We have been reminded recently that we often rely on scenes from movies to make the challenges of real life a bit more relatable. This is an accurate observation, and we plead guilty as charged. We find great movies often capture life’s challenges in the most memorable ways, and there is something truly magical about experiencing them on a big screen with a cinematic soundtrack.
In 1964, film director Stanley Kubrick made the satirical, dark comedy titled “Dr. Strangelove.” It was a farce set during the height of the Cold War, serving as a foil to the terrifying thriller “Fail Safe” that came out in the same year. "Fail Safe" was based on a bestselling book that began as a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post. They described a terrifying scenario of what could happen if a mistake were made that accidentally sent US nuclear bombers to attack targets in the Soviet Union.
In other words, what might happen if the “fail-safe” mechanisms, designed to prevent such an accident, actually failed?
The fact that the series in the Saturday Evening Post came out during 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis made the fictional scenario all the more plausible. Of course, it also helped sales of the book quite a bit. The movie version, featuring a fantastic performance by Henry Fonda as the President of the United States, is a must-watch. (It is streaming on the Tubi service and available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.)
Then, "Dr. Strangelove" took the Cold War scenario and turned it on its head. Kubrick’s film is actually titled “Dr Strangelove—Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” It satirized the fear that had become a hallmark of the Cold War era in brilliant fashion.
It is our position that every generation has something that it fears. For the children of “The Greatest Generation” who lived through World War II, the era of the Cold War followed. The reality of a war that ended with the use of a nuclear bomb was fresh in the minds of those who witnessed what the United States had done to bring about victory against Japan in the Pacific. When the USSR proved it had a nuclear capacity in 1947, the standoff between the superpowers of the world would be dubbed the Cold War, and it would last until 1991.
Forgive the lengthy preamble, but we’d suggest that much of the same fear that gripped the nation is with us again. And this time, its name is Artificial Intelligence. Better known by its ubiquitous simple abbreviation, “AI"
Yesterday, at the NAB Show New York, in a session titled “The Future of News: AI, New Revenues and Risks, and the Policy Response” (a title that was almost as long as Dr. Strangelove’s), the fear was quantified in a way that the media industry usually relates best to—via an opinion poll.
The poll, conducted by OnMessage, Inc., was presented at the session by the firm’s vice president, Tommy Binton. Binton described how 1,000 likely voters were surveyed and explained the methodology used to produce the results, which were represented to have a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
Of the 1,000 people responding, 46% said that they use AI in their personal life or career. But 50% said they don’t, and 4% said they either don’t know or have no opinion about the question. (We’ll bet those people would have been building backyard bomb shelters during the Cold War.)
All in all, a pretty equal split of the nation. Of course, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Democrats were more likely to use AI than Republicans (52% to 38%), and people under 55 are far more likely to use AI than those over that age (Some 59% to 37%).
But the headline from the poll that jumped out was that, by an overwhelming majority, (82% to 16%) respondents said they were “Concerned” about the development of artificial intelligence, versus “Not Concerned.” (To be precise, the 82% was made up of people saying they were “Very Concerned” (40%) or “Somewhat Concerned” (42%) opposed to those saying they were “Not So Concerned” (12%) and “Not At All Concerned” (4%.)
Another interesting question asked in the poll: ”Thinking about the development of AI, which of the following statements comes closest to your opinion? The choices were: “The Federal Government needs to step in and place guardrails on the development of AI to protect users from potential risks” or “The Federal Government needs to allow American businesses to experiment with AI with little regulation so that Americans can become the global leader in AI technology."
On this question, 72% said they favored the Federal Government stepping in with guardrails, compared to only 14% who preferred letting American businesses experiment without government oversight. 15% either didn’t know or had no opinion. Large majorities in all demographic and political affiliations support the government stepping in.
A substantial majority of poll respondents also said they would support “Congress passing a law that made it illegal for AI to steal or reproduce journalism and local news stories that are published online without compensation" (to the news organization originating those stories). 77% would strongly or somewhat support such a law, while 11% would oppose it. (12% didn’t know or had no opinion.)
When asked, “How would you describe the level of trust you have that information provided by AI services and chatbots is accurate and unbiased?” “Trustworthy” only received 26% agreement, while 68% said such information was “Untrustworthy."
And then there is this result in the poll. When asked, “How concerned are you that AI will eventually replace your job?” the poll respondents answered that 15% were "very concerned” and 17% were "somewhat concerned” versus 24% who said “not so concerned” and 37% “not at all concerned.” Lumped together, that’s 32% saying they are concerned that AI is going to take their job compared to 61% who aren’t. (And 7% had no opinion or didn’t know.)
No word on whether any of these poll respondents were working in newsrooms or any kind.
At this point, we turn to the wisdom of the fictional Dr. Strangelove from the movie when he delivers this explanation for why he considered and then rejected the notion of creating a “doomsday machine.”
"Based on the findings of the report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which, at this moment, must be all too obvious."
We’ll have more to report from the NAB Show in New York in the days to come.
Today’s headline comes courtesy of TV news industry maven Rick Gevers and his eponymous newsletter, which emailed a breaking news alert this afternoon. The emailed bulletin contained an announcement that we weren’t shocked to read, but sad to learn of all the same:
RTDNA is suspending its annual convention and says it is unlikely to return.
The association had struggled to attract many to its annual convention in recent years. The last one we attended here in the Twin Cities was truly a shadow of the event that had been a yearly industry gathering since the association’s founding (as the Radio-Television News Directors Association) back in 1946.
