Our favorite new commercial to debut during the return of football-filled weekends has got to be the latest from State Farm Insurance. It is the one where they compare a real athletic trainer with pop star Meghan Trainor. The singer interacts with Kansas City Chiefs quarterback--and long-time State Farm commercial star--Patrick Mahomes. At one point, the singer does the classic stage performer move of shouting into her mic, “Give it up for Patrick, everybody!"
Then Trainor delivers the knockout line: “He does Sports!"
The return of football, both College and Pro, reminds us of the essential nature of sports on television, and sports totelevision, both as live programming--and as an indispensable part of the business model.
And while all sports matter in that consideration, none matter more than (insert the basso profundo voice of the late John Facenda here) the National Football League.
For better or worse, the NFL has dominated television viewing for longer than we can remember. NFL games are usually the top-rated programs of each TV season. The argument can be made that getting the rights to broadcast the NFL is what truly made FOX a major network. And the current television rights deals to carry NFL games are reportedly worth an average of $10 billion a year, until 2033.
Just look at how the league orchestrated its opening weekend of the regular season.
First, there was the Thursday night game, a bonus to NBC’s very successful Sunday Night Football package, which, for our money, is still the best game production package in our view. Mike Tirico and Chris Collinsworth still bring more to the old Pat Summerall—John Madden vibe to the press box than any other play-by-play team out there. The NFL schedulers, who never miss an opportunity to have a marquee matchup worth showcasing, smartly sent “America’s Team,” which seems to be posing as an uncredited male version of “The Real Housewives of Wherever,” to take on the defending blue-collar talking, Cheesesteak-eating, tush-pushing Super Bowl Champions, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Then there was the oddity of a foreign Friday night game, both from a standpoint of where it was held and where it was shown. The NFL office clearly thought that they needed a September visit to São Paulo, Brazil, to showcase “American Football” in a different country. Thus, we ended up with the Kansas City Chiefs (sadly without their Tight End’s famous fiancée) looking like they didn’t realize that this wasn’t a meaningless preseason tilt against the very ready-to-play Los Angeles Chargers. The Chiefs were beaten by a Jim Harbaugh squad looking to prove they won’t be taken for granted in the AFC West.
But given that this game was available only as a live stream on YouTube, there was so much else about it that was worth taking note of. Not that the talent didn’t try to remind us of the game’s groundbreaking-ness at every opportunity. Apparently, the folks at NBC Sports were involved to keep all those YouTubers from mucking around too much with the sanctity of the NFL’s tightly controlled imagery of pro football. But there were enough influencers like “IShowSpeed", “Deestroying”, and “Haileyybailee” to appease the younger demos that the league was looking to prove it “gets their vibe” to.
And they didn’t go crazy in the booth, turning to the vanilla, but reliable team of Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner to call the game in a fashion that old football purists wouldn’t shout “What is this shit” at their screens. Ratings released on Monday suggest that 17 million people tuned in—or rather, streamed in—to watch the game. (Though broadcasters have thrown a “challenge flag” on the accuracy of that figure.)
By the time Sunday at Noon rolled around, it was business as usual for football fans. CBS and FOX returned their popular pre-game shows to the air with the usual suspects, though CBS took its show on the road to the football cathedral of Lambeau Field in Green Bay to highlight the network’s marquee afternoon game between the Lions and Packers. FOX, which pretty much invented taking the Sunday pre-game show on the road, stayed in their amazing augmented reality studio for their first show of the new season.
The games were mainly underwhelming on the “Kickoff Weekend” (presented by YouTubeTV, which now carries the pay-per-game product known as NFL Sunday Ticket). But leave it to the channel for the truly ADD-fueled football fan, NFL RedZone, and its marathon-man host, Scott Hanson, to keep us interested in all of the games by whipping around through all of them for seven hours or so.
News purists will likely think we are crazy for saying this, but watching NFL RedZone on any given Sunday is truly a masterclass in handling live coverage of multiple breaking news stories. Studying the approach of the production on any Sunday can be truly helpful in understanding how to navigate a chaotic situation in real time. If you’ve never watched RedZone in its 16 seasons, make it a point to do so and study how they do things. Even the somewhat controversial addition of commercials to the telecast didn’t hurt it that much in our view.
It may take a moment to come down from the adrenaline rush you will get from being exposed to that many different live football games at the same time. One way to do that is by watching the NBC Sunday Night Pre-Game show. For as good as we think NBC’s game production is, we find their hours before the game to be just OK. They do all of the things you want in a show to recap the day in the NFL and get you excited for the last game in the evening.
For our money, we still have a warm spot in our hearts for the OG of Sunday evening football shows, ESPN’s NFL PrimeTime. (Full disclosure, we worked at ESPN when “PrimeTime” debuted and played a small part in its creation.) Our position is simple: if you're hosting a highlight show, make it fun to watch by understanding the recipe for including not just the great plays from each game, but also some of the not-so-great ones you want to feature. And you need someone who loves the game and can have fun delivering the highlights. Love him or not, host Chris Berman has been that guy since the show’s debut in 1987. As “Boomer” would tell you (and yes, that is what he is called by everyone he works with), “it’s just a couple of guys watching all the games and then telling you about them. Plus, maybe having a little fun.” His partner, Booger McFarland, has filled the role that the late, great Tom Jackson created at the show’s start, some 38 years back.
Even now, as a show seen only via ESPN’s digital platform and truncated in length so as not to step on NBC’s Sunday night game, NFL PrimeTime is unabashedly two guys sitting at a desk and talking about a day of football. But they still do it in a way that makes it “a football highlight institution."
Finally, the football weekend bleeds over into Monday and wraps up with another institution, and that is ESPN’s Monday Night Football.
While “MNF” doesn’t have the original ABC cast of characters that Roone Arledge brought together some 55 years ago, ESPN has kept the franchise in the forefront by spending the money to lure Joe Buck and Troy Aikman over from being the lead play-by-play team at FOX and supporting them with a first-rate production team that definitely delivers a close second to the quality and class of NBC’s Sunday Night offering. We admit to still missing the foghorn rants of Howard Cosell, the “aw-shucks” comedy of “Dandy” Don Meredith, and the attempts by Frank Gifford to actually call the game. But the current-day version of “Monday Night Football” still provides the cure for the “Weekend full of football hangover” that many still have after going back to work on Monday morning.
(Especially after a week one fantastic come-from-behind win for our hometown Vikings over the Bears in Chicago. Skol!)
Yes, Football is back. And our position is that the television business is always better when it is.
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A few months ago, any parties who might have inquired about whether the E.W. Scripps Company might have any interest in selling any of their 60-plus local TV stations would have likely heard that there wasn’t a lot of interest from the 102-year-old media company. Scripps’ “Local News Group" was seemingly poised to be a significant player in the expected wave of deals ahead in the broadcasting business. Exhibit “A” of this appeared back in July, when Scripps and Gray announced a swap of some of their stations. The deal would give each group owner better geographic “clustering” and, not coincidentally, new duopolies in some small markets.
Many saw that deal as an early “toe in the water” just to see if the FCC was going to open the floodgates and do away with (or at least, heavily cut back on) its station ownership rules, especially the idea of allowing new duopolies in smaller markets like Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Twin Falls, Idaho.
Since then, there has been a lot of news in the station dealmaking space, but Scripps hasn’t been part of any of those deals. It hasn’t even been mentioned in the ongoing speculation about any other scenarios, either as a buyer or a seller.
Then last week, the company announced that they were selling off “just one station.” (With apologies to our friends at WSVN)
That station was WFTX, the Fox affiliate serving the Fort Myers-Naples, FL, market. The price tag announced was $40 million, and the buyer was a local outfit called Sun Broadcasting. Sun already owns WXCW, the CW affiliate in the market, along with a group of radio stations there.
(Allow us to note here that one of Sun Broadcasting's radio stations in Southwest Florida is called—and we are not making this up—“Trump Country 93.7.” The country music outlet sports the call letters “WHEL" and its online address is “radiotrump.com”. No word on whether the station is paying to license the family name, which we are pretty sure is a bit of a trademark.)
The sale of WFTX deserves more than a passing glance. First off, there is the price tag that Sun Broadcasting will pay for the station. “Fox 4,” as it is branded locally, due to its cable channel position in the market, has changed hands four times in the forty years it has been on the air. Scripps picked up the station as part of its 2014 acquisition of Journal Communications. Sources tell us that Scripps found the station in need of significant capital investment. In 2021, Scripps acquired the former network and stations of the Home Shopping Network (HSN), which had been renamed as ION. The ION network service became a subchannel on WFTX’s channel 36 digital over-the-air signal.
Having WFTX also allowed the nascent Scripps Sports to air the games of the NHL’s Florida Panthers on a digital subchannel in the Fort Myers market. That was just in time for the team to become the Stanley Cup Champions for a second time this past June.
Why would Scripps unload the station now? Maybe it was just a strong offer. The belief is that the purchase price for WFTX came in at a multiple of over 9X. (A reminder for those of us who didn’t get an MBA—a 9X multiple means the purchase price would be nine times a financial metric, usually called "broadcast cash flow” (BCF) or the money made after expenses, averaged over a period of time, which is typically five years. If you followed that description, it means the price of $40 million would suggest that the station was making a profit of about $4.4 million a year. Frankly, that sounds a bit high to us.)
For comparison purposes, Hearst bought Waterman Broadcasting’s WBBH-TV, the market’s NBC affiliate, for $220 million back in April of 2023. It also continues to operate WZVN, the market’s ABC affiliate, in a “local marketing agreement” with license holder Montclair Communications. Hearst rebranded the two stations’ news operations, which operate out of a shared newsroom, under the new names of “Gulf Coast NBC” and Gulf Coast ABC."
The other local station TV operator in market number 54 is the family-owned Fort Myers Broadcasting Company. It owns WINK-TV, the market’s oldest local station and its CBS affiliate. WINK has also operated the previously mentioned WXCW as the “WINK CW” under another local marketing agreement. It also produces 9 AM and 10 PM newscasts for the CW station under the WINK News brand. It is worth noting that Sun Broadcasting’s CEO, Joe Schwartzel, was once the General Manager at WINK-TV.
With Sun’s acquisition of WFTX from Scripps, the future relationship between WINK and WXCW will likely impact the news operation at WFTX.
Whatever the circumstances in Fort Myers, industry observers now wonder whether what led to Scripps' decision to sell WFTX is merely a “one-off” transaction or an indication that the company may look to bring in more cash by selling additional stations.
In the company press release announcing the sale of WFTX, Scripps CEO Adam Symson is quoted as saying, "Scripps is able to use the transaction to reduce debt and improve our station portfolio’s financial profile.” He goes on to justify the sale by saying it "will put the station in the hands of a locally based company with deep roots in the Southwest Florida community.”
Of course, one might ask if Scripps doesn’t really think it has enough roots in the Sunshine State with its ownership of six other Florida stations, including WFTS and WXPX in Tampa Bay, WSFL in Miami, WPTV and WHDT in West Palm Beach, or even WTXL in Tallahassee?
Whatever that logic, $40 million is still a nice chunk of change. And it probably buys the company a little breathing room on its bottom line.
We’re hearing that those interested parties who might have been getting the cold shoulder a few months back might now be finding a bit more receptive attitude about considering some deals about taking some other stations off Scripps’ hands. (You know, in those other places where they may not have “deep roots” in the local community...) Since late 2017, when Adam Symson took over as President and CEO, E.W. Scripps Company stock has dropped from $18.00 a share to trading under $3.00 a share as of the market closed last Friday. That means the current market capitalization of the company is roughly $260 million.
And just twenty years ago, in 2005, its market cap was $8 billion. (You don’t have to have an MBA to recognize that is a pretty significant decline.)
To wrap this up, we’re not suggesting that Scripps is considering selling everything, mind you. (Unless, of course, someone comes along with an outstanding offer.) But don’t be too surprised if perhaps it ends up owning a smaller number of stations sometime down the road.
One week ago yesterday, we were in the midst of writing an article when the breaking news notifications began appearing on our devices here in our office in the Twin Cities. The alerts stopped us cold. An “active shooter” was reported at a school in South Minneapolis.
Instinctively, we went to see if the local television stations were in breaking news coverage. In what may be a true sign of the times we live in, we didn’t go first to our television set, but rather to our mobile device to watch any livestreams that might be up.
Indeed, all four of the market’s major network affiliates were up with live streams of their over-the-air breaking news coverage. It would mark the beginning of a day with non-stop coverage of the tragedy that unfolded at the Annunciation Church and School. That coverage has now continued throughout the week that has gone by. Even one week later, the story still dominated the first block of the evening newscasts of each station.
And it isn’t meant to be any editorializing in saying this, but the reality of America in 2025 is that “a mass casualty situation” can pretty much happen anywhere, at any time.
Our focus here is on the television news coverage we have watched and studied in the past week. From the outset, we want to state that we have seen some outstanding coverage from all of the local stations here in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Clearly, this is the kind of story that had to be covered extensively in real time, even if the nature of the story would test the professionalism of any working journalist. Due to the demands of “wall-to-wall” coverage on that first day, there was the inevitable challenge in verifying facts as they slowly emerged--amid a growing tide of rumors and disinformation.
There will be opportunities for further review, and both compliments and criticism of the coverage provided. But at this mark, we wanted to share some takeaways we have noted in watching the coverage of this story from its first hour. We do so from the perspective of having been in a newsroom or a control room on many previous occasions, and with the hope that there can be lessons for any newsroom that may have to deal with this kind of story in the future.
Have A Clear Call to Action in each Breaking News Alert.
Like most people we know, we get far too many notifications on our mobile devices. Many of these we ignore as not essential to our lives at the moment we receive them. One thing that often gets overlooked in breaking news notifications is a clear call to action for the audience. Pointing directly to live coverage that can be accessed “right now” is essential. Avoid making viewers search for your coverage, especially if your standard procedure is to direct people to your station’s website or mobile app. Many station apps aren’t clear on how to get directly to the live coverage, so make it as simple as possible for people to do so.
Reset the Scene Frequently In The First Hours.
New viewers will join your coverage every minute it's on. Make it standard operating procedure to do “a reset of the scene” at least every 10 to 15 minutes in the first hours of continuing coverage. Space it out more as the coverage continues and as developments slow down. In the first hour or two, this may seem very repetitive, especially if few details are known and no new facts have emerged for some time. Resets also allow stating the time, which helps define the evolving timeline of the story.
Keep the facts known on screen as much as possible.
The minimum requirement is a full-screen graphic with bullet points, such as a title like “What We Know” or “At This Moment.” This gives your anchor(s) something to reference in the resets mentioned above. Some stations have persistent lower-third banners that stay on screen with the headline(s) of what is happening, while others use the old-school news ticker across the bottom of the screen. In any way possible, keep the facts on the screen so that when someone tunes in, they quickly see what is going on. Also, remember that not all screens will have sound turned on; make sure that someone glancing at your coverage can recognize that something is happening that deserves attention. Also, remember that a larger portion of the audience than you may think relies upon closed-captioning in these situations. Make sure real-time captioning is taking place.
Be careful about live video becoming wallpaper.
During the early coverage in Minneapolis, live cameras were constantly being shown, but they were actually some distance from the scene and showed little activity. Mainly, it was the crush of emergency vehicles with flashing lights and crime scene tape, all quite some distance from the front of the church. Although the live pictures were obviously the best available in those early moments, the video could be confusing when nothing was obvious. We’d note that using “double box” effects, which kept anchors on camera, provided a connection for viewers. A disconnected voice under a static scene isn’t as reassuring as seeing people explaining what it is we are seeing.
Aerial views can make a huge difference.
One of the things that has been lost with the arrival of bonded cellular backpacks is the decline of using live trucks. One of the best features of a live truck is its ability to raise a mast-mounted camera to see over a scene. If stations still have a live helicopter, we will assume you will use it, if possible. Otherwise, a drone may be the best option for getting aerials of the scene, again—if you can do so. But don’t pass up the idea of working to get a live camera on a nearby roof, hill, or other vantage point. A camera directly overlooking the scene is crucial in showing the full scope of the situation.
Maps are the next best thing.
Most of us are geographically challenged to some degree. Locating the scene from just an address isn’t easy for most viewers. Having a map that shows the location of breaking news should always be an early priority. We’ve seen stations just put a web browser with a Google Map view on the air when there was no other choice. We’d caution you to understand that such maps (and their 3D satellite view layers) are copyrighted material, so there can be issues if your station does not have a license to use them. Maps work best when there is someone on camera to point out what to focus on, so this is an opportunity to use a touch screen monitor or even an old school green screen—just like the one you likely use daily for the weather segments.
Don’t let being empathetic turn into being emotional.
