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Gray to acquire Quincy Media.


CircleSeven

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Even if the FCC approved WSAW's Eagle River transmitter (and WIFR in Rockford, IL) it would take several years to get it on air. Instead of looking at field contour maps, the Longley-Rice maps are far more important and they show a hole in the Rhinelander, Oneida and Forest county area for WSAW plus the LP signal in Vilas county. If approved, Gray is getting the far better Northwoods signal. Remember too FOX is on a sub channel of WSAW in hd. 

 

Spending a lot of time in the UP area last few summers all the Marquette stations for the most part put out a poor signal outside of Marquette County, They are nonexistent once you get to closer to the Wisconsin border   

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1 hour ago, doublejman69 said:

Even if the FCC approved WSAW's Eagle River transmitter (and WIFR in Rockford, IL) it would take several years to get it on air. Instead of looking at field contour maps, the Longley-Rice maps are far more important and they show a hole in the Rhinelander, Oneida and Forest county area for WSAW plus the LP signal in Vilas county. If approved, Gray is getting the far better Northwoods signal. Remember too FOX is on a sub channel of WSAW in hd. 

 

Spending a lot of time in the UP area last few summers all the Marquette stations for the most part put out a poor signal outside of Marquette County, They are nonexistent once you get to closer to the Wisconsin border   

With this transaction, are Gray's applications for the Eagle River and Rockford transmitters still relevant as they appear to be keeping WYOW and CBS moving to the WREX spectrum?

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1 hour ago, doublejman69 said:

Even if the FCC approved WSAW's Eagle River transmitter (and WIFR in Rockford, IL) it would take several years to get it on air. Instead of looking at field contour maps, the Longley-Rice maps are far more important and they show a hole in the Rhinelander, Oneida and Forest county area for WSAW plus the LP signal in Vilas county. If approved, Gray is getting the far better Northwoods signal. Remember too FOX is on a sub channel of WSAW in hd. 

 

Spending a lot of time in the UP area last few summers all the Marquette stations for the most part put out a poor signal outside of Marquette County, They are nonexistent once you get to closer to the Wisconsin border   

 

The new owner of WAOW could always set up a transmitter, or acquire a low-power signal, to build its signal up in that part of the market.

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1 hour ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

The new owner of WAOW could always set up a transmitter, or acquire a low-power signal, to build its signal up in that part of the market.

WYOW and WMOW are only 20 miles apart,  the new owners could apply to increase WMOWs power if they believe there's holes in the coverage. 

 

Now about WJFW and only having a LP with 1kw of power to cover Marathon, Portage, and Wood counties in which 80% of the market reside in...

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Seems like Marks selling out to Gray could help all of their markets.  WBKP/WBUP being the only conflict...although that could be resolved with some creative engineering betwewn the two stations, and possibly a "failing station waiver if WBKP was kept.

 

Alpena is the only market that lacks an NBC affiliate of its own, and Gray has been the owner that has fixed that in others recently, like Presque Isle and Mankato.

 

And Glendive could benefit from having a major owner, they could at least restore some kind of local news presence there, that went away when Emelie Boyles left KXGN...

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14 hours ago, doublejman69 said:

WYOW and WMOW are only 20 miles apart,  the new owners could apply to increase WMOWs power if they believe there's holes in the coverage. 

 

Now about WJFW and only having a LP with 1kw of power to cover Marathon, Portage, and Wood counties in which 80% of the market reside in...

If it makes anyone feel better, it appears that WAOW currently has a CP to increase the main stick, RF9, from their current 63.2 kW to 100kW. Here's the projected coverage contour.

 

2021-02-13.thumb.png.5ccbc4fb6a072e73bcf8add1af434917.png

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16 minutes ago, CubsFan79 said:

I could see CBS move to WREX sub channel if the deal with Gray and Quincy is approved. WIFR TV is a LP station. See how it plays out.