It was the event where, in 1958, Edward R. Murrow delivered his famous “Wires and Lights in a Box” speech, which George Clooney would recite on Broadway some 67 years later.
The Association’s leadership quietly announced that instead of an annual convention, it will conduct a “World Tour” by participating in a series of smaller and regional events across the country each year.
"This series of local meet-ups, virtual town halls, RTDNA-hosted events, and training sessions embedded in conferences and events hosted by our partners replaces our 2026 conference,” as the association’s website states. We’ll note with only a small amount of sarcasm that the two black tie awards galas that the association hosts each year (The First Amendment Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Awards) will continue.
Aside from paying a pretty penny to dress up, eat mediocre hotel catering, and listen to speeches from presenters and recipients, these award competitions and the tickets to attend the awarding ceremonies are a significant source of revenue for the RTDNA. That’s true for many professional organizations these days.
We first detailed the issues with the RTDNA’s declining convention attendance back in June, when we asked the question: “Wither the RTDNA?"
That article may still be the most-read post we have written here. In it, we suggested that the RTDNA would probably be wise to take a page from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) annual convention, which is still thriving and very well reviewed by those who attended this year’s edition held back in June in New Orleans. One of the stops on the RTDNA’s World Tour will be the 2026 edition of the IRE conference.
Maybe the IRE will use the opportunity to broaden its attendance by expanding its offerings beyond journalists focused primarily on investigative reporting.
We do find it sad that the RTDNA has never fully recovered from its 2001 annual convention, which was disrupted by the 9/11 attacks and aftermath. But it remains curious why their event didn’t regain its prominence. At the same time, other industry groups, such as the IRE and the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), have seemingly increased attendance at their annual conventions.
Even in the age of shrinking budgets and soaring travel costs.
Who knows, maybe the whole “world tour” idea is the better one for the fraught times in the television news business. NBC announced its expected cuts to its news division today, leaving about 150 good people looking for new jobs. By all accounts, CBS News will not be spared in the also expected “reduction in force” or “RIFs” to come under the new owner, Paramount-Skydance. (They gotta find more than the coins in the executive office couches to cover that billion-dollar deal, let alone the quick $150 million to acquire Bari Weiss and her Substack.) Smaller and quieter personnel trimming has been going on at other networks and news outlets.
No one in the news business is immune to hearing that “their services are no longer needed.” And that’s before “Skynet” becomes sentient. Sorry, we meant to type “that’s before ‘AI' starts fully replacing newsroom positions at every level.” (Who would have thought 1984’s “The Terminator” would one day be seen as a documentary? A reminder that movie’s dystopian vision of a future ruled by cybernetic forces supposedly occurred in...2029.)
Sincerely, we do hope the RTDNA’s annual convention will be back, to paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger’s trademark line. We offered up some scenarios on how it might do so in conjunction with the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual Las Vegas show in this column back in June.
We note that it is one of the announced stops on the RTDNA’s “World Tour.” But as John Connor correctly pointed out in the sequel, “Terminator 2”:
“The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves."
And with that, we will bid you a parting "hasta la vista…baby."
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In our rotation of rewatching various chapters in the Star Trek television canon, we’ve recently been enjoying the “Star Trek: Voyager” series. It was the only one to feature a woman in the captain’s chair (in the form of the great Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway). But watching the show on Paramount+ brings the painful reminder that once upon a time, there wasn’t High-Definition TV, let alone 4K that could be shot on smartphone cameras in everyone’s pocket.
No, back in the good old 1990s, there were only 525 lines of glorious "standard definition" NTSC television. (Engineers from back in that analog era would jokingly refer to NTSC as standing for “Never The Same Color” twice, which wasn’t far from the truth.) Episodes of “Star Trek: Voyager” now come complete with portions festooned by the giant, ugly black bars on the right and left of our magnificent 85-inch LED-powered screen, reminding us of when TV was only a small 4 by 3 picture, rather than the widescreen 16 X 9 that we take for granted now.
Fortunately, the show is still fun enough to watch — even with the low-res picture. However, it appears that Paramount has done its best to clean it up for streaming.
We were thinking about this when we read about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s latest “initiative,” which appears to be to get the long-delayed transition from the current ATSC 1.0 digital standard for America’s broadcast television stations changed over to the “new and improved” ATSC 3.0 standard, better known by its snappy trade name: “NextGen TV."
Since we are on a roll with this whole Star Trek theme, we can’t resist the apparent reference to “The Next Generation” of television. (Especially since Star Trek’s “Next Generation” has lasted longer than any other part of Gene Roddenberry’s franchise.)
In 2017, some eight years after the great digital television (or DTV) migration, which moved America’s TV stations over to the ATSC 1.0 standard that brought true HDTV into your living room, the FCC adopted rules that would allow the nation’s broadcast television license holders to begin transmitting in a newer, more efficient ATSC 3.0 standard. There had been some experimentation efforts in the preceding few years, the most notable one from WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC. WRAL’s owners have always been “early adopters” of new technology. In 2016, they launched an experimental station to transmit the 2016 Olympics in 4K video using a new signal that was then being called “Futurecast” by the industry.
The one problem, of course, was that there weren’t very many televisions available that could receive the new signal.
