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Sinclair's WPGH adds a 6:30 PM Newscast from Cox's WPXI.


Kenneth Kissel

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From TribLIVE , Pittsburgh Post GazetteFTVLive, and PBRTV . Sinclair's WPGH will add a 6:30 PM Newscast from Cox's WPXI on Monday March 14th. I think Cox should  just buy WPGH from Sinclair and become a true sister station. WPGH's current sister station WPNT could easily go to Hearst Television who owns ABC Station WTAE due to their ATSC 3.0 partnership. Sinclair is in financial trouble so they do need the cash and this could benefit both COX and Hearst and they could better compete against Paramount Owned KDKA/WPCW. 

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3 hours ago, abric said:

The new newscast gets sandwiched in-between The Big Bang Theory and You Bet Your Life goes to one showing at 12:30 a.m. Ouch!

I mean You Bet Your Life with Jay Leno has really just become a 30-minute vehicle for Jay Leno. You can tell by Kevin Eubanks being there, and how the show originally started out with segments from The Tonight Show like Headlines. Thank God those were largely removed, but even so, it was a thing in the earlier episodes.

 

In other words, it's Leno up to his old crap. It's all about Jay Leno. You might as well call it The New Jay Leno Show, remove the game show element, bring in a live band and celebrity guests and expand it to an hour and syndicate it out as a late night talk show.

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Had it not been for Sinclair owning them, they would have likely kept their standalone news department instead of being News-Central-ized in 2003 and axed in 2006 in favor of the WPXI newscasts.

 

And the last person to do YBYL was Bill Cosby, for a single season (92-93).  Well before all the stuff came out about him and when The Cosby Show was still a hit.

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Not to derail this, but the whole point of YBYL is for it to be a vehicle for the host's brand of humor. The gameplay has always been secondary. It only exists as some sort of framing device, between the host's bits. It was the same for Cosby, and Groucho Marx. Not liking Leno is fair, but don't think his material is taking away from the game. His (or any host's) material is the whole point.

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Does WPXI have complete editorial control of their newscasts on WPGH or are they subject to the same Sinclair propaganda must-runs. 
 

I would thing it would be a liability for WPXI to be associated with a Sinclair station. 

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53 minutes ago, newscopter7 said:

Does WPXI have complete editorial control of their newscasts on WPGH or are they subject to the same Sinclair propaganda must-runs. 
 

I would thing it would be a liability for WPXI to be associated with a Sinclair station. 

Like WISC for WMSN, they didn't have to do that statement a few years back, so yes. It's basically still an old-school arrangement, where they sell the time and pay the labor for WPXI to do the shows.

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2 hours ago, NEOMatrix said:

Honestly, if Meredith hadn’t sold WPGH, Gray would’ve made it a KPTV clone sooner or later.

'PGH would've been better off as a FOX O&O, I'm sorry for keep saying it but it's true.

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2 hours ago, TexasTVNews said:

'PGH would've been better off as a FOX O&O, I'm sorry for keep saying it but it's true.

For sure. I'm very surprised it hasn't been an O&O with FOX going after NFL Markets in the 90s  unless KDKA-TV drove them away. 

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1 hour ago, Kenneth Kissel said:

For sure. I'm very surprised it hasn't been an O&O with FOX going after NFL Markets in the 90s  unless KDKA-TV drove them away. 

Not an NFC market (Steelers are in AFC) tho so FOX wouldn't bite. 

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16 hours ago, TexasTVNews said:

'PGH would've been better off as a FOX O&O, I'm sorry for keep saying it but it's true.

I completely agree with this. A fourth news department would help this town, but it'll never happen sadly. 

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22 hours ago, tjt24 said:

I completely agree with this. A fourth news department would help this town, but it'll never happen sadly. 

A LEGIT 4th news department would work in Pittsburgh due to how competitive the news ratings are here. If I bought WPGH/WPNT. I would start an in-house news department my first day I owned the station. Sadly, it is in the hands of a company that cheaps out its news stations throughout the country.

 

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3 hours ago, Megatron81 said:

Didn't WPGH have in-house news department at one time? Why give the rival to air a newscast or have another Sinclair TV station do it for WPGH.

Because Sinclair is cheap and it's cheaper to just use somebody else's newscast than start their own

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15 hours ago, Megatron81 said:

Didn't WPGH have in-house news department at one time? Why give the rival to air a newscast or have another Sinclair TV station do it for WPGH.

Yes (in 1997) , but then Sinclair gutted it in 2003 for News Central and shut it down in 2006. 

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17 hours ago, Kenneth Kissel said:

Yes (in 1997) , but then Sinclair gutted it in 2003 for News Central and shut it down in 2006. 

Which begs the question: how bad were the ratings and revenue to justify WPGH getting News Central?

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1 hour ago, NEOMatrix said:

Which begs the question: how bad were the ratings and revenue to justify WPGH getting News Central?

Great Question. I wonder if WPCW (then known as WNPA) starting a newscast at 10 PM from KDKA-TV in 2001 was the beginning of the end for WPGH's news department. News Central was horrible from the start BTW. 

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On 3/7/2022 at 4:15 AM, Yankees4life said:

Because Sinclair is cheap and it's cheaper to just use somebody else's newscast than start their own

Sinclair is poor. Unlike stations like WRAL who have a strong brand of their own, WPGH is extremely weak. There's also rumour of Sinclair splitting itself up and three relatively strong stations that you would have to compete with. Therefore, using someone else's newscast would bring in more ad revenue than starting your own newsroom. For a poor company like Sinclair, it makes all the difference.

 

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Tacking on a new newsroom to a "competitive" market is not a formula for guaranteed success. Look at NBC's boondoggle in Boston. 

 

Neither the WPCW newscasts or the WPGH newscasts exist because there's any sizable demand for "more news." WPCW's newscasts are filler so they don't have to pay for syndicated programs. They exist to give CBS a couple of time blocks on the WPCW schedule where they control 100% of the ad inventory and revenue, using reporters and crew that they are already paying for. These people would be getting paid regardless of whether or not the WPCW newscasts existed, so it makes financial sense to use them to create more newscasts.

 

Sinclair knows that operating its own news department would be a waste of time and money, so they choose to partner with WPXI. Sinclair pays less for this arrangement than they would for running their own news in the same time slots, so the profit margin is higher. WPXI gets to make additional revenue off the share, and use their talent and crew that would otherwise be doing very little during that time. Why is Sinclair willing to air news from a "competitor"? Same reason Cox is willing to produce news to air on a "competitor": It's mutually beneficial to both companies.  The alternative would be for Sinclair run News from Somewhere Else (this also fits into the "we're already paying for it" model, because they're utilizing downtime at another one of their stations) or finally modifying TND into NewsCentral 2.0.

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