In covering a story with as much raw emotion as a mass shooting at a school or church, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to keep all personal emotions completely in check. Conversely, this is not when viewers want to hear from robots with no feelings. Every anchor or reporter may have a personal connection to the story, even if just the understanding of a parent desperate to be reunited with their child. The audience understands and will accept moments of being human from those whose job it is to report in these moments. Being empathetic is at the foundation of being relatable. But the job is to deliver a clear account of what is happening—even if it defies understanding while occurring. There is a line between being impartial and losing objectivity, and it is important to respect it.
Remember that staff reinforcements are essential.
During the Minneapolis school shooting coverage, each local TV station here made great use of their investigative reporters and producers to dig into the stories that were developing slowly, such as the identification of the shooting suspect and uncovering information about their background--once a name was confirmed. In continuing coverage, it is easy to develop a “throw everything at the scene” mentality. However, it is vital to reserve some resources for the inevitable stories that will arise from the primary coverage. Everyone wants to jump in right away, and almost always, it is essential to have people ready to deal with the most critical question: “What’s Next?” Also, everyone runs out of adrenaline at some point. They will need to be resupplied and ultimately relieved, as the hours mount up.
Turn off the comments attached to online streaming.
As we mentioned earlier, we initially watched coverage from local TV broadcasters via their livestreams on YouTube. Some stations had selected the option to turn comments off on their livestreams, while others had left them on. We found the comments to be precisely what you would expect on social platforms like X/Twitter these days. In short, a free-for-all of crazy commentary, rumors, and outright disinformation that is mostly distracting from the news story being covered. There are many online platforms available for this discourse, but we’d suggest that it shouldn’t be right next to your breaking news coverage.
Take the time to write a final thought to conclude the coverage.
At some point, as long-form continuing coverage event comes to a close, there is a return to regular programming. Please take a moment to conclude your coverage with a summation of what has been seen, what is known, and what comes next. This is an opportunity to provide so much more than the typical “we return you now to our regularly scheduled program.” Genuinely capturing the moment with a few well-chosen words and promising to stay with the story in the weeks and months ahead is something that can and will resonate with the audience. Do not leave this up to an off-hand adlib. Have someone explain to the audience that your team has experienced what they have and that they will be here to cover what will happen next.
Obviously, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of things to take away from the coverage of another deadly tragedy in another American city. Indeed, there is much that can and should be shared from all those who have been covering this story. We wanted to share these notes while they were still in our minds. We hope that they might be helpful when you and your team find yourselves covering such a story that will impact your community for weeks, months, and even years to come.
Well, that’s about it for the Summer of 2025. Labor Day always marks the end of summer, and the meteorologists say that it happens on September 1st--regardless of whether the calendar says it has another nineteen days to go before the autumnal equinox. Sure, there could be some warmer temps yet to live through--we saw an awful lot of sweating during the weekend’s college football games, especially on the sidelines and amongst the fans at those open-air stadiums located below the Mason-Dixon line.
(And welcome to the college game, Coach Belichick. That’s a long season ahead there in Chapel Hill.)
What a summer it has been in the local TV business. We thought that things on the station trading front would get moving, as we have documented here over the past few months. But we didn’t see all of that coming. And with the next big meeting of the Federal Communications Commission coming up on September 30th, there is bound to be a lot of heavy lobbying going on in the nation’s capital in the weeks ahead.
We thought it would be helpful to recap the proverbial “shot clocks” that are all counting up on the major station deals announced this summer and where they stand as of the start of September.
Buzzer Already Sounded - Sinclair and Imagicomm sell stations to Rincon.
We’re including this because they are the most significant station transactions the FCC has actually approved so far this year. Rincon, headed by CEO Todd Parkin, who had previously led Sinclair’s regional sports networks venture and was CEO of PBC Broadcasting before that, first acquired a total of five stations in four midwestern markets from Parkin’s former employer (Sinclair) for a bit over $24 million. (One station in Milwaukee, (WVTV, a CW affiliate), one in Kirksville-Ottumwa, Iowa (KTVO, a ABC and CBS affiliate), one in Hannibal, Missouri-Quincy, Illinois-Keokuk, Iowa (KHQA, a CBS and ABC affiliate), and two stations in the Springfield-Champaign-Decatur, Illinois market (WICS is the ABC affiliate in Springfield and WICD is a full-time, full-power satellite in Decatur.) That deal was announced way back on March 7th of this year, and it was approved by the FCC on July 1st, over a petition to deny the sale from Frequency Forward. By our count, that was a shot clock that ran for some 116 days.
Rincon got another deal done in even less time with its acquisition of seven former Imagicomm stations for an undisclosed amount. The deal, which gave Rincon stations in Memphis, TN (WHBQ - Fox), Tulsa, OK (KOKI - Fox and KMYT - MyNet), Spokane (KAYU - Fox), Kennewick (KFFX - Fox), Yakima (KCYU - Fox), all in WA, and Yuma, AZ (KYMA - NBC & CBS), was announced back on April 3rd, 2025. It was approved just 17 days after the previous sale from Sinclair was approved, on July 18th. That shot clock ran only 106 days until the FCC signed off—again, over the objections from Frequency Forward.
Both of these deals were completed well within the Commission’s informal “shot clock” duration of 180 days. Thus, providing hope to other groups seeking deals as the summer got rolling and their own “shot clocks” began counting upward.
Shot Clock #1: 57 days and counting - Scripps and Gray’s Station Swapping
On July 7th, the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Company and the Atlanta-based Gray Media announced they were trading stations in five markets, with Gray acquiring WSYM (Fox) in Lansing, Michigan, and KATC (ABC) in Lafayette, Louisiana, from Scripps. For those stations, Scripps will get KKTV (CBS) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and KMVT (CBS) and KSAW-LD (Fox) in Twin Falls, Idaho. This deal was an exchange of equal-value assets, the companies said, while giving both market duopolies in each market they acquired stations in. This was the starting salvo, so to speak, for the novel idea that the necessary regulatory approvals will require—as the Scripps press release put it—"certain waivers of outdated local ownership restrictions that have uniquely restricted local broadcasters’ ability to compete in today’s dynamic and highly competitive media environment.” In other words, the expectation that Chairman Brendan Carr will deliver on his stated promise to get rid of those pesky FCC rules that would typically prevent duopolies from happening in Lansing and Lafayette for Gray and Colorado Springs and Twin Falls for Scripps.
Both Scripps and Gray indicated at the announcement of this deal that they anticipated simultaneous closings on these station swaps in “the fourth quarter of this year.” That would start on October 1st, so if the FCC were to change the rules in its September 30th meeting, that would make that timeline feasible.
Shot Clock #2: 25 days and counting - Allen Media sells 10 stations to Gray Media
Byron Allen’s Allen Media hired station broker Moelis & Company at the beginning of June to find a buyer (or buyers) for the company’s portfolio of 28 local stations. On August 8th, it found its first buyer when Gray Media announced it had reached a deal for 10 of Allen’s stations for the bargain price of $171 million. The agreement includes stations in Huntsville, AL (WAAY - ABC), Paducah, KY-Harrisburg, IL (WSIL - ABC), Evansville, IN (WEVV - CBS & Fox), Fort Wayne, IN (WFFT - Fox), Montgomery, AL (WCOV - Fox), Lafayette, LA (KADN - Fox), Columbus-Tupelo, MS (WTVA - NBC & ABC), Rockford, IL (WREX - NBC), Terre Haute, IN (WTHI - CBS), and West Lafayette, IN (WLFI - CBS).
Again, Gray is buying stations that would give it duopolies in six markets where it already owns stations, such as in Huntsville (WAFF - NBC and WTHV-LD - Telemundo), Evansville (WFIE - NBC), Fort Wayne (WPTA - NBC and WISE - CW), Montgomery (WSFA - NBC), and Rockford (WIFR - CBS & WSLN - CW). So once again, the deal with Allen Media is in anticipation of those pesky existing ownership rules being rewritten by the FCC any old time now.
Shot Clock #3: All of 14 Days (so really just underway) - Nexstar to merge with TEGNA
With all this dealing underway, there was no way that Nexstar’s Perry Sook wasn’t going to be at the table. And you could have almost heard World Poker Tour host Vince Van Patten’s trademark exclamation “He’s going all in” two weeks ago, on August 19th, when Sook pushed about $6.2 billion into “the pot” to merge with TEGNA. The play potentially creates a behemoth among local television owners, with a combined 265 stations once TEGNA’s current 64 stations are added to Nexstar’s existing portfolio of 201 stations.
And unlike the previous deals, the union of Nexstar and TEGNA (expected to close by “the second half of 2026”) will create those duopolies in some major markets, where the arguments that may hold water in smaller markets--claiming that the duopolies are necessary “due to economic conditions.” (Meaning that struggling stations in those markets could go out of business if not allowed to merge.) But those claims may be a little too hard to swallow for even a deregulation-minded FCC—and perhaps even the US Congress, if the CEO of the Newsmax channel has anything to say about it.
Can somebody get Chairman Carr a glass of water?
Still Waiting to Tip-Off: Cox Media Group and…somebody?
We detailed in this column just last week why we thought the small, but mighty group of Cox TV stations that the money guys at Apollo Global Management invested in back in 2019 would be among the very first to be sold this summer. And why they weren’t—so far at least. That doesn’t mean that a deal couldn’t get done any day now, assuming that somebody has a spare $4 billion or so lying around or that they could get their hands on reasonably quickly—and at reasonable lending terms.
That list of buyers that we can think of is relatively small. (Doesn’t mean there aren’t some we haven’t even imagined yet, but keep reading because we have imagined a bunch.)
And later match-ups: Maybe on the West Coast? (Or the East Coast?)
There are still stations with virtual “For Sale” signs up all over the country. Allen Media still has 18 stations that Moelis is presumably out there shopping around. We keep hearing stage whispers that Sinclair still wants to be in the game, even after floating the idea that it would do a deal for TEGNA before Nexstar’s bold bet led them to fold on that play. Will they be a buyer--or will they find more places to sell off their smaller markets, freeing up some cash for a new "buy-in”?
(We should apologize here for stretching out the Poker metaphor almost as long as the Basketball one.)
What about the privately owned family-operated stations, such as those in single markets like The Goodmon family's in Raleigh or The Manship family's in Baton Rouge? Or the family-owned groups such as Hubbard, Sunbeam, Morgan Murphy, and News-Press Gazette? If someone showed up with enough money, would the younger generations of these families be interested in selling and exiting the television broadcasting business while their assets still have significant value? (Here’s a phrase to remember: “Never say never.”)
And no pondering of who might be sellers or buyers this fall would be complete without a mention of the Owned and Operated stations of the four big networks. The newly merged Paramount-Skydance says it still values the television business, even though the Paramount movie studio was the major attraction that led to the creation of the new PSKY trading symbol on Wall Street. But when those FCC-granted licenses for your O&O stations are the way for the current administration in Washington to make your business just a little more difficult, how much are they really worth?
Or conversely, perhaps you want to increase the flow of retransmission consent revenue directly into the network’s bottom line? Then maybe expanding your O&O group would make sense? Does anyone not believe that Disney might at least consider the idea of owning the ABC affiliate in the same Central Florida market where it operates its very successful theme parks and cruise line?
For the record, we don’t know if any of these wild ideas has any basis in reality. All we know is that many C-suite executives are waiting and watching to see what will happen next. Along with their employees, of course. The fourth quarter of 2025, along with all four quarters of 2026, still has a lot of time left on the clock.
And nobody in the TV station business wants to get upset by "a buzzer beater."
As we begin the Labor Day weekend, the signs of summer coming to an end are all around.
Most students are back to school already. College football has already started with Thursday night games. Many travelers are getting in a last trip (and hopefully the radios will be working at all airports). Plus, many folks will be hitting the beach for the last time, all before the summer of 2025 takes its last bow.
Our apologies, we’ve been a little off our normal publishing schedule this week. The last two days have been occupied with following the local news coverage here in Minneapolis of the tragic story at the Annunciation Church and School, where students were in a Wednesday morning service having just begun their new school year, when the unthinkable occurred.
It is a story that no one wants to have to report on.
But we have seen all of the local television newsrooms here in the Twin Cities do some outstanding work with covering the story. One that has unfortunately played out in too many locations around our country. We have some observations on what we have seen across the past 48 hours, and we will share them here next week, when we return after the holiday.
Here’s hoping you have an opportunity to enjoy the weekend in some fashion. Do make it a good one.
"Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends."
And with apologies to Emerson, Lake and Palmer--and the 1970s in general, we have to wonder as this new week begins—just what are the folks over at the Cox Media Group corprorate offices, in the Landings section of Atlanta, thinking about these days?
Because when the active market for buying and selling television stations was set to return full force, everyone assumed that Apollo Global Management, the folks who bought 71% of Cox Media Group (CMG), would be one of the first to announce that it was selling.
Earlier this year, Apollo retained the firm Moelis & Company (the go-to folks for when you want to sell billions of dollars worth of media properties) to explore selling CMG for an estimated $4 billion. Apollo spent just over $3 billion to acquire its controlling share of CMG in 2019. Cox Enterprises retained 29% of the spun off Cox Media Group, which to be clear, does not include the newspapers and other radio stations that Cox Enterprises still owns.
That’s about a nice billion dollar return in six years on the Apollo investment. And given the current value in the nine markets where CMG owns stations, the $4 billion price tag wasn’t considered that outrageous. For example, most observers put the price for Atlanta flagship, WSB-TV at nearly $1 billion, on its own.
So what happened? Why hasn’t a deal for Cox Media Group been announced?
Well, that’s where the real speculating begins. (And where we will remind you, as our lawyers suggest, that what follows is not financial information that any kind of investing or anything else should be based upon.)
There was a lot of talk that we heard suggesting that Nexstar was going to emerge as the buyer for the Cox Media Group’s television stations. And that would have seemed likely—that is up until a week ago, when Perry Sook announced that he had a bigger deal in place to buy Tegna for $6 billion and add 64 stations to the Nexstar roster.
There are those who think Sook and company could still do a deal for the CMG stations. But dropping $10 billion for both Tegna and Cox is, what might be called in some circles, "real money." As F. Ross Johnson said when he was trying to convince the head of Nabisco to merge with Johnson’s RJR Tobacco company: “We’re not just talking about f—k you money...we’re talking about f—k everybody money!” (The late James Garner plays Johnson in the 1993 HBO movie version of the book about the RJR Nabisco deal, titled “Barbarians at the Gate.” It is definitely worth a watch if you’ve never seen it.)
If Nexstar wanted to spend the money, it would seemingly have little problems adding the CMG stations to its portfolio. There would be market duopolies in Charlotte and Dayton, but if the thinking about the Federal Communications Commission’s stated goal of lifting most, if not all, of the regulations on television station ownership comes true--at some point in the near future--those duopolies would not be a problem.
What we keep hearing is that Apollo has been pretty firm on the price it wants to sell Cox Media Group for. If there were negotiations underway with Nexstar, they probably got sidetracked when Nexstar's deal for Tegna had to be announced. That was necessary when Sinclair floated a desire in the press to merge its TV stations group with Tegna. So any deal for Nexstar and CMG got moved to a back burner.
That certainly doesn’t rule out it still being done, but it might not happen before there is some clearer signal on what the FCC will do and when it will do it.
Meanwhile, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy is now calling for the FCC to reject any proposal to change or eliminate the television ownership rules, claiming that the commission lacks the authority to even do so. Ruddy’s position is that only Congress can make such a change, and that if the FCC tries to alter the current cap on local television ownership (which stands at covering no more than 39% of the country, but the cap has various nuances that make the calculation of that figure a bit flexible.) Ruddy promises court challenges to any move from the FCC, claiming that "consumers would have fewer choices and pay higher costs."
Obviously, Mr. Ruddy isn’t aware that local television stations still put a signal in the air which consumers can receive for free with an antenna. It only costs consumers when they get their local television stations via a cable, satellite or streaming provider, (along with Newsmax and other channels) which the National Association of Broadcasters will be quick to remind him of.
Back in 2017, during the first Trump administration, Ruddy was a vocal opponent of a proposed merger between Sinclair and Tribune Media, claiming the deal "raises very serious concerns about competition and media diversity.” That deal ultimately failed. Then, two years later, in 2019, Nexstar would acquire Tribune Media for $7.2 billion.
But all of this just points out that the questions over whether any company can own an unlimited number of local TV stations are far from being clearly resolved.
There could be other potential suitors for the Cox Media Group stations, but not that many with easy access to a credit line in the billions which will be needed to make the purchase--or the space in their portfolio to stay under that pesky ownership cap, should the FCC not be willing (or able) to change it anytime before the 2026 midterm elections potentially changes which party has control of Congress.
And Apollo doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get a deal done, at least one that might require it to do some negotiating of the price for the group. The other deal point that seems to be firm is the desire to have any sale of CMG be an “all or nothing” deal, meaning that Apollo doesn’t want to deal with selling off CMG’s stations in pieces.