So obviously, most television broadcasters weren’t jumping in to spend the money needed to broadcast in a standard that nobody could watch. Mainly because they had all made significant investments to upgrade their facilities in the 2009 DTV transition. The FCC made the ATSC 3.0 standard voluntary, with no hard deadline for completion. One reason for this was that the plan used for the digital transition in the previous decade couldn’t be easily repeated. Why? The FCC significantly reduced the frequencies used for television broadcasting. First, they cleared the old channels 52-69 for non-broadcast uses. Then, they sold off the spectrum that had previously been used for channels 41-51 for cellular telephone service, bringing billions of dollars into the federal government’s coffers. And it turned out that in the digital TV world, UHF frequencies (Channels 14 to 40) were superior to VHF ones (Channels 2-13), so that is why most digital TV stations are now on UHF channels.
No matter what channel number your local television stations claim to be on, the likelihood is that they are actually transmitting on channels between 2 and 36. Still, they are allowed to identify themselves by their legacy numbers via a technology called “PSIP” (short for Program and System Information Protocol, if you must know.) So now there’s not really enough room “on the dial” for broadcasters to operate simultaneously on two channels to be on both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0. This means they can no longer have two channels as they did at the beginning of the 2000s and gradually migrate to the new standard over time.
The solution to this problem was to have one station in each market convert to the new ATSC 3.0 standard and cooperatively carry all local broadcast TV signals on a single channel. The first market to launch a “lighthouse” station to broadcast local television channels via the ATSC 3.0 standard was Phoenix in 2018. The new standard allows for carrying multiple digital television signals compressed into a single channel. The lighthouse roll-out has been criticized for not carrying all stations in a given market, often excluding public television and smaller, independently owned stations.
As of the time this article was written, only 80 of the nation’s 200-plus local television markets have a station broadcasting in the new standard. That represents about 75% of all U.S. television households being able to receive an ATSC 3.0 TV station, if they wanted to.
In 2019, the Consumer Technology Association gave ATSC 3.0 the catchy new trademark of “NextGen TV.” While there have been events touting the arrival of the next generation in various markets, the problem remains that public demand for the new standard is minimal. There are more than a few reasons for the weak demand to date. There are still a limited number of TVs available that come with the tuners needed to receive NextGen TV. (Try looking them up at your favorite retailer.) And as if all that weren’t enough, there is a pretty significant dispute over just how the adoption of the new standard should be fully implemented.
Early this year, the National Association of Broadcasters filed a proposal with the FCC to implement a mandatory, two-stage transition to move all of the nation’s television stations onto the NextGen TV standard. A large number of groups came out in opposition, including the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), Americans for Tax Reform, the Low-Powered Television Broadcasters Association, and Consumer Reports. Even the chairman of the Consumer Technology Association, the group that coined the name “NextGen TV,” criticized the proposal for a mandated transition.
Enter FCC Chairman Carr, who is bringing the whole matter to a head with a proposal that the commission is expected to vote on a “Notice of Proposed Rule Making” (NPRM) in its public meeting later this month. The NPRM stops short of embracing the NAB’s mandatory transition proposal, leaving it basically up to each broadcaster to determine when they want to begin broadcasting in the newer ATSC 3.0 standard, and when they would cease using the older ATSC 1.0 standard. The proposed rules would also allow broadcasters to operate both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals simultaneously, but curiously, they would not require broadcasters to simulcast their programming across both signals. Also on the docket is whether the FCC should now require that all new television sets have tuners capable of receiving the new ATSC 3.0 signals.
Of the flurry of proposed rule changes in the NPRM, one that may get the most public comment if the FCC votes to approve, is about the question of whether or not the commission should impose “standards and/or rules concerning the encryption and/or signing of free, [over-the-air] television broadcast signals and what authority the Commission has to impose such standards and/or rules.” One of the features that NextGen TV currently includes is the ability for broadcasters to enable “digital rights management” encryption for their signals. You may remember DRM as an issue when downloading music over the internet first became popular. DRM was the technology deployed to combat music piracy via programs like Napster and LimeWire.
The use of encryption on TV signals for DRM purposes has some severe critics in the online world. Much of their complaint is, why should “Free TV,” as broadcasters often call themselves, need to prevent their signals from being received by their taxpaying audience? They, in theory at least, actually own the airwaves, which the FCC licenses them to operate “in the public interest.” The anti-encryption advocates also note that the DRM in use actually prevents the development of cheaper devices and external adapters from being available to receive ATSC 3.0 signals. For their part, broadcasters and their trade groups claim the DRM encryption is needed to prevent the digital theft of their valuable content.
Listen, we are sure that your head is already hurting from all of these technical details. We know ours certainly is. If you are so inclined to dig deeper into this topic, we’d invite you to follow the excellent coverage provided by our friends over at TheDesk.Net.
Right now, there is no deadline for when you might have to get a “NextGen TV” set for yourself. The NAB planned to have two deadlines: larger markets by 2028 and everywhere else by 2030. Since the FCC didn’t buy into that, it is unclear when there might ever be a deadline.
And whether or not there will still be television as we currently know it by then. Maybe it's that Star Trek got wrong.
It won’t be space that is “the final frontier,” but it might be broadcast television’s.
This was all fairly predictable. The initial reactions to the long-rumored, yet still surprising, appointment of Bari Weiss as the first-ever Editor-in-Chief of CBS News erupted from across the very public, yet insulated, world of broadcast journalism (itself a subset of the still-insulated, but less so, broader world of journalism). The sentiments would range from the mockingly genial “Let’s give her a chance” to the admittedly more extreme “A Victory Over Wokeness” from one side and “It’s Utterly Depressing” from the other.
