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Nexstar Acquires 75% of The CW


Georgie56

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2 hours ago, TheRob said:

“NewsNation, the cable news channel created from what had been WGN America prior to Nexstar’s acquisition of Tribune Media in 2019, was another area of focus during the call. Execs emphasized that it has been profitable since it launched in rebranded form in 2020. They also noted their plans to program it with 24 hours a day of news from Monday through Friday by the end of 2023 and then fully 24/7 news by the end of 2024.”

 

That’s literally it in a nutshell. Regardless of how much Nexstar screws up The CW, it’s still going to make a profit as opposed to the prior business model. NewsNation has objectively failed in their original stated purpose as a news channel, and no one is watching, and yet they would be losing money continuing to have it as a ION-lite rerun farm that no one would be watching.

Edited by Myron Falwell
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Ol’ Scotty got it wrong on multiple fronts.
 

Here’s the thing: it’s not about LIV at all. CBS has no reason to keep those stations affiliated with the CW, a network that they jettisoned their joint operating stake in and have already washed their hands of. But LIV gives them a readymade excuse as CBS is not going to want to be seen as being in bed with the Saudis (as @channel2noted to me, yes, Paramount has a joint venture with Qatar managing the remains of Miramax, but it’s all about the PR here, and Uncle Perry made a boo-boo).

 

CBS launching an all-news streaming service on WWJ meant that they were always going to wind up doing the same in Atlanta and Seattle and make them in-house CBS O&Os (and possibly in Tampa had the Standard General takeover of TEGNA actually went through; thankfully that deal is dead and the station is expendable). Plus CBS already dumped MyNet on WBFS and WSBK and have the Now hybrid local-national franchises in primetime on their secondary stations.

 

And the insane thing is, Nexstar is only thinking about how to turn a profit on an operation CBS and Warners lost a shocking amount of money on. They don’t care if it completely nukes the affiliate base, a parcel of land basically paid for the CW in the first place.

Edited by Myron Falwell
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https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/2/7/perry-sook-vs-cbs

 

Sources tell FTVLive that CBS will decline running the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour on the CW stations that CBS owns. 

 

CBS is not going to do anything that will cause harm to their relationship with the PGA and they will refuse to air the LIV Golf telecasts on The CW stations that they own. 

 

This will put CBS in violation of their CW contract and that will give Perry Sook the option to pull the network affiliation from those CBS owned stations. 

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On 2/8/2023 at 8:15 PM, The Frog said:

https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/2/7/perry-sook-vs-cbs

 

Sources tell FTVLive that CBS will decline running the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour on the CW stations that CBS owns. 

 

CBS is not going to do anything that will cause harm to their relationship with the PGA and they will refuse to air the LIV Golf telecasts on The CW stations that they own. 

 

This will put CBS in violation of their CW contract and that will give Perry Sook the option to pull the network affiliation from those CBS owned stations. 

If this is actually true (and it is Scotty Jones, so it must be 100% put under an air of suspicion) a few things:
 

1.  CBS pulled their affiliation from WJMN and literally put it on the .2 of a diginet tree. Uncle Perry might think he’s going to be a tough guy to retaliate in kind, but don’t underestimate the network. And do you really want to come off as an immovable bully to the other networks, Uncle Perry? 

 

2. There will be a settlement of some sort—CBS might even get to yank their affiliation off of WTTV/WTTK and put it back on WISH, where it belongs—but it’s kinda obvious this was floated to Scotty, and he published it without any sort of critical thinking.

 

3. If CBS refuses to air LIV, Gray and Scripps will follow. That will severely limit Nexstar’s options for replacement CW affiliates in multiple markets they don’t own a station in. Why would a WMYD want to take the CW if they have to run LIV and after Scripps refuses to run it?

Edited by Myron Falwell
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39 minutes ago, Myron Falwell said:

If CBS refuses to air LIV, Gray and Scripps will follow. That will severely limit Nexstar’s options for replacement CW affiliates in multiple markets they don’t own a station in. Why would a WMYD want to take the CW if they have to run LIV and after Scripps refuses to run it?

If these groups (and potentially others) follow suit, I think Nexstar is prepared to subchannel CW in markets where they only have a single station. 

 

And if they can't secure another affiliate?  Put it on cable (like the WB 100+) and tie it into the retransmission rights of NewsNation, because starting up another cable channel in this day and age is a great idea, right?🤣

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4 hours ago, Myron Falwell said:

3. If CBS refuses to air LIV, 

 

Complaining about the involvement of the Saudis, a long time ally of the United States, seems to be a little hollow to me. Something else is going on here. We gladly take their oil and their money to buy F-16s, but we're going to reject their golf? Right. I think a lot of things going on at the same time, but don't discount collusion with the PGA. That's a big no-no if they didn't follow all the legalities and could cost everybody a lot of money.