We are sure the executives in the CMG corporate office on Atlanta’s Peachtree-Dunwoody Road are saying publicly that it's "business as usual” until there is any official announcement on the future of the company. That leaves the company’s Executive Chairman, Steve Pruett, plenty of time to keep hawking his “best selling book” titled “The Gain Principle: Mastering Life’s Growth Cycles for Success and Service."
(No word on whether CMG employees will be getting a copy, as part of any future transaction.)
They might take some solace in the song lyrics of the aforementioned Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Even though it’s been over 50 years since that song, which opens with the words “Welcome back my friends...” was released. It was part of a musical suite titled “Karn Evil 9”, and no, we’re still not quite sure what it really means.
We do know that way back in 1973 when the album “Brain Salad Surgery” was released, one company could own no more than 7 local TV stations (along with 7 AM and 7 FM radio stations) so all we really are talking about here is just some ancient history.
And as the late Casey Kasem used to say, “Now, on with the countdown!"
For some time now, we have had a small, but vocal number of readers who have suggested that we can be…how best to put this?
That we can be a bit long-winded at times. (Well, it's not like we have had simple topics to cover in these dispatches lately.)
But on this Friday, before we get to the weekend--we’ll leave this here with no added commentary. Other than to admit that when we recently watched this video, we started out laughing.
That quickly turned to being uncomfortable at just how accurate this bit from The Onion truly is, at least in capturing the conundrum that is local television news today.
As one of our long-time industry colleagues said yesterday, there was a lot to digest in TV Land on this third Tuesday in August.
It all began unfolding on Monday, when the Wall Street Journal reported in an exclusive story, "Sinclair Proposes Merger with Tegna.” The Journal said that the proposal to combine Sinclair’s broadcast division of 185 owned or operated local television stations with Tegna’s 64 stations. The report pegged the offer as being worth somewhere between $25 and $30 a share, and cited details from “people familiar with the matter."
By early Tuesday morning, another person would weigh in. This one from "deep in the heart of Texas," as the song goes. We admit to wishing that Nexstar Chairman and CEO Perry Sook had opened his briefing call with the immortal words of ESPN’s College GameDay legend, Lee Corso, by declaring “Not so fast, my friend.”
Sook’s Nexstar announced that it had “a definitive agreement” to acquire Tegna. Nexstar would be buying the outstanding shares of Tegna stock and assuming its debt, in a deal worth about $6.2 billion. The deal would combine Nexstar’s 201 current TV stations with Tegna’s 64, keeping Nexstar as the nation’s largest owner of local television stations. The transaction would include 35 markets where Nexstar would create or add to duopolies (2 or more stations) by acquiring Tegna.
Turning to our financial experts, we asked why the Nexstar acquisition offer would be more desirable than the Sinclair merger proposal. The answer, it seems, is about the money. (Yes, we also said “Well, Duh” to them when they said it to us.) Specifically in this case, the Nexstar offer includes assuming some $2 billion in debt that Tegna currently carries. The Sinclair deal would bring that debt over to the new merged company, which we think definitely should have been named either “Signa” or “Tegclair."
Another factor is that Nexstar is a much bigger and healthier company, valued at over $6 billion, compared to the smaller Sinclair, which is valued at only $1 billion. Nexstar is seen by many as being more strategic, with its investments in businesses like the CW Network, NewsNation, and other initiatives being more sound than Sinclair’s portfolio, including its disastrous investment in regional sports channel operator, Diamond Sports.
Wall Street’s reaction to the Nexstar-Tegna deal was interesting to track during Tuesday’s trading session. At first, Nexstar shares opened up some $16 a share before sliding backwards during the day, and ultimately closing just a dollar and change over its previous close, which was a gain of less than one percent. At least one Wall Street shop raised its stock price target for NXST, the symbol Nexstar trades under, to $250 a share. Meanwhile, Tegna shares closed up over 4% at $21.05 for the day, which is an increase of 87 cents a share.
The Sinclair story in the Wall Street Journal late Monday sped up Nexstar’s timetable in going public, but the behind-the-scenes work had obviously been going on for some time. Whispers about the potential deal had been in the wind for a couple of weeks and frankly seemed more credible than the idea that Sinclair could put together a deal that would land Tegna.
Of course, this mega deal is based on the idea that the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission will dramatically reduce, if not outright eliminate, most regulations on television station ownership. Nexstar’s Perry Sook said as much in his remarks in the announcement early on Tuesday. Sook has been a leading voice in the industry, proclaiming that deregulation would allow local broadcasters to "level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the Big Tech and legacy Big Media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources."
The irony of that statement to us is that Nexstar isn’t what you would describe as a “Small Media” company anymore.
It has come a long way from its humble roots when Sook bought his first television station, WYOU, the CBS affiliate in Scranton, Pennsylvania, back in 1996. By the company’s 30th anniversary in 2026, it could own three of the four major network stations in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton/Hazelton, PA market, as it already owns NBC affiliate, WBRE, and would add Tegna’s WNEP, the ABC affiliate there when the deal to acquire Tegna was completed, which is expected to take as long as a year.
That would leave only the Fox affiliate in North Eastern Pennsylvania as owned by someone other than Nexstar. Ironically, perhaps, that station, WOLF-TV, is owned by New Age Media and operated by Sinclair, which also has WSWB, the CW affiliate, and WQMY, the MyTV affiliate in the market. Sinclair has been moving to purchase all of the so-called “Sidecar” owned stations that it doesn’t own outright, but operates through a structure known as a “Shared Services Arrangement” (SSA), which allowed broadcasters to effectively manage more stations than they could legally own under the existing television ownership rules.
So in 2026, six of the major local television stations in the nation’s 59th largest market will likely be owned by just two companies. Nexstar would have three, and Sinclair would have three. We almost forgot that Scripps, through its ION Media Networks division, owns WQPX there, but that station produces no local programming that we are aware of. This kind of market consolidation will likely play out in most, if not all, of the television markets across the country.
That is, if the FCC holds up its end of the bargain. We are expected to learn more about their plans by September 30th, which is the scheduled date for the next open meeting of the full commission. We must assume that Perry Sook believes his plans will be viewed favorably by the FCC.
By the way, Nexstar stated in its Tuesday morning announcement that it expects to find annual “synergies” (aka "cost savings”) of $300 million through the deal for Tegna. We think that is a pretty conservative number. By the time Nexstar fully integrates the Tegna properties into being part of the “Nexstar Nation,” which could take a year or two after the deal closes, the savings could easily reach double that figure.
By late Tuesday night, there was already one obstacle to a Nexstar-Tegna deal getting done.
The former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr. and his law firm of Kahn, Swick & Foti announced they were investigating the proposed sale of Tegna to Nexstar, “seeking to determine whether this consideration (the $22 a share price) and the process that led to it are adequate or whether the consideration undervalues the company.” They are inviting anyone “who believes that this transaction undervalues the company and wants to discuss their legal rights regarding the proposed sale” to contact the firm, “without obligation or cost."
Wonder if anyone from the 410 area code will be calling that firm’s toll-free number?
With apologies to Shakespeare, we had to borrow his line from “Romeo & Juliet.” In this case, it is what the folks at the “spinning-up-quick-co” known as Versant have taken out of the name of their flagship cable channel that matters. Faced with the need to drop the initials of the National Broadcasting Company, the future incarnation of what is known today as MSNBC wasted no small amount of time (and hopefully an even smaller amount of money) to announce the new name for the home of Maddow, Psaki, Wallace, Tur, Ruhle and Brzezinski, along with some dudes named Scarborough, Hayes and O’Donnell.
And so, MSNBC will become…(drumroll)...MS NOW. As in, they just took out the NBC part and slapped the ubiquitous word “NOW” on the end.
We can imagine the writers of the archenemy, Fox News, just crushing their keyboards with the obvious misnomers to keep Greg Gutfeld laughing at his own jokes for the foreseeable future.
As the scientists in Jurassic Park ask each other as they are on the run from various killer dinosaurs brought back to modern-day life, “Just exactly how did this get out of the lab?” Color us as skeptical as Samuel L. Jackson in a lab coat.
First of all, the MS in MSNBC stood originally for Microsoft, which was a partner in the joint venture that created MSNBC when it launched from its newly constructed facility in Secaucus, New Jersey, back in July of 1996. It was touted as being the marriage of television with that new-fangled news platform of the day, the internet. Microsoft was bringing its expertise in the whole online thing that founder Bill Gates had laid out in his 1995 book, “The Road Ahead.” Gates was referring to the then newly emerging “information superhighway,” which his company was going to rule with the release of its Windows ’95 operating system and the bundled “Internet Explorer” web browser.
They were heady times, the mid-90s.
In less than a decade, the MS in MSNBC would be gone when Microsoft divested its interest in the cable TV channel in 2005. It would retain a piece of the online news website for another seven years. But by then, the odd five-letter brand name had stuck, and MSNBC kept the first two letters despite there being no Microsoft ownership.
Fast forward to 2025, when NBC owner Comcast decided it wanted to unburden itself of the underperforming linear television business, and packaged up a group of TV channels, including MSNBC, along with financial news-focused CNBC and other lesser-watched channels, and set them off on their own, aboard the newly christened liferaft named “Versant.” (Still no word yet on what CNBC will be renamed. We kind of doubt that just having the letter “C” would be that new moniker.)
We almost forgot, the MS NOW name actually stands for something. The “MS” is short for “My Source,” and the “NOW” is not the shortened imperative version of “right NOW,” but rather an abbreviation for “News, Opinion, World."
Ah, that fixes it. Much better now, yes?
There are so many questions from our friends who specialize in branding, and so little time for them all. But again, as Sam Jackson delivered his classic line in Jurassic Park: “Hold on to your butts!"
Color us underwhelmed with the new name. Sure, we get the fact that, along with having to get the hell out of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (where the channel moved from its original home in Secaucus, NJ, in 2007), MSNBC also had to leave the NBC brand behind. But why would you pick a name that sounds like you are either updating the feminist magazine that Gloria Steinem started up in 1971, or creating a local news operation in the state of Mississippi, or fundraising for the chronic disease of Multiple Sclerosis?
What’s also missing? What is that four-letter word that means “newly received or noteworthy information?” Often preceded these days by another word like “breaking”, “old”, or regrettably, “fake”? Oh yes, the word is “news”! What they will ostensibly be delivering much of the day on “MS NOW."
Yes, yes, we know that what passes for news on 24-hour cable channels across the spectrum is mainly talking about the news. But even the late Roger Ailes figured out after his time with “America’s Talking”, the cable channel that MSNBC would replace after Ailes convinced Rupert Murdoch to build the Fox News channel, that you needed news in the name to have credibility with viewers. And you know how that turned out. (Fun fact, MSNBC’s facility in Secaucus was initially used by “America’s Talking.” Currently, it is the home of the MLB Network’s studios.)
Then there is the whole explosion of the word “NOW” as branding for news. Way back in 1998, when we were in a meeting about creating a tag line for a new 24-hour local news channel to be launched in Austin, Texas, we were trying to shorten a previously well-received slogan of “Your News All The Time.” After a whiteboard was filled with ideas, the one that made the most sense to go with was "Your News Now.” The underlining of the word made it read as so much more strident. At least we thought so at the time.
Again, the 90s were heady times.
In the years since, the word “now” has become part of the branding for news operations in numerous markets across the country. Morgan Murphy Media uses it on their TV stations in Madison (“News 3 Now”), Spokane (“4 News Now”), and Yakima (“Apple Valley News Now”). They aren’t alone; the word appears on stations owned by Gray (Hawaii News Now), Lilly (“Erie News Now” in Erie, PA), Scripps (“News 3 Now” in Omaha, NE), and countless other stations. NBC even calls their rolling daily news livestream, “NBC News Now."
Speaking of NBC, the last time there was a branding blunder of this magnitude was back in 1976, when NBC paid $750,000 (about $4 million in today’s dollars) to have their red and blue “Big N” logo designed, only to learn that the Nebraska Educational Television Network had the exact same logo design, just in all red. Nebraska ETV had spent about $100 on its version. NBC ended up paying off Nebraska ETV with $500,000 of shiny new RCA broadcast equipment and about $50,000 so they could get a shiny new logo. That let NBC use the “Big N” logo for another ten years before embracing its long-lost peacock motif.
If we were highly-paid "brand consultants," we would have suggested just pulling out our Sean Parker-inspired playbook and dubbing the new MSNBC as just “NOW.” To refresh some memories, Parker told Mark Zuckerberg to drop the word “The” and just call his growing online social network “Facebook.” As played by Justin Timberlake in the movie (“The Social Network”), Parker tells Zuckerberg as he strolls away from their first meeting: “It’s cleaner.” We would have only suggested this after the check for our large fee had cleared.
Whether it would stand for three words, as in “News, Opinion, World” or just one name, “News Opinion World,” just going with “NOW” would be distinctive and memorable. And it’s only three letters. Of course, there might be some confusion with other groups that use those same three letters as an abbreviation for their name.
Come to think of it, maybe the name “America’s Talking” is still available?
It is no secret to anyone working in a local television station over the past few years that the current business model seems to have one constant theme. How much money can be saved by eliminating positions? Contrary to what you might think, the incredibly shrinking station staff is not a recent phenomenon.
Since the early 1990s, with the advent of desktop computers and various software systems, there has been a gradual reduction in staffing across nearly every department of a station. Things escalated a bit in the early 2000s, with the introduction of automation in production areas. The development of control room automation marked by the debut of “ParkerVision” in Jacksonville, Florida. It, in turn, begat Grass Valley’s Ignite, which was joined by Ross’s Overdrive, Sony ELC, and others. Those systems led to the elimination of two or three bodies from staffing models for each shift, when dedicated TDs, audio mixers, and graphics operators found themselves either out of a job--or learning a new position. Robotic cameras made it unnecessary to have separate humans push and point each studio camera, and a few more minimum wage positions could be cut. Newsrooms dropped associate producers, production assistants, and writers along the way as well, leaving producers doing the job that three or more people used to perform.
Suffice it to say that these days the staffing model for a local television station has less “headcount” (as the financial folks like to call it) than ever before. So much so that in many stations, especially smaller ones, you might wonder when there will be nobody left to cut--and yet still keep the place on the air?
But who would have guessed that the latest round of personnel cuts would target the folks once charged with running the stations?
That’s right, the latest target of the endless budget trimming in local TV is none other than the position of General Manager. Need proof of this? Look no further than last week's moves announced by Graham and Scripps.
First up was the promotion of Autumn Jones at Graham’s WKMG in Orlando, to the hyphenated position of VP-General Manager and News Director. Jones has been the News Director at the CBS affiliate in Market #21 for four months. Before joining WKMG, she was working just down I-4 and I-75 in Fort Myers, as the Station Manager and News Director for Scripps’ WFTX, the Fox affiliate there. But she is no newcomer to Central Florida, having spent 15 years with cross-town rival and long-time market leader, Cox’s WFTV. She was also the Media Relations Director of the Orlando Police Department in a career departure from television.
We certainly congratulate Jones on her promotion. It is always great to see a News Director get bumped up to the GM’s office. Frankly, it used to be rare, if not unheard of, for a news director to be even considered for the role. Which was puzzling, given that the position typically managed the largest staff of people along with the biggest departmental budget.
Speaking of Scripps, that company was also involved in promoting some News Directors to become General Managers. In Norfolk and Tucson, the current News Directors in each Scripps station (Ed Reams and Leeza Glazier, respectively) will become combination General Manager and News Directors. They join other department heads in seven different markets who will continue in their current roles as Director of Sales, and in one case a Director of Engineering, while adding the duties of general manager to their job descriptions. And Scripps says there will be more of these hyphenated GMs to come.
Which leads us to ask the obvious question: When did the GM’s role become reduced enough that it could just be added to the plate of an existing department head? Is having a single leader of a television station necessary any longer?
Not that long ago, General Managers were the people who determined pretty much everything about how a local TV station operated. There is no doubt that the position has changed over the past decade or so, just like every other position in a station. Larger groups have turned stations into the equivalent of fast-food franchise locations, with each station looking, sounding, and operating pretty much the same as its co-owned siblings in other cities. You can go into most any market and identify which station is owned or operated by Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray, Scripps, or whoever in about ten minutes of watching.
And that’s without waiting for the corporate logo animation at the end of each newscast.
Each key function at a local television station is now overseen by at least one corporate executive in the company’s headquarters, who usually dictates operational policies and makes major decisions. They may have a group of regional executives who oversee sub-groups of stations that are geographically clustered. Scripps also announced that they are following the model pioneered by the now-departed Meredith station group, that of centralizing its creative services functions in a few station locations. It sounds like Scripps learned the lesson that Tegna discovered the hard way, and it will be keeping more “boots on the ground” in each station’s creative services department.