The Guardian’s article from Margaret Sullivan was headlined: “Bari Weiss is a weird and worrisome choice as top editor for CBS News.” That terse observation seemed to capture much of the initial reaction from the selection of Weiss, a person with zero broadcasting experience, to lead one of the nation’s largest broadcast news organizations.
Not to mention her very public stances on issues both political and impolitic alike.
Thus, we were not surprised that by mid-week, the supporters of the unconventional choice by ParamountSkydance CEO David Ellison were beginning to find their full-throated voice.
First up was The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan, who came out with her support Tuesday in an article titled “Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss.” The article makes its intent clear when Flanagan delivers this line in the third paragraph: "Weiss is a hugely successful journalist and entrepreneur, and the target—especially from others within her field—of Bari Weiss derangement syndrome.”
Author Flanagan does acknowledge that she is close friends with not only Ms. Weiss, but also with her Wife and Sister, both of whom she name checks. She points out that the three women founded The Free Press together, and then details that theirs was “a friendship born when I met Bari over coffee when she was at the Times and learned that we share the same disgust at what has become of so much of the mainstream, legacy press.”
(To insert a quote at this point from our favorite pet detective, Ace Ventura, “Well, Alrighty then!”)
Flanagan goes on to detail Weiss’s now imfamous resignation from her position as an opinion writer for The New York Times in 2020, where she, at least in Flanagan’s telling, wrote "a blistering letter of resignation enumerating the ways that the paper had abandoned the core principles that had made it great: the sharp line between opinion and reporting, and an approach to the news and editorial vision that wasn’t prey to the whims or axioms of political ideology or popular sentiment."
Ever the entrepreneur, Weiss goes on to launch her own outlet, The Free Press, on the Substack platform. While there is a joke to be made about the number of journalists who have decamped to Substack in recent years, she may be the only one laughing all the way to the bank, having sold The Free Press for $150 million to PSKY and gotten herself the new gig at CBS News at the same time.
As the song goes, “Nice work if you can get it."
But Caitlin Flanagan’s article makes the case, albeit with a bit too much personal gusto, that the J-world crowd is indeed suffering from some derrangement syndrome becase as, well to use her words, “Now—cry havoc and write a hit piece—CBS News has been desecrated, a Slurpee sloshed on William Paley’s Picasso.” (A small art note to Ms. Flanagan, Paley was more a patron of modern art. He had the Museum of Modern Art built next to his CBS corporate tower, nicknamed “Black Rock,” on West 52nd Street. But we appreciate the whole Slurpee sloshing imagery all the same.)
She continues with her case, claiming that the hiring of Weiss is, in essence, perhaps just what CBS News needs to reinvent itself, because—well, quoting her again, “...it turns out that fans of the network were willing to do whatever it took to save the network—except watch CBS News. It’s the least watched of all three little-watched network news programs, each weeknight a valiant struggle to report news that everyone’s been refreshing all day long…"
By the next day, in a strange coincidence that we can only blame on the lack of a proper assignments board at The Atlantic, the online edition of the publication featured another item, this one from writer Jonathan Chait. His article was titled “Bari Weiss still thinks it's 2020.” Chait counters his colleague Flanagan’s take when he opines off the top: “Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, has pledged to uphold the network’s traditional ideals of objectivity and rigor. Perhaps she will. Yet the evidence suggests a more discouraging future for one of the great pillars of American broadcast journalism.”
The main thrust of Chait’s questioning of Weiss’s intentions for CBS News focuses largely on the minimal amount of critical coverage applied by The Free Press to the current administration’s actions in 2025. The comparison to the founding of the Substack publication some five years ago to today is encapsulated by this sub-headline that reads "She co-founded The Free Press as a bastion of liberalism in an illiberal time. Her arrival at CBS is paved with excuses for illiberal friends."
While Chait’s semi-absolves his criticism by stating, "Unlike Weiss’s legion of enemies, I believe that The Free Press filled an important niche,” but then he delivers this scathing paragraph, which deserves to be quoted in full:
“The trouble is that the cultural conditions under which Weiss founded her publication have changed radically. The era of progressive institutions firing or silencing staffers who step out of line peaked five years ago and is now over. What looms over American culture at the moment is an authoritarian presidency that threatens to crush the very values of free speech and open discourse that Weiss pledged to uphold. While Yglesias, Sullivan, and others have passionately condemned Donald Trump’s illiberalism, Weiss’s Free Press continues to cover America as if it’s still the summer of 2020."
By Wednesday evening, the influential columnist Dylan Byers writing for Puck.News took up Pro-Bari cause with his take, whimsically-titled “Bari, Bari Quite Contrary.” (Apologies for the link to their paywall.)
Byers acknowledged the industry uproar of the hire of Weiss by Ellison with this quote: "The alarm ringers offer a clear illustration of the media groupthink and, frankly, laziness, that Bari has so often railed against. In the last 72 hours, otherwise smart writers and reputable media companies have made broad, sweeping, and baseless statements about Bari and The Free Press that evince a sort of paranoid psychosis, or what The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan has described as “Bari Weiss–derangement syndrome.” In one commonly held but unsubstantiated view, the Ellisons brought Bari to CBS as an olive branch to Trump."
