few examples of network switches that had even longer notice, because of contracts with CBS and ABC that lasted into 1995 or 1996). Neither Sinclair nor Nexstar bothered to give viewers more than eight hours notice that KGBT's intellectual unit was being shifted over to KVEO, and the only story about the switch in local media within the Harlingen/Weslaco/McAllen/Brownsville market I could find online from the day the switch was announced was from (the then-CBS-affiliated) KGBT that did not provide further information beyond the station's programming being moved to the KVEO stick, and one from KVEO that did note the subchannel switches along with the CBS switch. I bet there are a lot of South Texans that are confused and annoyed they didn't find out way before.

 

The least they could do was set the switch for a date after the transfer application was made public by the FCC, sometime between February 1 and March 1, to allow viewers time to prepare for the switch. I'm also not exactly sure why KGBT's former programming lineup just didn't stay on channel 4.1; was Sinclair trying to avoid scrutiny, given the circumstances of the lawsuit they just settled? I don't think SSAs involving two Big Three network stations are technically prohibited under the current FCC administration or were struck down when the agency's November 2017 ownership rule changes were thrown out in court last summer.

 

Situations like what happened between KVEO and KGBT were common during the Wheeler administration of the FCC, but this isn't the same; the KGBT license is staying with Sinclair, with Nexstar taking over operations (the other times network affiliations were shifted from a main feed to LPTV/subchannel occurred after the license of the conflict station was sold to a minority-owned broadcaster, who effectively got bilked by ending up with a station that they can't really profit from through a major network affiliation or a news operation, because the larger group owner decided to keep the prior Big Four affiliation rather than transfer it to the new ownership). The FCC under Ajit Pai (his opinions about what Sinclair tried to do with sidecars during the aborted Tribune purchase aside) has a hands-off approach to LMA/SSAs than Wheeler did.

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1 hour ago, TexasTVNews said:

I'm not buying the part where the GM says they're not going to cut anyone. Already, if FTVLive is to be believed, the KGBT general manager was told she's gone. Nexstar is keeping KVEO's GM. Also, there's no need for 2 sales teams, 2 engineering staffs and other redundancies. Most (if not all) of the news folks will likely be safe because KVEO didn't have much of a news operation.

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24 minutes ago, Greggo said:

I'm not buying the part where the GM says they're not going to cut anyone. Already, if FTVLive is to be believed, the KGBT general manager was told she's gone. Nexstar is keeping KVEO's GM. Also, there's no need for 2 sales teams, 2 engineering staffs and other redundancies. Most (if not all) of the news folks will likely be safe because KVEO didn't have much of a news operation.

Since Sinclair is going to continue to operate KGBT, it appears that their staff can be retained and will keep my theory that they'll try to lure Fox to channel 4.

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32 minutes ago, Greggo said:

I'm not buying the part where the GM says they're not going to cut anyone. Already, if FTVLive is to be believed, the KGBT general manager was told she's gone. Nexstar is keeping KVEO's GM. Also, there's no need for 2 sales teams, 2 engineering staffs and other redundancies. Most (if not all) of the news folks will likely be safe because KVEO didn't have much of a news operation.

Get ready for "Action News" on KGBT and KVEO! 😝

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5 hours ago, JCB4TV said:

Since Sinclair is going to continue to operate KGBT, it appears that their staff can be retained and will keep my theory that they'll try to lure Fox to channel 4.

Nope. They've relinquished the news department over to KVEO too. Staffers there are now Nexstar employees.

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28 minutes ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Nope. They've relinquished the news department over to KVEO too. Staffers there are now Nexstar employees.

 

In fact their last newscast on 4.1 before the switch to 23.2 had the Nexstar endtag.  So the control over the newscast was given to Nexstar even before they switched to KVEO 23.2.  It looks like it happened instantly once the papers were signed.

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1 hour ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Nope. They've relinquished the news department over to KVEO too. Staffers there are now Nexstar employees.

I believe he's only talking about KGBT's license and the TV station itself (minus the news operation). Sinclair still owns that.

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I was surprised the lawsuit was still on going when Tribune was no more once the merger was final with Nexstar kinda surprised that Nexstar didn't want $240 Million of the buyout to get out of the deal in Aug of 2018. I knew that no one was getting $1 Billion dollars in the lawsuit.

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30 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

Not sure when it happened, but Nexstar has consolidated CBS 4 & KVEO's websites using Nexstar's template. They're using the url valleycentral.com.

 

I didn’t know Sinclair gave up KGBT TV assets to Nextstar and KVEO TV.  I take it was over the Tribune  attempted acquirement.

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