We are reminded of the funny scene in the movie “Coming to America” where the legendary actor John Amos plays the manager of a fast-food restaurant in Queens called “McDowell’s.” In the scene, Eddie Murphy, who has been working in the restaurant, walks in on Amos in his office as he is going through a stolen McDonald’s restaurant manual, which he quickly tries to hide. The gag, of course, is that his “McDowell’s” is a near carbon copy of a McDonald’s, changed just enough to hopefully keep the lawyers at bay. Amos explains this would-be distinction to Murphy’s character by telling him that while McDonald’s has its “Big Mac”, McDowell’s has the “Big Mick.” The main difference between the two is that the Big Mick has no sesame seeds on its bun.
In real life, this scene played out a few years ago when one major TV station group issued a news “playbook” to all of its news directors, seeking to unify many of the procedures and decision-making across all of the group’s newsrooms.
Local TV stations, for better or worse, have been made into so many near-identical outposts of their owners. While there may be some vestiges of their former branding, such as the call letters or newscast name, as they have had for years, all of the supporting elements of the station are likely to be the same as every other station in the same company. There are certainly savings to be had in buying all the graphics, music, and even network affiliations in bulk.
But stations still seemed to need General Managers. As the highest-paid position in each station (unless there was a news anchor who was particularly popular and long tenured), GMs were the people who were responsible for all aspects of a station’s operation and, in turn, the public face of the station at the local chamber of commerce and all other community-type meetings. Given that the revenue aspects of local TV stations are usually totaled in the millions of dollars each year, most GMs came from the ranks of leaders in sales departments.
Now the job is such that apparently one person can handle it while still leading the news, sales, or even the engineering department at the same time.
After all the headcount reductions, it might be reasonable to ask at some point, will there be anybody left working in a local station’s building? Or will it be an empty shell, with all functions being remoted to another city that features a “hub” that operates everything, including the station’s traffic, sales, promos, and even the nightly newscast?
In some locations, there could still be a station building open locally with people working inside. It will feature a small staff operating what used to be two, three, or more separate local stations—now all under one roof. Surely those operations will still need a general manager? To keep track of what is on the air at each station, ensure they remain profitable, and funnel money back to corporate headquarters.
By then, the job will likely be hyphenated into being a General Manager--Director of Sales--News Director—Creative Services Director--Chief Engineer—and front desk receptionist. After all, someone has still got to ask the question, “What can I do for you today?"
This past Monday afternoon, Sinclair Broadcast Group President & CEO Chris Ripley sent an all-hands email telling the employees that “our Board of Directors has begun a process to explore strategic opportunities for the Broadcast division and to evaluate a possible separation of our Ventures division.” The email went on to explain how “this review is about unlocking new opportunities through innovation and scale” and about how the company has expressed in the past “the standalone value of our ventures and broadcast assets exceeds what the market has historically recognized."
Ripley tried to address the obvious fears that his email would generate amongst the workers with an encouraging “As far as what that means for us all, it’s business as usual.”
The industry press lit up with the headline that Sinclair was undertaking a "comprehensive strategic review" of its business.
Checking in with our universal BS translator device to decode this swirl of corporate PR puffery, we were greeted with the response: “Reply hazy, try again.” So we put down our “Magic 8-Ball” and began scratching our heads in puzzled bemusement.
Why on Earth would anyone put out such a collection of words posing as informative and helpful, but with the obvious meaning of "we don’t really know what we are going to be doing, and we don’t know how long it will take. And when we are done, we may be buying, selling, merging, or doing something else, but don’t you worry about it.
In essence, the proverbial "Nothing to see here, folks--so just keep moving along."
We’d guess there also is nothing to wonder out loud about—except there are the billions that were pissed away in that whole Diamond Sports Group fiasco, when Sinclair spent $10.6 billion to buy Fox Sports’ former group of regional sports channels. That bet is now worth (checks notes...) yes, it is worth absolutely $0 today, Sinclair even had to spend $500 million just to settle lawsuits that came in trying to extract itself from the business.
Now comes Monday's announcement that left everyone shaking their heads.
Here’s what we think it means: Sinclair needs to find some room to maneuver, especially as the deluge of real--and rumored--deals for local television stations begins. It has a large portfolio of local TV station assets that still have some value in the current marketplace. And there has been much speculation that Sinclair would like to be in any of the conversations for the local station properties that are—or soon will be—up for grabs. That’s all in their Broadcast division. As for the Ventures division, things like the company’s "digi-networks” (like Comet, Charge, and TBD) and Tennis Channel would likely prosper more if they weren’t tied to all the “questionable long-term prospects of local television stations.
Sinclair, which began life as a technology company, selling UHF television transmitters as Dielectric, still has that business along with interests in various firms deeply involved in the slow-moving transition to “NextGen TV” which is the ATSC 3.0 television standard. It also has investments and real estate holdings, according to the company’s website.
That “comprehensive strategic review” would seem to mean that the company is going to try to figure out what it needs to do from a list of possible options that includes too many conceivable (and maybe some inconceivable) options to list here. By Tuesday, the company announced it was spinning off its “NewsOn” app, which provided streaming of local newscasts from over 275 stations from over 135 markets. NewsOn was a promising marketplace for local news that never reached its potential. It will now be part of the streaming technology company Zeam.
But the truly puzzling thing, to us at least, is the timing of Sinclair’s announcement. For weeks, Sinclair’s name has been popping us as being involved with everything from being a possible buyer for the Cox Media Group stations that Apollo Global Management wants to sell—to thinking about selling off some of their own smaller markets where they presently own stations. Then there is the persistent chatter that Sinclair might be willing to finance some sales of those smaller stations. That’s not a crazy idea, given that financial institutions aren’t as interested in writing loans for someone looking to finance their acquisitions of those stations.
All of these potential moves would seem to position SBGI as still the hunter, rather than becoming the hunted.
We were trying to decode the cryptic tea leaves coming our the company’s headquarters in Cockeysville, Maryland, when a couple of readers started asking if we believed that there may be some major “head fakes” going on in the industry, given all of the recent “hot takes” on who is (and isn’t) going to be buying stations in the near future.
Sure, the whole Wall Street Journal article last Friday about Nexstar being in talks to acquire TEGNA’s portfolio of stations got everyone talking, including us. But what if that story was strategically leaked to disrupt other negotiations that were quietly going on? What if TEGNA were a company buying rather than selling TV stations? One line of purely speculative thinking involved the idea that if TEGNA acquired another group or a package of stations, it could become too big for anyone else to swallow up. Certainly, the executives in the C-Suite of TEGNA’s Tysons, Virginia offices may not be ready to turn over the keys to the company and just walk away. Taking on an acquisition of more stations could act as a “poison pill” to hold off any potential acquirers of TEGNA itself.
As we said before, this particular game of "musical chairs" for the largest owners of local television stations may just be getting started, and every CEO is likely trying to figure out if there will be any chairs left open whenever the music stops.
So there probably are a whole bunch of “comprehensive strategic reviews” going on right now. Our advice to those of you still working as if “it's business as usual?” Keep those resumes and reels updated, friends.
Our experience is that those “comprehensive strategic reviews” rarely lead to plans to keep the same number of employees.
We’ll add our ask that you please subscribe to TVND by clicking the subscribe button at the top of this web page. It’s absolutely free to do so; we won’t hit you up for anything other than the opportunity to let you be among the first to read our dispatches in your email. If you are already reading us from your inbox, we sincerely thank you for your support.
In this past Saturday’s special edition on the still-developing news that Nexstar is in talks to acquire the television stations of TEGNA, we initially noted that there weren’t many markets where Nexstar might have run afoul of the current FCC limitation on owning two or the “big four” network-affiliated stations. Our eagle-eyed readers quickly began pointing out that we had missed some obvious markets where our original observation was in error.
We had fully disclosed our somewhat impaired state at the original time of publication. We don’t make excuses for our errors. Even if we had a really good one, which we certainly did. But we don’t, so we hereby acknowledge our oversights. In this case, all 31 of them.
Now that we have had some additional time to recover, we can assure you that we have diligently compared both companies' portfolios and can accurately report all of the 30 markets where Nexstar’s current 201 stations will have duopolies when they add in the 64 stations that TEGNA currently has. In some markets, there could be “triopolies"—or perhaps even more?
Of course, as we have stated before, this amalgamation is still a theoretical one until there is an official announcement. And then there is the small matter of when the FCC will decide to announce its promised reform, rejection, or even retention of the agency’s television ownership rules. Surely someone in the commission has given Perry Sook & Company some assurance that by the time they are ready to close this multi-billion dollar transaction, there will be a more receptive environment than what the deal would face under the long-time rules from “a different era."
Here are the 31 current markets where a merged Nexstar and TEGNA station group would have overlaps between the so-called “big four” network affiliates. We’ve also noted the CW stations that will be included in those markets, as Nexstar owns that network as well. Other call letters are either affiliated with other networks or are independent. (And one more note--yes, we know some of the full market names are hyphenated with multiple cities, but we just used the first city to make this list fit a bit better on a page and be easier to read.)
Indianapolis, IN WTTV (CBS), WXIN (FOX), WTTK WTHR (NBC)
Knoxville, TN WATE (ABC) WBIR (NBC)
Little Rock, AR KARK (NBC), KLRT (FOX), KASN (CW) KTHV (CBS)
Memphis, TN WREG (CBS) WATN (ABC) & WLMT (CW)
Midland, TX. KMID (ABC) & KPEJ (FOX) KWES (NBC)
New Orleans, LA WGNO (ABC) & WNOL (CW) WWL (CBS)
Norfolk, VA WAVY (NBC) & WVBT (FOX) WVEC (ABC)
Phoenix, AZ KAZT (CW) KPNX (NBC)
Portland, OR KOIN (CBS) & KRCW (CW) KGW (NBC)
Sacramento, CA KTXL (FOX) KXTV (ABC)
San Angelo, TX KLST (CBS) & KSAN (NBC) KIDY (FOX)
San Diego, CA KSWB (FOX) & KUSI KFMB (CBS)
St. Louis, MO KTVI (FOX) & KPLR KSDK (NBC)
Tampa, FL WFLA (NBC), WTTA (CW), WSNN WTSP (CBS)
Washington, DC WDCW (CW) & WDVM WUSA (CBS)
Waco, TX KWKT (FOX) & KYLE KCEN (NBC)
Wilkes-Barre, PA WBRE (NBC) & WYOU (CBS) WNEP (ABC)
And that’s it. Just 31 markets where owning two of these stations was once unthinkable. Now, it seems like it won't be a big problem. And given the size of this would-be television group behemoth with 265 stations under its control, one starts to wonder if anyone would try to get bigger than 265 local stations under one roof.
But it is only Monday, and the week is still young. Who knows what might happen next?
One thing is for sure. We will definitely be drinking again. And long before this week is over.
We'll spare you the ubiquitous "Breaking News" animation here, and our apologies for interrupting your weekend with a special Saturday edition of "The Topline."
But much like the childhood game of musical chairs, the music has started in the real-life game of television station acquisitions--and already the chairs are filling up. One wonders who will be left standing when the music stops. And oddly enough, it might just be the group that everyone thought would be the first one taken in this breaking wave of deals.
We'll return to that thought in just a moment.
Honestly, we thought that yesterday's big announcement about Gray picking off ten of the beleaguered Allen Media stations would be the only big industry news for a Friday in August. So we got on a plane to attend a private family celebration--and didn't check our iPhone frequently for the rest of the day, thinking the weekend would get off to a quiet start.
Then we woke up on this Saturday morning to the Wall Street Journal's reporting late Friday afternoon--that Nexstar is in talks to acquire TEGNA. (Thanks once again to our friend Rick Gevers' email list for the heads up on this story. Yes, you really should be subscribed to his updates, if you aren’t already!)
We'll second Rick's rare use of the word "seismic" in categorizing the word of this potential transaction. Admittedly, we had heard from a couple of people speculating in the past few weeks that perhaps such a billion-dollar deal was in the making. Still, we were too quick to dismiss it as being "much too big of an early test of the FCC's appetite to seek approval for."
Looks like we were too short-sighted in that analysis, at least for the moment.
Sure, we can understand the appeal of putting the 64 TEGNA stations in the Nexstar portfolio of 201 stations, which is at present the television industry's largest group. We haven't done the market-by-market analysis yet (Candidly, we're still nursing a little hangover from last night's celebration.) At first glance, it doesn't seem like there are any obvious markets where the possible union would run into significant problems.
In Dallas and Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C., where both Nexstar and TEGNA own stations, the existing Nexstar properties aren't "big four" network affiliates. However as a sharp reader pointed out to us after we initially published this item, in St. Louis, Nexstar owns both KTVI, the Fox affiliate and KPLR, the CW affiliate already. Would the FCC allow adding TEGNA’s KSDK as an NBC affiliate to that mix? Would that concern the FCC any less than the Gray-Allen Media deal announced earlier on Friday, in terms of market consolidation with station duopolies.
We are curious about the fate of Tegna's newly expanded corporate content staff, particularly those who have just been hired or promoted to VP roles. Once upon a time, not that long ago, Nexstar had its own regional content leaders. Those folks were scattered into other positions with the company when Susan Tully arrived as Nexstar's SVP of Local Content Development some six years ago.
By contrast, Adrienne Roark just arrived in her gig as Chief Content Officer at TEGNA back in March after decamping from her three-year stint at Paramount-CBS. She just installed her group of content VPs in the past couple of weeks. Those half dozen or so news director positions that are currently open at Tegna may have just gotten a bit harder to fill.
However, the reality on the larger level is that the Brendan Carr-led Federal Communications Commission still hasn't announced its long-awaited deregulation of the television ownership rules. All this activity that is underway is seemingly what casinos would call "a bet on the come." Meaning it is a wager on a hand that is not yet completed, but has the potential to improve into a winning hand.
And there are billions of dollars at stake, and unfortunately, many jobs are suddenly uncertain as well.
That brings us back around to what we noted off the top of this column. Not to put too fine a point on it, but where the heck are the Cox Media stations in all of this dealing? Many industry observers—us included—thought that a deal to acquire those primo properties was going to be the first blockbuster deal to get done in this new wave of station swapping.
Yet, so far, nothing but crickets have been heard from Atlanta and Cox's majority owners at Apollo Global Management in New York City.
Sure, the music is still playing, and there are chairs still open. But for just how long?
Barring any more shifts in the tectonic plates of the television business for the rest of this weekend, we'll be back on Monday with some more thoughts on what's next for the local television industry. Hope to see you then.
And since we have your attention at the moment, can we respectfully ask that you please subscribe to TVND by clicking that subscribe button at the top of this web page? It's absolutely free to do so; we won't charge you anything beyond the opportunity to be among the first to read our dispatches in your email. If you are already reading us from your inbox, we sincerely thank you for your support.
That word being “duopolies”(as we earlier wrote.) And they must have a decent line of credit available to keep buying up stations.
Today, it’s ten of the Allen Media stations—which from all accounts have mostly been stripped down to being just a license and a bunch of leases for everything else. Hopefully, Gray got a good deal to add seven more duopolies—looks like they paid an average of about $17 million per station, for a total of $171 million. (Of course, some were worth more than others.)
Here’s the press release. A tip of the TVND fedora to our friend Rick Gevers for reporting this update via his excellent email list.
The Walt Disney Company has been very busy lately with its property located not in Central Florida, nor in Southern California, nor even in some exotic International location, but rather in the once sleepy town known to sports fans everywhere as Bristol, Connecticut.
Just this very morning, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (the original meaning of the letters ESPN) announced it had signed "a landmark deal" to bring the mega events of professional wrestling giant WWE to the new direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service that ESPN is just about to launch. The agreement, which begins in 2026, is reported to be worth over $1.6 billion.
Leaning a bit more into the “E for Entertainment" side of the business on that one.
But that announcement comes just one day after the ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro and his team in Bristol announced an even bigger “landmark deal” when it rocked the sports television world by giving up 10% of its equity to acquire the National Football League’s media assets, including the NFL Network and popular “RedZone” channel.
That transaction, which is far more in the “S for Sports” side of the business, as the NFL is far and away the most popular sport in the country. That deal is valued “in the neighborhood of" $3 billion.
Busy times in Bristol, indeed.
Those business deals were an essential part of Disney’s third-quarter financial results that were reported this morning before the markets opened on Wall Street. Make no mistake, though, the headline on the company’s revenues wasn’t ESPN or any other part of the media business but rather those folks pushing through the gates of Disney’s theme parks around the globe. Income at the theme parks grew by double digits to contribute to the $23.7 billion the company made in the period ending June 28th. Income from what Disney labels its “conventional entertainment TV” dropped by some 28% and the movie business actually suffered a loss.
So much for “The Fantastic Four” saving the “House of the Mouse."