The always well-sourced Byers cites over a dozen unnamed sources he has spoken with inside CBS News. He characterizes all as greeting the first week of working for the new Editor-In-Chief with “excitement, cautious optimism, and relief.” He goes on to put a pretty fine point on it:
"Perhaps these insiders understand something the paranoid critics and anonymous “doomsday” leakers do not. The existential threat to CBS News isn’t Bari, but rather the complacency that made her ascent possible: the lack of innovation that kept CBS News mired in last place in the ratings; the failure to develop a robust direct-to-consumer strategy; the inept leadership that allowed internal dramas to metastasize into national referendums on the brand. While some view Bari as a violent rupture with CBS News’s storied journalistic traditions, others realize that, without some transformation, CBS News won’t command any influence at all."
And we said, it was all pretty predictable. In terms of how the cycle of any news coverage evolves, really. Even coverage about the news industry itself.
Just ask Chris Licht, who went from being an Executive Producer on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” to being the CEO of CNN in 2022. You may remember that Licht was lambasted for only having local TV news experience with NBC stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, followed by EP experience on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” then "CBS Mornings,” and finally with launching Colbert’s show, which is in its final season. (We’ll note for the record that all of that experience was in television.)
And Licht was out of his job at CNN in just over a year.
Ironically, one of the things Licht has said he regrets most is agreeing to a lengthy interview with The Atlantic.
In a 2024 interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Licht recognized that his decision to do the article was made out of his own “arrogance."
He added some thoughts that any newsroom leader should take heed of: "When you try to change something dramatically, you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to build the trust of the organization. They have to believe in you. And I did not build that trust.”
To which we’ll add our own experience with this bit of hard-earned hindsight: “The honeymoon period with a new job never lasts as long as you would hope for."
It’s almost like that iconic stopwatch; you can practically hear it ticking loudly in your ears. If you listen to it long enough, you’ll swear at times--it actually speeds up.
Congratulations on surviving your first day in your new job as Editor-In-Chief at CBS News. Which, of course, is a new job in a storied legacy place of broadcast journalism. After all, even Edward R. Murrow was never bestowed the newspaper title that makes you again a trailblazer, much as you were when you left the New York Times and started your online publication, The Free Press. It was nice of your new boss, ParamountSkydance Chair David Ellison, to purchase The Free Press for $150 million, aside from offering you the fabulous new job.
As veterans of the task of walking into a newsroom for the first time after being hired to lead it, we hope to offer a few tips to help make the transition just a little easier and set you up for success. Because, despite all the handwringing there has been from all sides of the block there on NYC’s West 57th Street, we here at The Topline really are hoping for your success.
The good news is that you inherit some still valuable news properties. Yes, we acknowledge that broadcast TV is not your background, and from the looks of things, it does not appear to be the future growth engine that PSKY is counting on to improve the bottom line significantly. However, it is still drawing an audience, albeit a much smaller one than in the days of Cronkite. There is still a bit of that “Tiffany network” shine to the programs like 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning, and Face The Nation—even if the daily flagships in the Morning and Evening are struggling against the competition at ABC and NBC.
Let's face the elephant in the room. Your arrival is not a surprise, as it was rumored about, speculated about, written about, and apparently dreaded by many of your now colleagues. You arrive with many questions about who you intend to be in this broad new role, which has you reporting directly to CEO Ellison. (While that reporting structure of you, as Editor-In-Chief, and your boss seemingly as the “Publisher” of CBS News, may be more comfortable given your background, it is unfamiliar to those who have been toiling away in broadcast journalism. And given that there has always been some judgmental feel to having to segregate the work done on television as being a specific subset of “journalism,” the whole newspaper org chart is going to take some getting used to.)
But the real pachyderm in the corner is the fear that you have been brought in because of your politics, or at least the appearance that your politics drives your editorial viewpoint. Also, that you have been hired, at least in part, to provide a viewpoint that might be appreciated more by the current administration in Washington, which has been vocal in its criticism of—forgive the obvious pun here—pretty much the entire free press, including and perhaps especially, CBS News.
We’ll set aside the recent chapter of having to write a check—although we still aren’t sure where the check went—but a check nonetheless for around $16 million. That was the previous owner's problem, and that is your first recommendation from us. Blame your predecessors for all of the bad decisions that were made before your arrival. If need be, don’t be afraid to throw the memory of Ed Murrow under the bus in establishing that “A New Day Is Dawning” at CBS News.
After all, it didn’t stop that Clooney fellow from raking in some cash playing him on Broadway.
We noticed that on your first day, you adopted a similar approach to Charles Foster Kane, issuing your own “statement of principles,” just as Kane did when he took over “The New York Inquirer.” These ten ideals (let’s not call them commandments, because that would be too precious by half) all seem agreeable enough when first read:
1. Journalism that reports on the world as it actually is. 2. Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual. 3. Journalism that respects our audience enough to tell the truth plainly—wherever it leads. 4. Journalism that makes sense of a noisy, confusing world. 5. Journalism that explains things clearly, without pretension or jargon. 6. Journalism that holds both American political parties to equal scrutiny. 7. Journalism that embraces a wide spectrum of views and voices so that the audience can contend with the best arguments on all sides of a debate. 8. Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity. 9. Journalism that uses all of the tools of the digital era. 10. Journalism that understands that the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.
We’re reminded here of the brilliant monologue from comedy legend George Carlin on The Ten Commandments from 2001. Carlin’s premise is that the list was "deliberately and artificially inflated to get it up to ten.” He goes on to explain that the number ten is significant because “Ten sounds important. Ten sounds official.” You may want to watch Carlin’s original bit, which is available by clicking here.
He really nails it when he states that having ten was really…a marketing decision.