 

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4 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

Complaining about the involvement of the Saudis, a long time ally of the United States, seems to be a little hollow to me. Something else is going on here. We gladly take their oil and their money to buy F-16s, but we're going to reject their golf? Right. I think a lot of things going on at the same time, but don't discount collusion with the PGA. That's a big no-no if they didn't follow all the legalities and could cost everybody a lot of money.

 

There’s one nugget in Scotty’s post which makes me believe this “source” is in fact a CBS executive intentionally leaking this to make Perry look bad:

Quote

The problem is, CBS has had a decade long relationship with the PGA Tour and they don’t want to do anything that will strain that relationship.

Liv Golf has sued the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour has in turn countersued LIV.

CBS is not going to do anything that will cause harm to their relationship with the PGA and they will refuse to air the LIV Golf telecasts on The CW stations that they own.

You notice something’s missing here? Nowhere does it say that CBS wants to disaffiliate their CW stations over LIV, they just don’t want to air it because of an obvious conflict of interest with their PGA deal. Pretty clear-cut issue, doncha think?


This is making me wonder if Perry, or a Perry surrogate, started a “could CBS dump the CW over LIV?” rumor… fed it to Scotty, and Scotty ran the story because he doesn’t engage in critical thinking.

 

I do think that Nexstar legitimately made a threat to disaffiliate his stations from CBS, but that’s more him holding a grudge over the network yanking their affiliation from WJMN and putting it on the .2 of a heretofore diginet tree.

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On 2/11/2023 at 12:33 AM, Georgie56 said:

WGN is airing LIV Golf events in Chicago in lieu of WCIU.

 

 

So Weigel apparently had the option to refuse carriage of LIV and Nexstar let them decline? If that's the case then Nexstar has no standing in their threat against CBS and they're free to.put the time-buy on stations they own.

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Nexstar has announced that LIV Golf has cleared 100% of CW stations, "as well as Nexstar owned and operated stations in key markets including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Tampa and Hartford":

 

https://deadline.com/2023/02/liv-golf-tour-clears-100-percent-of-cw-stations-1235259435/

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6 hours ago, AmericanErrorist said:

Nexstar has announced that LIV Golf has cleared 100% of CW stations, "as well as Nexstar owned and operated stations in key markets including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Tampa and Hartford":

 

https://deadline.com/2023/02/liv-golf-tour-clears-100-percent-of-cw-stations-1235259435/

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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2 hours ago, AmericanErrorist said:

Nexstar has announced that LIV Golf has cleared 100% of CW stations, "as well as Nexstar owned and operated stations in key markets including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Tampa and Hartford"

 

Can't wait to see the major backlash 

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5 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments (except for WCCT) aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

 

3 hours ago, NewEgg00 said:

Can't wait to see the major backlash 

Most of the stations seem to be of the 'it's better than Byron' mindset where most of the coverage is overlaying weekend content or infomercials and treated like filler, but it's telling that WCCT (which is de facto an over-the-air CW+ affiliate with its site hosted there) and Tegna turned it down. If its ratings get above, say, what Raycom historically had with ACC sports outside its territory, I'd be very surprised. The PR doesn't mention what time-buy affiliates there are, by the way.

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WLFI Channel 53 - aka Chattanooga CW - aired roller derby
 

 

If the CW's upcoming sports division is gonna get some national presence, how about throwing roller derby into the mix, as well as WNFC women's tackle football? Instead of that LIV golf, which could create some backlash from what I've read so far.

 

Those two are neglected sports that (a) don't get much television exposure as in live games like the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA and (b) never get any highlights during the sports segment on the local news. Make those two sports a part of CW SPORTS

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15 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

 

That makes more since because if you take that article at face value, it implies that WGN and WCIU were simulcasting.

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21 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

Funny that LIV is not showing up on WUAB’s schedule on TitanTV, but Zap2It (which Nexstar owns) is showing it. The same disparity is also occurring with WKBD.

 

Who to believe? Well, the websites for both WUAB and WKBD link to TitanTV and NOT Zap2It…

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Over here in San Diego, LIV will air on independent station KUSI instead of Tegna's KFMB/CW San Diego. Wondering what's KUSI's angle on all of this, are they trying to slowly get the CW affiliation? KUSI is a stronger station and a loyal (and wealthy) following. 

 

The weird thing about this is that the CW San Diego has acquired sports programming before, as recently as last fall: https://www.sdloyal.com/news/2022/10/18/sd-loyal-playoff-match-to-be-broadcasted-on-the-cw-san-diego/

 

Here's the announcement from this morning, the anchors look and sound "so excited": 

 

Edited by tvtime07
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They sound like they didn't want to read that script on the teleprompter. But the boss forced them to do it like they're in a hostage situation. 

 

Update: They removed the video that @tvtime07 shared. 

 

Oh yes....a definite backtrack now. 

 

 

Edited by NewEgg00
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