Back to ESPN, Disney Chairman Bob Iger made it clear in this morning’s earning call that the streaming business is a key part of the future of the company, as it will rely on the two pillars of the existing Hulu platform and the new ESPN one that will launch in time for the return of football of all sorts, on August 21st. Streaming is already profitable for Disney, with the company reporting a quarterly profit of close to $350 million in that part of the business.
The new monthly ESPN streaming subscription will set sports fans back $30 a month when it launches, including all the ESPN channels from the original to Ocho and promised new interactive features. The ability to split your TV screen and watch up to four things at once is a must-have for hyperkinetic sports watchers already. We assume the ability to add live gambling data from the ESPNBET service might be forthcoming. If you’d like to add Hulu and Disney+ so the children have something to watch when you are not gambling away their college money, that will only be another $6 a month.
Those numbers explain why ESPN was typically the largest part of the programming cost of your monthly cable bill for many years.
Speaking of costs, the NFL media acquisition sheds some light on precisely what ESPN is worth these days. By our calculator, if 10% of ESPN that the NFL will own is worth $3 billion, then the whole company must be valued at about $30 billion. A reminder that Disney only owns 80% of ESPN. The other 20% is owned by Hearst, which acquired that minority position from RJR Nabisco in November of 1990. At that time, the initial purchase by Hearst was reported to be around $170 million. That would mean that the investment has grown to be worth $6 billion today.
A pretty decent return for Hearst by any measure.
Bloomberg reports that the deal to give 10% of ESPN to the NFL, in exchange for the NFL Network, RedZone, and some international games that aired exclusively on the NFL Network, was equally split between Disney and Hearst, the former giving up 8% of its share and the latter parting with just 2%. In other words, each gave up an equal 10% of their total equity in ESPN to take in the National Football League as the company’s third owner.
What this seems to set up is that Disney will probably follow the lead of Comcast and Warner Bros.-Discovery and seek to spin off ESPN in the next 12 to 18 months into a separate company. Rich Greenfield, the respected media and technology analyst at Lightshed Partners, said just that on Bloomberg TV this morning. We think he is correct with that analysis.
Greenfield included ABC in his prediction of a stand-alone entity for ESPN. Pairing the declining revenues of those “conventional entertainment TV” assets with the very profitable “Worldwide Leader in Sports” makes sense. It would allow Disney to focus on the “intellectual property” pipeline between its movie studios and theme parks. (We’d include the Disney Cruise Line as basically “floating theme parks.”)
Just what that will mean for the Disney-owned American Broadcasting Company and its owned and operated stations is anybody’s guess. Among the guessing would surely be the affiliates of the ABC network, who have to be wondering what will happen to their sports programming, which is all under the “ESPN on ABC” umbrella, including the simulcast of Monday Night Football games that has been a bright spot in the broadcast network’s primetime schedule.
Not sure that getting axe-throwing or cornhole championships from “The Ocho” would be quite the same thing.
When we were working at ESPN in its first decade, way back in the mid-1980s, ABC Sports wanted as little to do with the nascent sports network as possible. One wonders if the opposite is the case, some forty years later.
Because we sure don’t expect the folks in Bristol to be singing “Be Our Guest” anytime soon.
Here we are at the start of another work week. What this week will bring in the business of television is anybody’s guess. But in this week or the ones soon ahead, we expect a growing number of deals to be announced, with more local TV stations being sold or traded--and more local duopolies being created. Today, however, we’d like to focus on this modest idea we had, to see if it makes sense to anyone other than those of us trying to think up an idea to start a new column for a new week.
You see, our recent travels have had us jumping back and forth between US time zones. Since we live primarily in the Central Time Zone, we find it is always a slight adjustment to be in the Eastern Time Zone, where the late news starts at 11 pm, rather than the 10 pm hour that we are used to. That’s likely true because we spent our first half-century living in the East. But that shift in thinking about time got us to thinking: It is time to consider the radical idea of shrinking TV’s primetime?
Back in 2009, NBC faced the interesting problem of having too many late-night hosts, with both Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on its roster. In 1992, NBC picked Leno to replace the legendary Johnny Carson over David Letterman. Letterman, who had been waiting in the wings with his 12:30 pm show for NBC, then decamped for CBS, where he successfully hosted “The Late Show” for 22 years. Fast forward to 2004, when Leno had told the network that when his five-year extension expired in 2009, he would be ending his time behind “The Tonight Show” desk. NBC was ready for that move, having signed Letterman’s 12:35 pm replacement, Conan O’Brien, to take over “The Tonight Show."
When the 2009 deadline arrived, Leno had a change of heart. But NBC had already committed to elevating Conan O’Brien to “The Tonight Show, in large part because he was drawing a substantially younger audience in the later time slot. The network was anxious to keep Leno on the air because his ratings were still substantial. So NBC announced that they would be putting Jay on with his own hour-long show that kept almost every identifiable trait of “The Tonight Show" (brilliantly named “The Jay Leno Show.) It would air each weeknight at 10 pm, starting in September of 2009, and at the same time, Conan would take over “The Tonight Show” in its traditional time of 11:35 pm following late local news on the NBC stations.
Shockingly, audiences felt they didn’t need two very similar talk shows on each weeknight, and both Leno’s and Conan’s overall audiences fell significantly. NBC realized its blunder and scrapped the 10 pm exercise in January of 2010, reinstating Leno as host of “The Tonight Show,” and saying goodbye to a blindsided Conan O’Brien.
We bring that chapter in TV history up because it suggests that the idea of a major broadcast network thinking that the 10 pm hour isn’t as sacrosanct as it might have been in the pre-cable and pre-internet days. Fast forward to July 2025, when the story breaks that CBS is pulling the plug on Letterman’s “Late Show” successor, Stephen Colbert, next May, due to that program now reportedly losing millions of dollars a year. The network says nothing about what they might air in its place at 11:35 pm each weeknight.
We offer this free, unsolicited idea: Consider reducing Network Primetime to two hours a night from 8-10 pm, down from the current three hours.
Then, let your affiliates air their late news at 10 pm. You can start your late-night programming at 10:35 pm, or even allow the affiliates to program a full hour of late local news at 10 pm, and start network late-night programming at 11 pm.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, the FOX network has produced a two-hour primetime schedule since its birth in the late 1980s. Its affiliates have produced their local news at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific (9 pm Central and Mountain), and most have done very well for themselves. With no competition at 10, at least in the majority of markets they are in, they have an opportunity to attract a news audience that doesn’t necessarily want to wait another hour to get the latest news, weather, and sports before going to bed.
Assuming that network television is becoming a less profitable business--seemingly by the hour—— why stick with the legacy schedule that doesn’t seem to be helping anyone in the equation? Especially since there hasn't been a breakout 10 pm network hit in a very long time, especially in the era of streaming, where network audience levels have fallen faster than most people's retirement account balances.
Yes, we know all the reasons why this isn’t likely going to happen anytime soon. The loss of the network ad inventory is considerable. But the savings of not having to program seven hours of original network programming each week would be significant as well. Not maybe as cheap as running the best of “Saturday Night Live” episodes at 10 pm on Saturdays, but much more affordable than new episodes of “High Potential” for one example. It’s been one of the few bright spots at 10 pm in recent memory.
Plus, having a level playing field for local news at 10 pm would be an opportunity for the affiliates, especially with a mid-year political cycle just ahead. We’re just saying that if the adage is ever true that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” our idea doesn’t seem as desperate as those housewives were at 10pm on ABC, back in 2004.
Of course, that was before housewives in primetime got real. But they appeared on basic cable. On Bravo, no less.
Maybe the times really are desperate enough in television right now.
We come to you today from that haunt of frequent flyers, busy executives, and TV station consultants alike—The Delta Sky Club. It is packed, as these airline club locations tend to be more and more these days. But we have managed to secure a small bit of workspace, allowing us to pull out our trusty laptop and bring you this Friday edition of The Topline.
Back in the early 1960s, the game show producing dynamic duo of Mark Goodson and Bill Todman brought a new game show to life on CBS. Creator Bob Stewart cooked up the show, which featured two teams of two people, a celebrity and a civilian. The object was to try to guess a mystery word based on single-word clues given by their partner. The twist was that the audience would know the word before the guesses began. Points were awarded based on the fewest guesses needed to determine the word correctly. "Password” became a hit, and the show ran in various forms on different networks for nearly three decades. In recent years, NBC’s “Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon brought Password back to life--first as a segment on his show and then as a stand-alone game show.
If we were playing the game for this column, this is where the announcer would tell you in a hushed voice what the password is for this round. You’ll have to see if you can guess it as you read along.
Last week, the Eighth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals issued an interesting ruling that received minimal notice by many in the broadcasting industry, but the decision stands to change that industry substantially in about 80 days from the time we are writing this. The court delivered its decision, in the matter of Zimmer Radio of Mid-Missouri v. FCC. Don’t let the name Zimmer Radio throw you off, as the Missouri-based radio station owner was just the first name as the petitioner on the case, which also included the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) as well as all of the four major television network affiliate groups, representing the local television stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC.
The case challenged the Federal Communications Commission’s decision in its 2018 Quadrennial Review, which retained the existing broadcast ownership rules, which include a prohibition against one company owning more than one television station affiliated with one of the “big four” networks in the same market. The Eighth Circuit court unanimously accepted that the arguments put forth by the NAB, which presented that “in many markets, combinations of the top four rated stations would increase competition.” At the same time, the court rejected the FCC’s argument that the top four-rated stations in a given market “are generally associated with the four major broadcast networks and that they are more likely to originate local news."
The Eighth Circuit didn’t find much else worth changing, so they left the remainder of the FCC’s current rules (at least as released in 2023) for both Local Television Ownership and Local Radio Ownership, essentially in place.
There is a lot to unpack in this seemingly narrow decision. You can read the full decision here. For those of you who haven’t passed the bar exam, we will examine this through the lens of its potential real-world implications, as the Eighth Circuit’s decision seems to mean that it will soon be open season for hunting duopolies.
To get a preview of what that may mean in practice, we needed to get on a plane and head south.
And so we did, non-stop to television market #41. That would be Jacksonville, Florida. It is a reasonably good example of a medium-sized television DMA, as determined by Nielsen, but with one unique aspect. The market’s 16 counties in Northeast Florida and Southeastern Georgia are home to some 688,000 television households, representing about 0.6% of the US television universe. Jacksonville is also the largest city in the US (by land mass), with some spectacular beaches along what’s known as “The First Coast. It is also the home to the typically disappointing Jaguars of the National Football League.
Football record notwithstanding, Jacksonville is a charming place that has seven full-power commercial television stations on the air. But for our professional purposes, the unique feature here is that there are three different “duopolies” currently operating in the Jacksonville market. The first was TEGNA’s WTLV, the market’s NBC affiliate on channel 12, co-owned with WJXX, the market’s ABC affiliate on channel 25. Cox Media Group’s “virtual duopoly” is the pairing of WFOX, the Fox affiliate on Channel 30, and co-managed WJAX, the Hoffman Communications-owned CBS affiliate on Channel 47. The third station duo is Graham Media Group’s WJXT, a news-heavy independent on channel 4, branded as “The Local Station.” It is co-owned with WCWJ, the market’s CW affiliate on channel 17. (Of course, these stations are broadcasting on different digital channels, but use their legacy channel numbers as their branding.)
This complicated situation is allowed under the current FCC rules (before the Eighth Circuit weighed in last week) because of the unique way the ownership of each station evolved over the years. WJXT was the market’s first station, signing on the air as WMBR-TV back in 1949 as a CBS network affiliate. It would remain one until 2002, when owner Post-Newsweek (the predecessor of Graham Media) got into a nasty network affiliation renewal battle, and it gave up the CBS affiliation to become the news-centric independent station it is today. That’s the same situation that will be happening soon in Miami to WPLG and in Atlanta to WANF. Both will become independent stations that are heavily focused on local news programming throughout the day.
WJXT is still usually Jacksonville’s most-watched newscast in most time periods. Because of that, the four network-affiliated stations are paired up in two duopoly situations. In the case of WTLV (NBC) and WJXX (ABC), the duopoly was permitted in early 2000 due to WJXX's complex history in getting on the air and securing the ABC network affiliation. When the FCC ruled in November of 1999 that it was permissible for one company to own two television stations in the same market, WJXX’s owner, Albritton Communications, announced it was selling the Orange Park licensed station to WTLV owner Gannett (predecessor to TEGNA) the very next day after the FCC rule change.
The other two network-affiliated stations, WFOX (Fox) and WJAX (CBS), are considered a “virtual duopoly” because of the remaining FCC rule that would prevent one owner from having both network affiliates. Thus, WJAX is owned by a different company (Hoffman) that contracts with WFOX's owner (Cox) to provide “shared services” and basically does all of the operating of WJAX. This kind of arrangement is in place in many markets where large group owners like Nexstar and Sinclair have so-called “sidecar” companies that own the license of a second station, but the stations are run in tandem by the larger group owners under what is known as a "shared service arrangement.”
What that means in Jacksonville is that only three local TV newsrooms are covering the market. TEGNA’s WTLV and WJXX are co-branded as “First Coast News,” and the same news programming runs across both stations in most time periods, save for weeknights at 7 pm when “First Coast News at 7 pm” airs only on WJXX (WTLV airs “Wheel of Fortune” in the access time period). Cox Media’s WFOX and WJAX operate in a somewhat similar fashion, both branded under the same “Action News Jax” name. Because of the Fox network’s smaller programming schedule, WFOX runs an additional two hours of morning news from 7 to 9 am each weekday and then a 10 pm hour-long newscast. WJAX is in CBS programming during those times, but it is the only station of the duopoly that airs a noon edition of “Action News Jax.” Long-time market leader WJXT airs some 59 hours of local news each week, more than any other station in the market, but sister station WCWJ carries no local newscasts.
The net effect of all this is that in any given time period each day, there can be five stations carrying local news, but only three different local newscasts are actually on the air. That’s because two of those newscasts (First Coast News and Action News Jax) are seen identically across two different stations.
So much for that premise of "increasing competition."
On the flip side, in a world where the economics of broadcast television have declined significantly, the idea of allowing two television stations to survive-and maybe even thrive-by teaming up to save on costs and personnel may make business sense. The industry argument is that it may be vital to save some stations from going out of business.
As we were writing this story, Gray Media announced that it will be seeking permission for new duopolies in Columbus, Georgia, and Lubbock, Texas. It plans to acquire stations in each market from Sagamore Hill under the existing FCC rule that allows for a waiver for an owner to acquire a second station in a market if it is determined that the station would not be able to survive on its own. This “failing station” provision was part of the 1999 rule changes that allowed for the first duopoly in Jacksonville that we noted above. That is in addition to the pending station swaps between Gray and Scripps that would create duopolies in Lansing, Michigan, and Lafayette, Louisiana, for Gray, and ones in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Twin Falls, Idaho, for Scripps.
Editor’s Addendum: Post our initial publishing of this article, Gray announced it was acquiring the stations of Block Communications. That will give Gray another market duopoly, this time in Louisville, Kentucky, where it has WAVE (NBC) and will add WDRB (FOX).
What Jacksonville shows us is that having six television stations can mean only having three choices for local news--albeit spread amongst the various network affiliates, along with one historically strong local news station that has held its own without a network affiliation. Look for the number of markets to get new duopolies to increase dramatically.
When the Eighth Circuit court’s ruling takes effect on October 23rd, the reality is that any two stations amongst “the top four” in any given market would be able to be co-owned. That assumes the Brendan Carr-led FCC won’t put forth its own plan to deregulate the local television ownership rules further, a move it has suggested was already in the works. Legal observers believe it's why the Eighth Circuit court didn’t make last week’s ruling effective for ninety days, to give the commission time to put its plan to change the station ownership rules in place.
Now the clock is running. One way or the other, the deals to create duopolies are likely to start coming faster than the lightning round of the original Password game show. And not just in the smaller markets. Some of the long-awaited major deals that have been waiting to get done, wondering whether the FCC would allow one company to own two network affiliates in a major market, may have just been given the green light.
So, in case you haven’t guessed it, from now on, the Password is… “duopolies."
We recently came across a Substack post that introduced us to an interesting concept. It’s called “compression culture,” and the TL;DR is that we, as a society, have come to value brevity more than depth. That in our always-connected, information-on-demand, perpetually switched-on world, we have replaced knowledge and understanding with information overload. We have tuned our attention span to be minimally focused at all times.
To attempt our best Rod Serling impression as he might open an episode of “The Twilight Zone." “Presented for your approval, the television newscast. A noble effort to inform, which has devolved into an effort to shovel out headlines, while for the most part, eschewing too much depth that could lead to context and understanding."
Yes, it is a depressing scene.
But examine the evidence presented nightly on your television screen (let alone the countless examples on every other screen you use). Television presents hours of news that almost universally follow a similar formula: The broadcast opens with a series of headlines crafted to draw your attention away from whatever else you might be doing. Each headline is seemingly more urgent and insistent than the one that precedes it.