And indeed, in the early going, you are going to be selling yourself to the entire news division, just to let them know that aside from being “the new sheriff in town” and having to say “It is great to meet you” way more times than a Chik-Fil-A worker has to say “my pleasure” each day— you are also there to assure everyone that you are “excited be part of the team."
Because soon enough, you will need to cut the team down to a smaller, more efficient size. One that happens to look a lot better in a spreadsheet that has to go to the bean counters.
The list of projects to dive into there at CBS News is a long one. Do be careful not to be pulled in too many different directions at once. First and foremost, establish your immediate team around you. You can’t do it all by yourself; this is not like starting up a newsletter or even writing an opinion column. Those are, as we are sure you know, solo activities. You can do them all by yourself. TV News is definitely a team sport, and your first order of business is much like that of a new NFL head coach; you need the rest of your coaching staff on board as quickly as you can assemble them.
There is the question of the holdover from the previous regime, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski. By all accounts, he is an experienced hand in the whole specialty of “broadcast journalism” and has some capital from the newsroom staff. Even though he doesn’t have the same access to the guy running the whole PSKY empire as you do, he can be a help if you can recruit him to your way of wanting to do things. Tanya Simon’s elevation to Executive Producer at 60 Minutes was hailed by the team of individuals who, for whatever reason, work on their own island in the building across the street from the network newsroom at the CBS Broadcast Center. However, the other island, which was the CBS Morning News studio located at 1515 Broadway (in the former MTV space of the old Viacom building, overlooking Times Square), recently returned to the Broadcast Center.
That’s one less group working independently of the mothership. Always better when you don’t have to get in a cab to see part of your newsroom that is in another part of town.
Listen, we know it was a long first day, and we have a lot of other thoughts to share with you. Still, out of respect for your time, we’ll follow George Carlin’s lead and suggest that you consider trimming your list of ten principles down to just two, at least in this crucial “Introductory phase” of your new job.
The first one is simple, because from our view of watching the work done by CBS News over nearly 100 years of being in existence, since William Paley bought the Columbia Broadcating System in 1927, you could easily say that the legacy of “the house that Murrow built” has always been about your point number 8: Journalism that rushes toward the most interesting and important stories, regardless of their unpopularity. That principle has never been in short supply at CBS News, even on the rare occasion that the organization may have misstepped in pursuit of it.
The second principle we’d suggest is deserving of the most of your attention right out of the gate is your second one. “Journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual.” These days, not everyone agrees that being factual and fearless in the pursuit of a story is fair. In fact, labeling such journalism as “fake news" is the lingua franca not only of those politically opposed to any critical coverage of their positions, but also repeated by the media outlets that operate in sycophantic support of those political views.
We also agree with your tenth and final principle, that the fair and fearless journalism you have endorsed is "the best way to serve America is to endeavor to present the public with the facts, first and foremost.” It is up to you to define just what that standard is going to be at CBS News. That will require numerous conversations in the weeks and months to come.
There will be more problems awaiting you tomorrow and the day after that.
But based on our experience, a moment will arrive, probably far sooner than you will want it to, when a news story will require a clear determination of how your legacy at the helm of CBS News will be remembered. Let us quote one of your predecessors at CBS News who may have best summarized the challenge before you:
"The instruments with which you work are miraculous, (know) that your responsibility is unprecedented or that your aspirations are frequently frustrated.”
Mr. Murrow made it clear just how big the stakes are: "For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must indeed be faced if we are to survive."
No pressure there, really, just the survival of the nation and its citizens.
This is where we tell you the often retold fable of a new newsroom leader who arrives at their new office for the first time to find three sealed envelopes and a note from their immediate predecessor in the top desk drawer. The note is cordial, much like the tradition of outgoing Presidents leaving a note for their successor in the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office. It states that the person who sat behind the desk before you enjoyed their time here. They wanted to provide some help in making the transition into your new position, which comes with so much to accomplish and with so much scrutiny. It offers that on each occasion where you find yourself stuck on a decision, you should open one of the envelopes.
The leader smiles appreciatively at the note and closes the desk drawer. But at a point not too far in the future, they find themselves in a very tough spot with a major decision to deal with. To see if it might be of any help whatsoever, the first envelope is torn open. Inside is a card that states: “Blame your predecessor for everything wrong at the moment.”
The second tough spot comes around sooner than expected, and the second envelope is opened. The card inside says: “Change the _________” and lists various things, including “talent,” “set,” “music,” “name,” “time,” and concludes with “anything else you can think of.”
After implementing all those changes, another major problem presents itself, and the news director is forced to open the third and final envelope to see just what the final recommendation might be.
And on the card inside, the simple statement advises: “Time to prepare three new envelopes."
We wish you the best in your new job. Enjoy the ride as much as you can. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance to you in the future.
We’ve been guilty of being focused recently on the larger issues in the television industry. Issues such as the First Amendment and Free Speech, Media Ownership Concentration, and similar matters. Admittedly, we haven’t kept up with our primary focus here, which remains the television news business.
Let’s get back to that in today’s edition of The Topline, in which we focus on a particular news story that has unfolded over the past eight days in Albany, New York.
We begin on Tuesday, September 21st. A large police presence has gathered at a residential address in Albany to execute a search warrant related to what was identified as "suspected financial crimes." The next day, excavation equipment appeared at the site, and began working in the backyard. In the course of the following 36 hours, the bodies of two people were discovered and removed from the scene.