 

I'm not sure how much coverage that would improve though. Geographically, Rockford is a fairly small market with only a handful of counties.

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45 minutes ago, CubsFan79 said:

I could see CBS move to WREX sub channel if the deal with Gray and Quincy is approved. WIFR TV is a LP station. See how it plays out.

It's probably already a done deal as it would place CBS back on full power status. I expect the migration to occur as soon as Gray closes the sale or shortly thereafter.

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On 2/28/2021 at 8:59 AM, CircleSeven said:

Damn. It didn't take no time to sell those papers.

 

Phillips Media of Harrison, Arkansas has acquired the Herald-Whig & the Courier-Post.

 

Quincy Media president Ralph Oakley (whose family have ran the paper for nearly a century) wrote a message to the H-W readers.

 

At least it was to what seems to be a family operation rather than Alden or Gannett (so far at least).

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The deal is now on the docket. No. 21-87.

 

Anyone who want to file a petition to deny, would have until April 12 to file.

 

For oppositions to the deny petitions, would have until April 27 to file.

 

And for replies, you would have to file those by May 7.

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10 hours ago, CubsFan79 said:

I could see CBS move to WREX sub channel if the deal with Gray and Quincy is approved. WIFR TV is a LP station. See how it plays out.

 

I don't see why Gray couldn't keep WIFR's LP signal on the air, even if they were to simulcast on WREX's subchannel.

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9 minutes ago, TheRyan said:

 

I don't see why Gray couldn't keep WIFR's LP signal on the air, even if they were to simulcast on WREX's subchannel.

Yeah...it could easily be a ATSC 3.0 repeater as well if they want to do it one day.

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Rockford will no doubt be the one to watch.

 

Even though WIFR is a low power station, and the FCC doesn't count LPs into the ownership limits, the Department of Justice (DOJ) could still look into Rockford under antitrust grounds.

 

And since the deal is now docketed, I wouldn't be surprised your usual anti-consoliation advocacy groups (Free Press, cable groups, etc.) would mention Rockford in their informal objections. And since we have a democratic-run FCC, they tend to be more sympathetic to those groups of any of their concerns.....

 

Back in 2016 during Nexstar-Media General, the DOJ ordered the parties to divest Lafayette, LA's LP KLAF-LD (and full power KADN) to a third party, even though Nexstar was going to keep MG's full power KLFY (and KLFY & KLAF-LD would've been allowable under FCC rules). But this was also during a democratic-ran FCC at that time.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, CircleSeven said:

Rockford will no doubt be the one to watch.

 

Even though WIFR is a low power station, and the FCC doesn't count LPs into the ownership limits, the Department of Justice (DOJ) could still look into Rockford under antitrust grounds.

 

And since the deal is now docketed, I wouldn't be surprised your usual anti-consoliation advocacy groups (Free Press, cable groups, etc.) would mention Rockford in their informal objections. And since we have a democratic-run FCC, they tend to be more sympathetic to those groups of any of their concerns.....

 

Back in 2016 during Nexstar-Media General, the DOJ ordered the parties to divest Lafayette, LA's LP KLAF-LD (and full power KADN) to a third party, even though Nexstar was going to keep MG's full power KLFY (and KLFY & KLAF-LD would've been allowable under FCC rules). But this was also during a democratic-ran FCC at that time.

 

 

Essentially, this deal would have Gray and Nexstar each controlling two stations, and each company having 3 networks (Gray with NBC, CW & CBS, and Nexstar with ABC, Fox and MyNetwork). 

 

Depending on how the market share is could throw Gray's further ownership of WREX into question, especially if they intend on consolidating WIFR further into WREX, or vice-versa.

 

Rockford is also one of the few markets without its own PBS member station, so WTTW out of Chicago is piped in as their default PBS station.

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12 hours ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Don't they also get WHA from Madison as well??

Yep, but it's Over The Air only, I checked the Comcast schedule and I didn't see WHA on there.

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