If you need a good example of this principle in action, watch the opening few minutes of “ABC World News with David Muir.” Muir begins each broadcast with a few terse on-camera headlines, then he delivers as many as eight different stories (at least in our counting) with video clips. This opening segment of the broadcast can go on for two minutes or more. It’s finally punctuated with some story falling loosely into the “hopeful” category, usually under one of the jingoistic franchise names like “America Strong,” “Made in America”, etc. An opening animation finally rolls, and the camera swoops in on Muir at the anchor desk, thanking everyone for watching before telling us one more time about a story or two to come--before (finally) diving into the day’s lead story.
This isn’t some new paradigm to television news, and it isn’t even unique to the network level. The legendary anchor Jim Gardner, on perhaps the even more legendary Action News on Philadelphia’s WPVI, opened his broadcasts with a similar series of quick headlines before delivering the signature opening line: “But the big story on Action News…” And with that, the newscast would be off and running to mow down as many stories as it could in the minutes to come.
By the way, should you doubt the effectiveness of this attention-grabbing format, we would remind you that ABC’s “World News with David Muir” has been the most-watched program on television for nearly the last dozen weeks or so.
The producers of newscasts have been pressured to deliver “more news” in less time since the medium's earliest days. The pressure to “increase the story count” (meaning to up the number of different stories that are shown in the newscast, regardless of how short or compressed they might have to be) has been in place since the introduction of consultants and research to the business of television, and in turn, television newscasts.
We admit that we have been on both ends of that equation, both delivering and demanding a higher story count in newscasts we have been a part of for the last four decades.
But no matter how many stories we jammed into the eighteen to twenty or so minutes of each half-hour newscast, the audience has kept shrinking in recent years. We tend to write that off to there being so many more places to get news and information, and, of course, the personalization of receiving only the news we might care about most, driven by the rise of the algorithms that seem to know more and more about us with each passing day.
All of which goes to the point that our "compression culture" continues to squeeze out actual knowledge in favor of a never-ending stream of what we like to think of as countless "news nuggets”-dispensed each day from those ever-present slabs of glass and metal in our pockets. It has become something of a shared addiction when most of us can’t bear to be separated from these devices for any measurable length of time. Let alone placing the device face down while eating or even having a conversation with another person.
Consider for a moment that there were people who went to the polls last November who were surprised to discover that Joe Biden wasn’t on their ballot.
How do we know that this happened? Because the number of Google searches asking “Did Joe Biden drop out?” actually spiked nationwide, with notable increases in battleground states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Even though Biden announced his decision not to seek a second term on July 21st, he endorsed his vice president’s candidacy to replace him.
The fact that there is anyone who would not have known of Biden’s decision to drop out of the race should be shocking. The reality that enough people did to spike Google search trends should be considered impossible in our current information age. But as Substack author Maalvika Bhat brilliantly dissects the issue, "It's the logical endpoint of an attention economy that treats human focus as a finite resource to be optimized and monetized.”Her essay is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic.
In local television newscasts, we “showcase” those instances where multiple reporters are covering the same story. The “team coverage” label implies a “team” of reporters has been deployed, and with the rare exception of severe weather coverage featuring those “how many boxes with live shots can we jam onto the screen at one time” intros, what is mostly being labelled as “a team” is usually two whole people. We delight in summaries of a big story with a “here’s what we know” bulleted point-by-point graphic, punctuated by the now-standard suffix “we have more for you on our website and mobile app."
Because we have led ourselves to believe that we can combat the march of "compression culture" by being, as Phoenix’s KTVK used to boast, “the place with more stuff."
Whether that “stuff" is of any value or if it helped viewers understand what was happening in their community, state, nation, or world--was somewhat beside the point. And so context has become the missing commodity. There are, of course, brief exceptions to this norm. We’ve seen stations lead their newscasts with lengthy investigative stories, going well over five minutes in length—an eternity in normal measure of ninety seconds as being a long story by television news standards.
While stations and groups are happy to tout their industry awards for producing and airing such stories, usually under the banners of “in-depth” or “investigative,” there seemingly is little appreciation for how those values can translate to any other story presented in the same news program. We have been intrigued by the recent retooling of the “CBS Evening News” to lean into a different playbook for its storytelling. Some notable things are being attempted in that broadcast. Unfortunately, any innovation worth considering is tied to other decisions that will likely doom the current version of the newscast that the storied Walter Cronkite used to anchor.
And that’s before the “ombudsman” promised by the network’s soon-to-be new owners shows up to monitor and address “bias” in the "CBS Evening News.” That was one of the final concessions Skydance offered to finalize their long-tormented deal to acquire CBS parent Paramount Global. It was necessary to overcome the various roadblocks posed by the current administration in Washington, DC. Hank Price, writing in TVNewsCheck, provides some excellent perspective on the likely “Death by Ombudsman” that awaits the legacy that once was CBS News.
Not that what happens to CBS News matters that much in the ongoing slide into irrelevance that is happening to broadcast journalism right before our very eyes. We can’t explain, let alone address, the growing trend of audience abandonment for watching whatever is trending on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Stations continue to try to appease the market forces at work, scrambling to be relevant on those digital platforms by creating content that might hopefully get noticed in the ever-widening sea of short-form videos. Should the force of "compression culture" not act as enough gravity in the downhill slide of the industry? In that case, the lubricant of “purely financial decisions” will be as effective as what Clark Griswold put on the bottom of his sled in that hilarious scene from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation."
We’d like to believe that someone would have the fortitude to buck the tide of compression culture and be brave enough to try leaning into news coverage that features delivering context and contrast over chasing clicks and views. That would be a laudable goal for all of the recently installed news executives who are supposed to be focused on “content" and “storytelling."
It might also be the only thing that stops the march of "compression culture” from turning us from an informed society to an ignorant one.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of another week in summer! Hopefully, you are not sweltering too much wherever you are, and you will do something fun this weekend. Before we let you get to that, a few things we wanted to share with you at the end of another week in the television biz.
The long road to merge Paramount and Skydance is finally at an end.
If you had the under bet on your favorite sports betting app that Brendan Carr's FCC would finally approve the union of Paramount and Skydance so Shari Redstone could get her billions and David Ellison could be the only Neo-baby with his own Movie Studio, Broadcast Network, TV Station Group and Cable Channel for the Resistance—then you were a winner! Last night, Carr announced that all those concessions offered up by Paramount would be adequate to assure a certain someone that it was OK to let the long “suffering” deal finally go through.
The lone Democrat sitting on the FCC, Commissioner Anna Gomez, pulled no punches in her withering dissent on the action: "Despite this regrettable outcome, this Administration is not done with its assault on the First Amendment. In fact, it may only be beginning."
Yet somehow, “South Park” is still on the air and continues to skewer pretty much everyone.
It remains to be seen if “New Paramount" does anything to reel in Comedy Central, the home to “The Daily Show” and “South Park”, but if last night’s season 27 premiere was any indication, the answer so far is seemingly not so much. We admit that it has been a few years since we watched the antics of Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny. But watching the first episode of the delayed new season, titled “Sermon on the Mount,” made us laugh out loud--more than once. The show remains as irreverent, profane, and shocking as it has always been. Maybe even a bit more than we remembered. We warn anyone easily offended by very satirical material on politics, religion, and the state of the nation to avoid watching (it streams on Paramount+). Everyone else should find some time over the weekend to sit down and laugh at ourselves.
The company that is dumping Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” next May somehow found an estimated 1.5 Billion to do five more years of new “South Park” episodes (10 new ones per year), plus bring all of the previous 26 seasons back to Paramount+ this August (they had been available on HBO Max) and make show creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone considerably wealthier dudes, with an extension of their “first look” deal with Paramount. (For you not fully plugged into Hollywood’s jargon, a "first-look deal” basically means that any new show is presented to the studio that holds those rights, and they can choose to acquire the show before anyone else can see or bid on it. It is a way to hold on to creatives who have successful shows or movies to their credit.)
Not bad for what the White House called a “fourth-rate show…that has been relevant for over 20 years."
TEGNA is looking for a few good…news leaders.
We noticed a posting in our LinkedIn feed this week from a recruiter at TEGNA about hiring five leaders for newsrooms of their various stations. Four of those positions were for News Directors and one was for a Director of Content. (Don’t ask us, we don’t know what the difference is either.) The post was titled with this pitch line: “We’re not just hiring, we’re rebuilding the future of local journalism.” We’ll resist the temptation to point out that they wouldn’t have to rebuild if the company hadn’t pretty much deconstructed itself in the last half-dozen years or so.
Speaking of rebuilding at TEGNA.
KARE 11, TEGNA’s NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, was forced out of its studios and offices in Golden Valley, MN, earlier this week by a nasty electrical transformer fire that filled the place with the kind of noxious black smoke that is not conducive to normal breathing.. To its credit, the station only lost one 5 pm newscast on the day of the fire. It quickly got a temporary operation going at the station’s transmitter site at the “Telefarm" complex in Shoreview, MN, which is home to most of the market’s TV station transmitters. The station dispatched an anchor and meteorologist down to sister TEGNA station, WXIA-TV in Atlanta, where the duo fronted the station’s newscasts for a few days, while repairs were being made back in Golden Valley.
KARE has job postings available for both a “Head of Technology & Operations” and a News Director (which notably was not part of the five newsroom leader openings mentioned in the earlier referenced recruiter’s post on LinkedIn). Looks like both of those jobs will have a lot on the “To-do” list for whoever fills them.
Let that be an important reminder that your station needs a viable, up-to-date disaster plan.
The problem with situations like the one that hit KARE is that you never know when they will happen or how severe they will be. Disaster recovery plans are crucial and should be updated regularly. (Imagine if the fire at KARE had forced them out of the building during a January in Minnesota! There would be no standing outside of the transmitter building to anchor the newscast.) Our experience over the years is that these plans don’t get the regular reviews and changes that they really need. Start with the simple premise: If a fire forced everyone out of the building your station is in, how would it stay on the air? Continue to do newscasts? Yes, this is the kind of thing that the technological leadership (aka the Chief Engineer) of any station takes the lead on, but it impacts everyone. Much easier to practice this plan when it isn’t needed in real time.
And finally, something fun to read this weekend.
Yes, we know that Stephen Colbert’s name has been in the news a bit lately. (As well as in this space.) But we’d point you to the piece Colbert recently penned for The New Yorker magazine, as part of that publication’s 100th anniversary. During their centennial celebration, they are having people re-read some of the magazine’s seminal articles and write retrospective looks back. Colbert was asked to write his take on a 1978 profile of late-night legend Johnny Carson. Both the original article and Colbert’s current-day take on it are well worth a few minutes of your time before the new work week begins, when we hope to see you right back here again.
(A small reminder before we go that you can subscribe for free to this newsletter by clicking the subscribe button at the top of the page. Thanks so much if you already do so.)
If you are spending too much of your free time these days wondering what the fate of broadcast television in the near future is going to be, take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone. With the postings of people who are “getting out of the business” every day (whether by their own choice or as a result of never-ending cutbacks) you would.be forgiven if you felt that you might be the last person left in the building when they turn off the studio lights once and for all at some point.
Even if you feel reasonably secure in your current situation, there is almost always that nagging suspicion that things could just change with little or no warning. And though there is almost no line of work that isn’t in the same turmoil these days, it just feels more cataclysmic because it happens to be the one you are trying to make a living in.
We here at TVND.Com feel your angst and share your wondering about just how a business that once seemed relatively stable and had a bright future now seems to have precious little of both of those qualities.
One revelation that might be helpful came to us in digesting the continuing post-game analysis of CBS's decision to end “The Late Show” next May. We were watching the latest episode of the “Pivot” podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway via YouTube and the two hosts were giving their thoughts on whether they thought the move was strictly a financial one--or if there were other factors in play. Swisher at one point referenced the phrase “the fracturing of the monoculture” and that hit us like the proverbial “bolt from the blue.” (As an aside, we highly recommend the Pivot podcast as worth being on your playlist.)
Think about it. Nearly everything that is happening in the world may well be captured in that one phrase: “The fracturing of the monoculture."
Wikipedia, the online reference that has become this century’s replacement for the old World Book Encyclopedias that lined the bookshelves of many homes years ago, refers to term monoculture in this way: "The monoculture (also called global monoculture) is a concept in popular culture studies in which facets of popular culture are experienced by everyone at once, either globally or nationally."
Like any good theory, the monoculture one has supporters and those who write it off as being a myth. The Wikipedia entry on the topic does a solid job of providing a basic understanding of just what monoculture is. Like broadcast television, it is traced back to having roots in the 1950s and continuing on to the dawn of the 21st century. Also like broadcast television, the monoculture has been fractured by (and may possibly be ended by) the rise of streaming media, which of course has allowed everyone to both consume and create their own media, tailored to each individual's interests and beliefs. Compare that to a time when many people were part of shared cultural experiences, typically delivered or documented by what was euphemistically labelled as “the mass media."
One shining example of the monoculture era has been recently celebrated on its 40th anniversary. On Saturday, July 13th, 1985, the world witnessed the event known as "Live Aid." The music concert for charity was held simultaneously in London at Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia at JFK Stadium. It was beamed via satellites to an estimated television audience of nearly 2 billion people in 150 nations. Raising funds for famine relief for Ethiopia was the primary goal of organizers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. It was an effort that had started the previous holiday season of 1984, with the release of the hit record “Do They Know It's Christmas?” That effort would inspire the US recording industry to respond with its own record, “We Are The World” in January of 1985 and released for the domestic-based Ethiopian aid effort called “USA for Africa."
As a 24-hour long musical event, Live Aid’s star power is almost hard to quantify today. So many major recording stars of the day performed on the stages in London and Philadelphia, it would be easier to list those who were notable for their absence. Phil Collins was notable in appearing in both the UK and US venues, jumping on the supersonic Concorde after appearing first in London to make it to Philadelphia and perform there. As a television event, here in the United States, despite ABC carrying a three-hour primetime special on that Saturday night, it was upstart cable network MTV that truly planted its flag by airing all 24 hours of the concert. In the US, the television broadcasts on ABC and MTV contained commercials, whereas in the UK, the BBC aired it without commercial interruption.
The cultural impact of Live Aid has been dissected and debated for years. Performer Adam Ant came to regret his involvement and has been quoted as saying: “It was the end of rock n roll.” Live Aid's chaotic back story is the stuff of many accounts, and whether the funds raised actually helped feed the poorest victims of the famine has also been debated in the years since. A comment from Bob Dylan about the need to help US farmers at the event inspired the US charity concert “Farm Aid,” which was first staged and telecast a few months later in 1985. That effort to raise money for struggling US farmers has become an annual event.
There are, of course, many other events that might be identified as the largest examples of the idea of monoculture. But for our purposes, the timing of an event in popular culture where so many people witnessed it through the lenses of television cameras transmitted to screens all around the world is hard to equal. 1985 may also be seen by history as the zenith of television news. The broadcast network’s news divisions, anchored by Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings, had serious 24-hour competition from the still relatively nascent Cable News Network. Would-be competitor Satellite News Channel had come and gone in just 16 months, and it would be a decade before MSNBC or Fox News Channel would launch.
The mid-1980s also saw the rise of local television stations’ news departments into what we know them to be today.
Successful local stations had grown their operations with more hours on the air, larger staffs and the latest technologies such as their own weather radars, helicopters and satellite trucks, that vastly expanded their coverage abilities. The battles for the largest number of viewers in each local market were fierce and millions were spent to generate even more millions in advertising revenues.
It would be a decade and into the mid-1990s before “on demand” television would be delivered by cable television operators, and digital video recorders such as TiVO would become common. At the same time, the data technology that made it possible to deliver on-demand TV programming to many households via cable was being adapted to become “Broadband” and deliver something called the "World Wide Web” into homes as well. Crude web pages would evolve into the multimedia platforms that would come to feature the streaming of audio and video.
Much like the interstate highways that would criss-cross the nation, the so-called “information superhighway” would blanket America—and the world.
Which all roughly brings us to today. It is hard to imagine that a Live Aid-sized event could be pulled off some forty years later. (Even if the situation on the ground in Gaza might be as large as a humanitarian crisis as Ethiopia was in '85.) Few things rivet the world’s attention so widely, save for perhaps wars, sports, and sex. People have become more insulated and tribal around their beliefs and interests—and the technology of today’s media creation and distribution allows for anyone to find like-minded people who share their beliefs and interests to the exclusion of needing anything resembling “mass media” as we once may have known it.
Thus, the fracturing of the monoculture continues at an ever-increasing pace. With that fracturing comes the fight for ever-shrinking audiences. Not the size of the overall audience is smaller, but rather that the staggering overload of content, which we loosely call “social media”, forces the segmentation of the audience into ever-shrinking slices of the “attention pie."