In a press conference on Thursday, September 25th, Albany Police Chief Brendan Cox announced that the investigation that led police to this address had been ongoing since May 21st. That is when police received a call from the Social Security Administration requesting a welfare check on Franz and Theresia Kraus, who, according to Social Security records, lived at the address where the warrant was served. The Chief says that the couple’s adult son, Lorenz Kraus, has been interviewed as part of the investigation.
Albany television station WNYT, the Hubbard-owned NBC affiliate in the market, reports that a source close to the investigation had confirmed to the station that Lorenz Kraus had admitted to killing his parents, suffocating his father, and choking his mother.
Shortly after WNYT broke this news, Lorenz Kraus arrived in the lobby of another television station, WRGB-TV, the Sinclair-owned CBS affiliate, where he was to be interviewed on camera by WRGB’s veteran anchor Greg Floyd. Kraus agreed to the interview after speaking with the station’s news director, Stone Grissom, by telephone. Kraus had emailed a rambling statement to the local television newsrooms and other local media outlets, requesting that they publish it. News Director Grissom told Kraus in their conversation that the station would publish his statement—but only if he would agree to be interviewed in person at the station.
Kraus agreed and said he was heading to the station. Grissom then alerted anchor Floyd, and preparations were made to conduct this exclusive interview. Kraus arrives shortly thereafter, and Floyd proceeds to conduct the on-camera interview. During the interview, Lorenz Kraus confessed that he killed his parents eight years earlier and had hidden their bodies. Kraus says he killed his parents “out of concern for their misery.” The interview ends, Kraus leaves the building, and is immediately arrested in the station’s parking lot by the Albany police department, and charged with the two murders.
WRGB then airs the exclusive interview in its Thursday evening newscasts and posts the full interview on YouTube, where it has been viewed over a million times.
While all that is a fascinating and still unfolding story, and a major “get” for WRGB, there is the proverbial “story behind the story” that we have found equally interesting. Two interviews with anchor Floyd provide an insight into his thinking while conducting the interview. Molly McPherson is an Albany-based public relations professional who has a practice as a Crisis and Reputation Strategist. She has a popular podcast called “The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson.” In her podcast, which we have been fans of for a few months now, she breaks down contemporary events through the lens of her crisis PR experience. She also happens to be in a personal relationship with Greg Floyd.
In her latest edition of “The PR Breakdown,” McPherson interviews Floyd (whom she identifies as her boyfriend) about getting the exclusive interview and a follow-up jailhouse interview with Lorenz Kraus on the very next day. They also talk about Floyd’s personal feelings about the story.
These two candid conversations with the news anchor provide an extra dimension for reviewing how the story unfolded and assessing its subsequent impact. Greg Floyd deserves much credit for conducting a probing, yet professional interview with little preparation and a growing recognition of the story unfolding right before him. As a journalist with 45 years in the Albany market (he started as an intern at WRGB before returning to be on the air), the two interviews with him are worth watching—along with his entire interview with the man now charged with killing both of his parents back in 2017.
At the time of this publication, Lorenz Kraus has pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse. A Grand Jury indicted him on the charges late this Wednesday afternoon.
Update Epilogue: We’re now also publishing new editions of “The Topline” on Substack for users of that platform. You can find us there at tvnd.substack.com. Our intention is to see if being available on the Substack platform is a better experience for our readers. We will keep you in the loop on what we find as we go forward.
Let’s face it, open meetings of the Federal Communications Commission are usually not what you might call “exciting affairs.” When your agenda is filled with terms like “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” let’s just say that these meetings are filled with things that only get DC lawyers and policy wonks like us to sit up and take notice.
But after the Chairman of the FCC appears to take on the persona of a “mob boss” and suggests that his position appoints him as the arbiter of what is--and is not--considered to be protected as “free speech” (at least when broadcast over the air of local TV and radio stations that have federal licenses allowing them to operate), well then your normally quiet little meeting can turn into something much different.
And that is just what happened when protestors disrupted today's “Open Meeting” of the FCC to begin shouting, “Fire Carr, The Censorship Czar!” While not quite in the top three of protest chants, like “Hell no, we won’t go!”, it wasn’t the worst we’ve ever heard.
Reports indicate that Carr appeared to find the protest amusing, as he smiled through the disruption and kept the meeting going after the protesters were quickly removed. But not before one woman shouted, “Hope you enjoy promoting a pedophile’s agenda!"
It’s unclear, as we go to press, which, if any, organization was behind the protest.
Order was restored, the meeting resumed, and many crucial topics were reviewed, including “Accelerating Wireline Infrastructure Buildout," "Jamming Contraband Cellphones in State and Local Prisons," and "Deleting Obsolete and Duplicate Wireline Rules.” That last one is the formal name of the FCC’s contribution to the administration’s much-touted initiative of “Delete, Delete, Delete”.
However, the item that anyone working in television was most interested in on the agenda was the “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” known in commission lingo as an “NPRM,” that was titled “Modernizing Broadcast Ownership Regulations."
This seemingly innocuous idea is a proposal for the FCC to modify the regulations governing the ownership specifics for the licensed local radio and TV stations across the United States. For television, the regulation most anticipated to be changed is the one that limits any one company from owning more television stations than a total that would cover over 39% of the country's television households.
As you may know, this particular rule is of particular importance to Nexstar and its CEO, Perry Sook. That’s because Nexstar has proposed a $6 billion-plus deal to acquire rival TEGNA, becoming the owner of numerous local stations that would likely cover around 80% of the country.
And although our public school education may have left something to be desired in terms of our math skills, we are still fairly certain that 80% is more than 39%. Much more.