It is hard to imagine what, if anything, might bring our nation--or our world--back to a singular shared vision for more than a few minutes or hours at a time. The news cycle is spinning faster than a child’s toy top—but it feels like we are reaching that point just before the top slows down enough and then falls over. But history has a way of defining each era and shifting our focus. We believe the news organizations that will survive (and hopefully thrive) will be the ones that lean into being as genuine and authentic as possible. If you follow creators on your favorite platforms, it is likely because you are interested in what they are sharing and you find them to be genuine and authentic. Local television stations must tap into that same zeitgeist to connect with their fractured audiences on more than just the traditional broadcast platform. Or just scattershot posting on whatever social platform seems hot at the moment. This will be difficult because the revenue models will not be the same, and there will be a period of transition that will be difficult.
Even the streaming giants are dealing with this very challenge.
As the monoculture fractures, we will need to find our own tribes of people--from all walks of life and deliver to them more of what they are looking for, where they are looking for it (currently that is more YouTube than anyplace else) and make it available when they want it (which is always right now.)
Call it “The rise of the minicultures.” Coming soon to a screen near you.
We admit that we probably spent more time this past weekend than we should have, consuming all of the coverage about the CBS television network’s surprise decision ending its production of “The Late Show” and its relationship with Stephen Colbert, after a decade of his hosting what has typically been the #1 network show in the 11:35pm time period.
As we suggested last Thursday night, there would be a lot of questions about the decision. And given the optics of it, studying how the story has been playing out has been a fascinating exercise in watching the intersection of journalism, the media industry itself, and America’s political landscape in 2025.
Before the story fully succumbs to the demands of the ever-spinning news cycle and is likely overtaken by whatever the hell the next major development in “The Epstein Files” will be, wewanted to examine a few more thoughts out there-as they apply to both the situation on the network level, as well as the one in the local markets across the country.
If the CBS executives believed that their Thursday night explanation would be satisfactory enough to address the instant and obvious speculation about the political forces that might be behind the decision, well, in the classic words of Vice Principal Ed Rooney in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” they were “sorely mistaken.”
Especially after details emerged that Skydance head David Ellison had visited the Washington, DC offices of the Federal Communications Commission just two days prior, trying to push for the approval needed to finally get Skydance’s long-suffering bid to takeover CBS corporate parent Paramount Global finally “off the schneid.”
Then the President of the United States-and frequent target of Colbert’s monologues- popped up on his Truth Social platform and bitcoin holding company on Friday with this opportunistic message: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” Mr. Trump went on to praise the only late-night host he finds amusing, Fox News host Greg Gutfield, but that was before sister News Corp-owned outlet The Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster story about an apparent letter that Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein back in 2003. We’d link to it for you, but it’s behind a paywall.
Well, at least somebody is making money on their digital property!
(FTR: Trump denies he wrote the letter, says the newspaper’s report is false, and promptly filed another $20 Billion lawsuit against what he called another part of “the Fake News Media.” The WSJ says it will “vigorously defend any lawsuit.”)
CBS says that the decision to take Colbert off the air is positively, absolutely a financial one, and it has nothing to do with anything else that its parent, Paramount Global, may or may not be involved with.
As the story continued to reverberate, the would-be supporting financial numbers began appearing in much of the follow-up coverage. The production cost of “The Late Show” was reportedly around $100 million per year, including a $10-15 million annual salary for Colbert himself. Poor CBS was losing some $40 million annually on the program. The precipitous slide of late-night ratings and advertising revenues to streaming just made it impossible for the network to keep the show on the air.
Impossible, until at least, airing ten more months of it.
This is one of the biggest problems we have in looking at this whole storyline of being “purely a financial decision.” Puck’s Matthew Belloni did a great job of explaining the current economics of producing a network late-night talk show in 2025, in the latest episode of his excellent podcast, “The Town.” His interview with veteran late-night TV executive Nick Bernstein was very illuminating in breaking down the numbers in play, as well as the forces that may be at work. Keep the show going, lose tens of millions of dollars more, rather than pay off Colbert’s contract, give the staff two weeks’ notice—or maybe 30 days if they were feeling really generous, and pull the plug on the show sooner, rather than later?
Plus, CBS leaves Colbert on the air to continue to annoy, on a nightly basis, the occupant of the White House and his administration for nearly another whole year? What is up with that kind of timetable? Keith Olbermann, former ESPN, Fox Sports, MSNBC/NBC News anchor, has been vocal
both on X and his own podcast “Countdown” about his skepticism that the Colbert decision was made for political reasons, given the long exit ramp that CBS is providing.
Olbermann, who made it clear on his podcast that he is no fan of Colbert and considers him to be something far less than a gentleman, based on their interactions over the past few decades, believes this is evidence that the decision was not politically driven.
Fox News jumped on that take from the liberal leaning Olbermann with the improbable headline on its website: “Keith Olbermann pours cold water on claims Colbert was fired for political reasons.” When Olbermann is quoted on Fox News (at least on its website) then we may need to question if truly, the apocalypse is imminent.
Crack wise all we might, the underlying worry here is that the decline happening in the television business is much more terrifying than anyone is talking about out loud. The New York Times weighed in with a piece on Sunday from its “Critic-at large” Jason Zinoman that proclaimed that “Getting cancelled may end being the best thing that ever happened to Stephen Colbert. The same cannot be said for its impact on late night television.”
The article goes on to suggest that Colbert will be just fine in his post-CBS years, hosting a podcast and maybe writing a Substack, just like Bari Weiss, Terry Moran, and everyone else in the media who has lost their high-flying and higher-paying job in recent months.
Notably, some with more success than others. (We say that as we look in the mirror.)
That is of little comfort to our friends in the local television business who are trying to figure out just what the decision to cancel Colbert at some point in the future or at least by next May means in their world.
Is “network late-night TV dead as The New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and so many others had in their headlines? If so, what happens after the late local news ends at 11:35pm?
Here’s one thought we haven’t seen anywhere else. Why not expand those late local newscasts to an hour?
It’s been done before. KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul took its 10pm newscast out to a full hour in 2013, delaying the start of the ABC network’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to 11pm when the network moved the talk show up to replace “Nightline”.
Much earlier in its storied history, KSTP was the first in the nation to expand its late news to a full half-hour, when most stations still carried only a fifteen-minute late news update. That may well have started the long expansion of local news to seemingly every hour of the day.
Depending on what programming the networks offer to replace the now deemed “much-too-expensive” late-night talk shows they currently air (at the possible risk of incurring the wrath of upsetting those in power in Washington, DC) some local affiliates will certainly give serious thought to calling their network reps and using that favorite phrase heard in Congressional hearings, advising that they will be “reclaiming my time!”
Braver local stations may go all in on following the trend of WJXT, WISH-TV, WHDH-TV, etc. (and soon WPLG and WANF) in reclaiming all their broadcast day and placing their bet on even more local news than just an hour at 11/10pm.
After all, any local station can see what Byron Allen has in the Entertainment Studios program library just as easily as the broadcast networks.
Or whatever will be left of those would-be dinosaurs nearing extinction.
Buckle up, friends. This wild ride in “Jurassic Park” is far from over.
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We still remember where we were when we received the startling news. We were in Buffalo, New York, where the news arrived that would jolt every CBS affiliate to its core. The announcement stood to change the fate of their late newscasts and impact the bottom line, in terms of both ratings and revenue.
Frankly, we were a little gobsmacked when we heard it.
It was August 1993, and the big announcement was that David Letterman was leaving NBC to come over to CBS and host weeknights at 11:35 p.m. After decades of being a non-contender in late night, then-CBS President Howard Stringer had pulled off the big deal that NBC should have made (but it had already placed its bet on Jay Leno) and Dave would be moving into what long-time CBS staff knew as Studio 50, but the world would come to know as “The Ed Sullivan Theater.”
Allow us to take the opportunity to recommend one of the best books about the television business we’ve ever read. That would be Bill Carter’s “The Late Shift” from 2019. It details the backstage drama between Leno, Letterman, and the networks for the late-night audience. It is definitely worth the read if you are at all a student of the television business.
There was joy in the heart of everyone connected to the late newscasts at any CBS affiliate because now, folks would have a reason to watch those newscasts and stay up for Dave. In the same way that our parents watched the late news and stayed up for Johnny Carson on NBC for three decades, from 1962 to 1992.
Not to be too graphic about it, but many of you who were born during that period were probably conceived while Johnny was on the air. That was likely the real reason why your parents had a TV in the bedroom in the first place.
So when Letterman made the move from 30 Rock to Broadway in the summer of 1993, being at a CBS affiliate was to be filled with unbridled optimism about how your late news race could change.
And when Dave announced his retirement in 2015, there was concern that no one could really fill his shoes and keep CBS competitive in late night, which by then was a three-way race, as aside from NBC’s “The Tonight Show” there was also ABC’s up and coming offering with “Jimmy Kimmel Live” taking over the time period from “Nightline.”
CBS would turn to its corporate cousin at Comedy Central to draft its late night “conservative-satirist-in-chief” Stephen Colbert to take over the reins hosting “The Late Show.”
Fast forward a decade, and Stephen Colbert has just delivered the shocking announcement in the taping of his Thursday night broadcast that CBS will be cancelling “The Late Show” in May of next year. Ending the program’s 32-year run on the network and parting ways with its host.
Network executives, including CBS President George Cheeks, quickly put out a statement that stressed that it was “purely a financial decision–against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
Purely a financial decision? Perhaps like that recent $16 million payment to settle a lawsuit holding up CBS’s parent, Paramount Global, from closing its pending deal to merge with movie studio Skydance? The very same payment that was called out by Colbert on Monday night’s show, which was his first back from a two-week vacation–during which the settlement was finally announced.
In his monologue, Colbert labeled it just as many people saw it: “A Big Fat Bribe.”
Thursday night’s statement from CBS tried to add some damage control to head off the obvious questions. “It (the decision) is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” To put a cherry on top of that denial, the statement added: “Out admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”
If you find yourself booing at that paper-thin praise, just as the live audience in The Ed Sullivan Theatre did during Thursday night’s taping when Colbert told them of the news, take some comfort at Colbert’s response to them when waited a beat and simply said, “Yeah, I share your feelings.”
Being a class act, Colbert went on to praise his network, saying that CBS executives “have been great partners.” Just over a month ago, those same “great partners” also pulled the plug on “After Midnight,” the show that followed Colbert at 12:35pm each weeknight. To be fair, that was more about host Taylor Tomlinson’s desire to focus more on her continued success as a touring stand-up comedian. But CBS took the opportunity not to keep the show and replace her with another host. Instead, it has said it will fill the timeslot this fall with would-be media mogul Byron Allen and his “Comics Unleashed” series, which was last funny in its first airings some two decades back.
We at TVND.com are not unaware of the seismic changes occurring in the television industry. Last month’s numbers, showing that streaming video has overtaken broadcast and cable as the leading way audiences watch video, were a sobering milestone. The New York Times, in covering the cancellation of Colbert, reported that the ad revenue from late-night network shows has dropped by 50% in the last seven years.
But even if we are to believe the economic reason CBS offers for ending “The Late Show”, the reality is that the timing of dropping a voice criticizing President Trump, even a comic one, won’t likely sit well with a significant number of people. That includes some Democratic lawmakers, who were already on social media questioning the real motives behind the decision, a decision that Colbert himself was told of just 24 hours before announcing it at the beginning of his program on Thursday night.
Of course, issuing feckless threats on social media seems to be about all Democratic politicians are capable of doing with any effectiveness these days.
And as bad as we feel for Colbert, our fellow native Charlestonian who may be joining the ever-growing ranks of the unemployed next year, we also sympathize with all those local news directors at CBS stations who just lost a still reasonably decent “lead-out” for their late news offerings. Sure, what airs after the late newscast might not draw as much of an audience as it once did. Plus, the ability to watch the nightly monologue and best interview moments on YouTube whenever one might want to has certainly eroded any sense that one might have to stay up just to know what happened on any late-night show and still be “in the loop” for the office watercooler the next morning.
Assuming that anyone has a watercooler in their office anymore, and that anyone ever talks around it.
Maybe this news is just another indication that these seismic changes affecting the industry are intensifying as an existential threat to broadcast television. Maybe it is something far more sinister. We’ll let history write the final word on this particular decision, which does feel, to us at least, like it is far more than “purely a financial decision.”
The way things are going, maybe another future financial decision will be to cut the late news back to being just 15 minutes long. Just as it was back in television’s early years. That was just before many stations would sign off for the evening. Then, the late news expanded to “a full half-hour of news, weather, and sports.” Then, some stations discovered that running old movies appealed to a good number of insomniacs in the audience.
What title did many stations give to the newly discovered timeslot at 11:30pm?
Ironically enough, it was “The Late Show.”
Update: Author Bill Carter wrote on X Thursday night: “My first impression abt the cancelation of Colbert:
The financial side of that business has definitely been under pressure, as CBS release asserts, but if CBS believes it can escape without some serious questions about capitulating to Trump, they are seriously deluded.”
If you are finding that everything you read or hear about the television industry is as concerning as the telegraph messages that a young David Sarnoff was hearing in a Marconi receiving station at the end of Long Island on the evening of April 14, 1912, then trust us, Dear Friends, you are not alone. Each day seems to bring us more depressing news than the looming revelations for those unfortunate people who were ever in the vicinity of the late Jeffrey Epstein.
A few folks have asked why we have been doing this series about just who might consider some kind of corporate “hook-up” of their local television station groups in the weeks and months to come, and why we have framed it under the guise of a modern-day version of the old TV show, “The Dating Game.”
Obviously, the idea was to have a little bit of fun with the exercise. Additionally, the idea of making the convoluted dance of forming interpersonal relationships the basis for an entertaining primetime show was too irresistible, and television has been forever fascinated by it. From the fun innocence of “The Dating Game” in the 1960s to the not-too-subtle debauchery of “Love Island” today, the question of “Will they or won’t they” has always made for some memorable (and not-so-memorable) moments in television.
So let us return once again to asking the questions that everyone is wondering about in the soon-to-be-upon-us world of deregulation and subsequent open season for hunting deals in TV station acquisitions. Because much like on the Titanic on that fateful early morning of April 1912, everyone will be looking for a lifeboat, as the band will play on.
Just before we do, a reminder from our still-unhired legal department that what follows is pure speculation, based on the reading of tea leaves and listening to various sources of gossip. No actual financial advice is being given, and none of your money should be invested accordingly. Assuming you have any money to invest these days.
Couple Number Four – Some Network O&Os and somebody else?
If there were ever a station group that you might think would never be on the trading block, you’d probably say it was the owned and operated stations of any of the “big four” networks. These groups are the proverbial backbone of their respective networks, as well as being each network’s outlets in the largest local media markets. And while we don’t believe that these cash-producing engines are very likely to be up for sale in the very near future, there is at least one group of them that could be set adrift in the stormy seas that may lie ahead.
Most casual observers of the television business are surprised to first learn that the largest group of owned and operated stations is held by the newest of the four major TV networks.
Even though FOX didn’t come into being a network until 1986, it’s Fox Television Stations is the 5th largest group owner in the country, at least in terms of revenue and reach as of 2023 (the last year we could find complete data for.) Fox is only behind Nexstar, Gray, Tegna, and Sinclair in the largest groups ranking, using those metrics. The 18 markets where it owns stations gives it a reach of nearly 39% of the country’s television sets.
And despite the political leanings of the cable news network that also bears the same name, the FOX O&Os, as a group, are a well-run business, even if the quality of its stations is somewhat uneven overall. On the one hand, they have some very good stations in places like New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. But then there are the underwhelming stations in markets like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Seattle to consider. Given the fact that the slimmer FOX network schedule allows these O&Os to program more hours of local news (especially in mornings) and that the network has invested heavily in sports coverage, the $2.5 billion that the FOX Television Stations did in 2023 revenue would seem to cement a place in the Murdoch family-owned holdings for the foreseeable future.
That leads us to the smallest of the network-owned station groups. The Disney-owned ABC O&Os are only in 8 markets in the country, and as such have the smallest footprint of the four networks. But no group dominates their local markets the way that the ABC Owned Stations do. Typically, #1 in local news across all time periods and they have been so for decades. The billion dollars or so that this asset contributes to the Disney financial picture is a pretty reliable source of revenue and CEO Bob Iger has reiterated his backing of the importance of ownership of the local stations on more than one occasion.
Even if some industry observers were making a big deal about some recent cutbacks at some ABC-owned stations, that just proves that even long-time successful local stations could stand to do some belt-tightening in the shrinking overall television marketplace. Nobody is immune to what is going on in the real world.
In terms of markets covered, the NBC Stations group (technically part of NBCUniversal Owned TV Stations) is actually the largest of the four networks, due to its ownership of both NBC and Telemundo stations. In total, there are 31 markets where an NBC or Telemundo-owned station operates, and in the 11 markets where both are owned, a developing strategy is underway to consolidate those operations into a single facility, particularly in news operations. One example of this is the recently completed massive new newsroom in the Comcast building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, where WNBC and WNJU are now co-located. Given this one-two punch of having both English and Spanish-language local news and programming under one roof, it certainly appears that Comcast values the station group somewhat more than say the group cable networks it is setting adrift under the newly formed (and oddly named) Versant.
By process of elimination, you have likely jumped ahead of us and come to the fourth and final network-owned group in our considerations, and that would be the CBS-owned stations. Though this Paramount Global division is nearly the same size as the FOX group, with stations in 18 of the nation’s markets, it has been saddled for some time with having the weakest-performing stations in the largest of each of those markets, at least in terms of audience ratings for local news and programming. Even with that history, the CBS Stations have made a notable contribution to the Paramount Global bottom line.
But oddly enough, it may be that the very ownership of those stations that proves to be the biggest obstacle in the proposed multi-billion-dollar merger of Paramount Global and would-be acquiring company Skydance Media. Yes, there was the whole ridiculous lawsuit by the now-President, then-Candidate, Donald Trump against the network and its venerable “60 Minutes” newsmagazine for perceived editorial malfeasance. Rather than fight in court, Paramount’s chief owner, Shari Redstone, settled for the sum of $16 million and maybe some other concessions to come from the new owner. (There is still no clear answer on what those terms might be.)
The thing now gumming up the works is that the Brendan Carr-chaired FCC has to approve the transfer of the CBS-owned television station licenses from Paramount Global to Skydance. Everyone believes that it is likely to happen, even if there has been no public indication that the Commission is ready to do so, given its own review of the alleged sins CBS committed, which was broadcast over those local stations.
Former CBS News and Stations boss Wendy McMahon was ousted in the whole mess at “60 Minutes,” and by all accounts, she is not being replaced. The stations group has been through a painful series of cuts and reorganizations, even as it is trying to spin up a news operation from scratch in Atlanta, where the network is moving the affiliation from Gray’s WANF to CBS-owned WVEU on Channel 69, which many Atlantans have been blissfully unaware of until recently.
At some point in this convoluted process, one has to wonder if the CBS Stations become too much of a liability? Redstone and company definitely want to unload Paramount Global to Skydance. However, a clock is ticking on consummating the deal. In all fairness, Skydance really wants to acquire the movie and networks side of the Paramount business more than it wants to be a local station operator. (To be sure, everyone involved will say anything but that as being the case.) But it doesn’t take a lot of vision to see that at some point in this long voyage, the CBS Stations become more of a stuck anchor in the mud–and someone is going to think about cutting the chain that’s keeping this vessel stuck on the high seas, rather than in the safe harbor of being a done deal.
Which recalls the old joke about the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life? The day you buy the boat is the first. The day you sell it is the second. And as many boat owners will tell you, it’s usually the better of the two.
We’ll be here on the dock, with our boat shoes on, a cold beverage in hand, and a pair of well-worn shades on as we watch the horizon for the ships to come in. In the meantime, please take a moment from your busy day and click the subscribe link at the top of this webpage. It is cheaper than the cold beverage we crave, as in being absolutely, positively free.
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If you have been following along this week, you hopefully know the drill by now. (If not, go back and read this one first and then this one.) We are doing this series of hypothetically matching up group owners of local television stations that we think could be interesting. Our game is based on the coming-of-age game of “Spin the Bottle.” Yesterday we suggested the bottle might be an empty Jack Daniels one.
Today, we’re classing it up by suggesting using an empty bottle of the pride and joy of Austin, Tito’s Handmade Vodka. (Not sponsored, we’re just fans of the company and its product.)
Last bit of housekeeping to ward off any legal entanglements and a potential SEC investigation (and no, that’s not from the Southeastern Conference that we are talking about.) The disclaimer is that what follows is pure speculation, based on the reading of tea leaves and listening to various sources of gossip. No actual financial advice is being given and none of your money should be invested accordingly.
Couple Number Three: Gray Media and Graham Media (There is a joke here about two GM’s meet in a bar, but we’ll save that for another time.)
Gray and Graham. Well aside from being the far-too-cute names for the offspring of a far-too-hip couple, we are talking here about a real potential union of an industry David (Graham) and Goliath (Gray) in a combination that almost seems like an afterthought but would likely make a great deal of sense for both parties.
Both Graham and Gray are owners that began life under other names and eras. Graham Media of course is the descendant of the venerable Post-Newsweek Group, which was the broadcasting arm of The Washington Post company. The Washington Post newspaper purchased its first radio station, WINX, in 1944. It then did a joint venture with CBS to run WTOP radio in 1948. The joint venture bought WOIC television, Washington’s CBS affiliate, in 1950, and that became WTOP-TV. The Post bought out CBS’s interest in the WTOP, Inc. joint venture in 1954, when the FCC at the time forced CBS to sell it’s interest.
Meanwhile, The Post outside of the WTOP joint venture, had purchased WMBR-AM/FM/TV in Jacksonville, Florida (back when local radio and television “trifectas” were commonplace.) WMBR-TV became WJXT and The Post rolled all of its broadcasting interests under the new company named “Post-Newsweek Stations” in 1961, as the newspaper had acquired Newsweek magazine.
Post-Newsweek Stations (PNS) would add stations in Miami (WPLG) in 1969 and Hartford, Connecticut (WFSB) in 1974. By 1978, the company was worried that the FCC’s dislike of cross-ownership of newspaper and television stations in the same market was going to force it to sell WTOP-TV, given the dominance of The Post in the nation’s capital. A swap was orchestrated with the owners of The Detroit Evening News to moved ownership of WTOP-TV to that paper, while Post-Newsweek Stations acquired Detroit’s WWJ-TV, which was renamed to its current WDIV.
By 1994, another deal with another newspaper family, the Hobby family that then owned The Houston Chronicle in Texas, would bring KPRC in Houston and KSAT in San Antonio into the Post-Newsweek Stations group. In 1997, PNS would spin Hartford’s WFSB to Meredith for Orlando’s WCPX, which became WKMG, in honor of legendary Post publisher Katharine Graham. After The Washington Post Company spun off Newsweek magazine in 2010 and then the namesake newspaper in 2014 to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. With neither the Post or Newsweek owned, Post-Newsweek Stations became Graham Media Group in 2014. It’s last station purchase was in 2016, when it acquired WCWJ in Jacksonville (giving it a duopoly there) and WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia from Nexstar’s acquisition of the former Media General stations.
Gray Media also began with newspaper roots, when founder James H. Gray bought The Albany Herald of Albany, Georgia, along with its WALB radio outlet. Television was added in 1954 with the launch of WALB-TV. The company would expand with the purchases of WJHG-TV in Panama City, Florida in 1960 and then KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana in 1967. The descendants of James H. Gray would accept an offer to sell Gray Communications Systems to Georgia financial and insurance businessman, J. Mack Robinson in 1992. Over the next decade, Gray began to grow its television station portfolio from a small group of Southeastern stations to a more of a national player with acquisitions in Nebraska and Wisconsin. In 2002, Robinson would become Chairman and CEO of Gray with his son-in-law Hilton Howell as Vice Chairman. That same year, Gray would buy 14 stations from Benedek Broadcasting when the latter was in bankruptcy proceedings.
Gray would add additional stations slowly over the next 15 years, until it made its major move to acquire Raycom Media in 2018 for $3.65 Billion. Raycom’s sprawling portfolio of some 142 stations in 92 markets helped make Gray the third-largest owner of television stations in the nation, trailing only Nexstar and Sinclair, after subsequent acquisitions of the Quincy Media stations and Meredith Corporation’s television group in 2021.
Which brings us to today, and the question: Why would Gray with now 180 stations in 113 markets be interested in Graham Media’s 7 television stations in 6 markets? And would Graham be willing to sell?
As we have noted here more than once, in a brave new world where the FCC actually delivers on promised deregulation of television station ownership, the size of a group owner’s portfolio will matter more than ever. Small groups, like Graham, will have a tougher time with major parts of its business such as network affiliate negotiations and declining retransmission consent revenues. Graham has first-hand experience with the shifting economics and loyalties of networks. In 2002, the CBS network took a hardball stance during affiliation negotiations with WJXT in Jacksonville, offering a deal that would end the network’s paying for carriage on WJXT and ultimately resulting in being paid by the station in a model known in the industry now as “reverse compensation.” WJXT declined the offer and announced it would become an independent local station in July of 2002. (CBS moved to then UPN-affiliated WTEV in the market, then owned by Clear Channel, now part of Cox Media’s duopoly there.) To its credit, WJXT has done well in the nation’s 41st market as “The Local Station” with a heavy local news schedule.
The Graham stations would fit well into the Gray portfolio of stations, with only Roanoke, VA being a market where both companies currently own stations. Whether the FCC would let Gray keep Graham’s WSLS-TV, an NBC affiliate, along with its current WDBJ, a CBS affiliate would depend on the retention of the current policy that has prohibited a single owner from having more than one station affiliated with the “big four” networks of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC.
But for Gray, picking up three stations in the top 20 largest markets (Houston #6, Detroit #14, and Orlando #15) along with stations in southern markets like Jacksonville and San Antonio, would be a very attractive addition to the company’s stronghold in markets south of the Mason-Dixson line. Gray announced last week its revised financial guidance for the company’s 2nd Quarter of 2025. In that announcement it noted that that it was taking a $29 Million “non-cash impairment charge” resulting from its Atlanta station, WANF, losing its CBS affiliation in August of this year. Wait, where have we heard that kind of a story before.
On the same day, Gray announced that it was pricing a round of private offering notes at $900 Million, which would allow the company to refinance some shorter-term debt. While we are no financial analysts, that sure sounds like some cleaning up of the balance sheet to put it in a more favorable position for attractive future acquisitions.
Would Graham Media sell? Could Gray Media buy? These questions fall into our folder marked “never say never.” We’ve all seen surprising relationships start with far less certainty and end up very successful.
Our bottle keeps spinning. As Major Bowes said it best: “Round and round she goes, where she stops…nobody knows!”
We’ll be back soon with another “couple” to play our game. In the meantime, please consider taking a moment and click that subscribe link at the very top of this webpage. It is, as our accountant tells us regularly, “an aggressively priced offering”—as in it’s absolutely free. And if you are already reading this in your email, thank you! Please share with anyone you think might enjoy it.
As we began detailing here yesterday, the dealmaking in the local television station business is poised to heat up faster than the cast members on “Love Island.” As the nation awaits the promised major deregulation decisions of the Federal Communications Commission (hoping that those files weren’t sitting anywhere near those Epstein files that disappeared right off the US Attorney General’s desk), we decided to do some good old-fashioned, journalism-adjacent speculating and throw out some potential pairings of would-be station buyers and sellers.
We labelled this being a big money version of the coming-of-age game known as “Spin the Bottle.” You’d be forgiven if your immediate thought was that it was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels that was doing the spinning. Our first installment looked at the suitors for the television stations of Atlanta-based Cox Media Group. That is a deal that everyone is seemingly expecting “any day now.” But as of this writing, it still hasn’t happened.
Today, we’re going to look at a deal that no one seems to be speculating about. Except uniformed speculators, like us.
Once again, let us run the disclaimer from our fictional legal team of Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe, who ask us to let you know that what follows is pure speculation, based on the reading of tea leaves and listening to various sources of gossip. No actual financial advice is being given and none of your money should be invested accordingly.
With the fine print out of the way, let’s meet today’s contestants!
Couple Number Two – TEGNA and Hearst
We can hear your surprise or is that just a snort of derision? Could be either. Of course, TEGNA is a strong candidate to be in the circle around the spinning bottle once again. The company was this close to being acquired by Soo Kim’s Standard General in a $8.6 Billion deal (including assumption of debt) that cratered in May of 2023, right after those fun-killers at the FCC slow rolled the deal into a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge. That was never getting on the docket, and TEGNA terminated the merger agreement. It also pocketed a $136 Million termination fee that we sure hope is helping to cover the salaries of all those new Vice Presidents of Content they are hiring.
Our AI chatbot, “ClosedFOS” (not a real AI startup) tells us this helpful bit of spin about the deal’s collapse: “The failed acquisition is seen as a cautionary tale for private equity and hedge funds seeking to take over local media companies, especially when public interest concerns are at stake.”
So instead of some other private equity hedge fund acquiring TEGNA, why not consider a marriage with an actual media company, based in the United States? One that might know a little something about running successful television stations. We know, we know-the word “successful” is key there. But it would be hard to argue that Hearst Television, the broadcasting subsidiary of Hearst Communications, is deinitely (again according to our AI chatbot) “a major player in the broadcasting industry, known for their local news leadership and diverse programming.”
That description is actually pretty accurate.
Hearst Television owns a total of 34 local television stations across 28 markets. It is one of the top ten largest TV groups, and is the only one to be privately owned, in this case by the Hearst family trust that descended from the newspaper empire built by William Randolph Hearst, beginning in the late 1800’s. It became the biggest media conglomerate in the world by the 1920’s, when it began adding radio stations and later, in 1948, beginning its television ownership with WBAL-TV in Baltimore.
The parent company of Hearst Communications hasn’t given up on its newspaper roots. Just last week, it agreed to acquire the corporation that owns The Dallas Morning News for $14 a share in cash, representing a 219% premium for what the shares in DallasNews Corporation had been trading for, prior to the announcement. Hearst will fold the Dallas Morning News into its existing portfolio of newspapers, which includes in Texas, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, and the San Antonio Express-News, and smaller papers in Beaumont, Laredo, Midland and Plainview, Texas, as well.
DallasNews is the last remaining part of the A.H. Belo Corporation, which used to be a substantial television station owner. Belo would sell its portfolio of TV stations to newspaper giant, and USA Today publisher, Gannett, back in 2013.
Two years later, Gannett followed Belo’s move of splitting itself in two, the newspaper and publishing company retaining the original name and the broadcasting entity becoming a new company with the anagram-based name of TEGNA.
TEGNA now has 64 television stations in 51 markets across the country. In 2023, the company had revenue of just under $3 billion dollars. Its stock was trading north of $17 a share at the time this article was written. If the price of $8.6 Billion ($24 a share, plus debt) was valid in 2023 when the stock was also trading in the same range, the price to buy TEGNA would hopefully now be within the same ballpark?
Why would Hearst want TEGNA? The only place where both already own a television station is in market number 49, Louisville, Kentucky. (WLKY, the CBS affiliate is Hearst’s there and WHAS-TV, the ABC affiliate is TEGNA’s) That’s a market with no major network duopolies, aside from Block Communication’s Fox affiliate WDRB also owning CW affiliated WBKI, so it might be possible to keep both under one roof. Even if not, a Hearst-TEGNA hookup could result in a major group with 100 stations, across some 79 different markets.
(Erratum post-facto: A faithful Topline reader notes that there is another market with both Hearst and TEGNA stations. In the Triad of Greensboro/High-Point/Winston-Salem, Hearst owns NBC affiliate WXII and TEGNA owns CBS affiliate WFMY. We regret the original oversight.)
And not to be crass about it, but in the coming era for local television station ownership, size will definitely matter. Would it be the worst thing in the world to own some television stations in markets where you also owned the newspaper?
Wait, maybe you are thinking there might be some government restriction on that kind of media consolidation? Well, once upon a time, there was. In 1975, the FCC under the administration of President Gerald Ford instituted a ban on a single entity owning both a newspaper and broadcast stations in the same market. The FCC proposed lifting that long-standing ban in November of 2017, but there was a slew of legal challenges to the proposal. The Supreme Court of the United States ultimately upheld the FCC’s decision, and the FCC formally implemented the changes that ended “the cross-ownership ban” in June of 2021.
Could a Hearst-TEGNA hookup happen in the future?
As Major Bowes, who had a wildly successful radio show featuring amateur talent acts (think the great-great-grandfather of “America’s Got Talent”) back in that medium’s heyday before television arrived, would say as he spun his own “Wheel of Fortune” (before Pat Sajak was even born): “Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.”
So too for our “Spin the Bottle” scenarios for “the big deal of the day” perhaps forthcoming in the TV station business. (With apologies to Wayne Brady and before him Monty Hall, both hosting “Let’s Make A Deal.”) We’ll be back with another potential deal to discuss tomorrow.
Like Amazon’s Prime Day, we’re stretching it out to nearly a week.
Until then, might we ask you to please subscribe to our dispatches by clicking the “subscribe” link up above, if you are now reading this on our webpage? If you arrived from LinkedIn.com, the algorithm over there no longer places a premium on showing you the latest content posted, so to get these articles as soon as they are published, sign up for them to be sent straight to your email. We appreciate you considering doing so. And if you are already a subscriber and reading this via your email, please accept our thanks for supporting our efforts.