So this morning’s FCC meeting officially kicked off the process of “modernizing” the FCC’s “Broadcast Ownership Regulations.” Which, to be clear, means that the only decision of substance made was to invite the public to weigh in on the draft of proposed changes to the existing regulations. The National Association of Broadcasters has made it clear that it wants the existing ownership rules to be largely eliminated.
Of course, there will be individuals and public interest groups who will file comments in opposition to any changes in the FCC rules as they currently exist. Surely one or more of them will point out how the relaxation of regulations on radio station ownership appears to have led to the rise of the iHeart-Cumulus-Audacy-styled mega groups that have, for the most part, turned local radio into a homogenized offering of stations that sound the same in nearly any city in America.
Should you, dear reader, need some “light” reading to help with any bout of insomnia that you might be experiencing, you can dive into reading the entire “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” by clicking right here. We strongly advise against doing this before operating any heavy equipment.
After the meeting concluded, the FCC held a press conference, at which Chairman Carr was peppered with questions about his comments that preceded the surprise decision by Disney/ABC to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” back on September 17th. Mr. Carr did a lot of deflecting, saying that it didn’t matter because Kimmel was already back on the air. He added that he didn’t even actually say what everyone (especially Democrats) said he said. But he didn’t miss the opportunity to reinforce that it is definitely within the FCC's purview to investigate complaints of “news distortion” against licensed broadcasters. He went on to essentially state that this is a well-established role of the FCC, as under Democratic administrations, complaints were brought against the Fox-owned station in Philadelphia (for the conduct of the Fox News Channel, which parent News Corp also owns) and stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.
It’s that last example that we think deserves a little more examination. You may recall in 2018, when Sinclair required anchors in all of its stations to read the same script from corporate, warning of the dangers of “fake news” (on other outlets, of course). The episode garnered considerable attention online. It was ultimately reported on when a video showed dozens of local newscasts from Sinclair stations, apparently forced to deliver the exact same script that they had no say in.
So much for local stations having the freedom to make “local decisions” on what is “in the public interest” as their licenses require.
A number of viewers and groups wrote to the FCC to complain about what they felt was “news distortion.” The FCC indeed launched investigations of the local Sinclair stations that aired the segment. So this, according to the FCC Chairman Carr, proves that the FCC has previously used the licenses of local TV stations as a political tool when Democrats were in the majority.
One key difference between the Sinclair episode seven years ago and the latest kerfuffle over the ill-timed comment from Jimmy Kimmel about the murderer of Charlie Kirk is that Kimmel appears on a program that doesn’t in any way call itself “News.” Commenting about the news in a comedy show’s monologue, whether accurate or not, isn’t a case of news distortion. If it were, then we’d like to ask Chairman Carr if he has ever listened to the likes of Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck, Candace Owens, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, or any of the dozens of other talk shows that occupy 24 hours of the program schedule on nearly 1,000 “News-Talk” radio stations across the country.
This point wasn’t lost on fellow FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who followed Carr in the press conference. She flatly stated that the FCC wasn’t supposed to ever be in the business of regulating free speech on the nation’s Radio and Television stations. Both the Bill of Rights and the Communications Act specifically say so. Gomez went on to make another key point, that the ownership cap on local television stations was actually codified in a statute passed by Congress. She raises the question of whether the FCC can even change the cap if it wanted to.
Thus, it may well be Congress that will have the last word on whether Nexstar, or anyone else, can own that many stations. And not “the Censorship Czar."
Probably means a lot more lobbying to come from the NAB and its members. That would quite possibly include some donations to be made (via "political action committees”) to the campaigns of influential members of Congress up for re-election in the 2026 midterms. Of course, some of that money might then be used to buy advertising time for political ads, some of which might air over those local radio and TV stations that just might have been hoping for those pesky ownership rules to be “delete, delete, deleted."
That’s assuming a lot of “mights", we know, including whether or not the Federal Government might still be open for business after a threatened government shutdown at midnight tonight.
Another reason to stay tuned. Just to see what happens next.
We were all set to start our weekend a little early and were searching for our trusty blender to whip up some libations when the news alert popped up from The Hollywood Reporter:
We just didn’t see a way that the leadership of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is headquartered in Cockeysville, Maryland, could realistically hope to holdout for too long after Disney had decided to return “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to the network this past Tuesday night. As we noted at the beginning of the week, as the nation’s largest operator of local ABC stations, the contracts that each Sinclair station has with ABC (and parent company Disney) didn’t give them a whole lot of options.
And while we thought Kimmel’s on-air apology certainly appeared to be genuine and heartfelt, it was clear from the rest of his monologue and the episodes that have followed this week that he wasn’t about to donate to the murdered Charlie Kirk’s organization, “Turning Point USA” as Sinclair had demanded as a condition before they would return Kimmel to their stations.
But in their statement today, Sinclair made no mention of any donation, stating:
"Our objective throughout this process has been to ensure that programming remains accurate and engaging for the widest possible audience. We take seriously our responsibility as local broadcasters to provide programming that serves the interests of our communities, while also honoring our obligations to air national network programming."
Yeah, that sounds like the “obligations” involved far outweighed the “objective,” no matter how they saw their “responsibility."
But in a later paragraph, the folks at SBG seem to say “it wasn’t for lack of trying"
"In our ongoing and constructive discussions with ABC, Sinclair proposed measures to strengthen accountability, viewer feedback, and community dialogue, including a network-wide independent ombudsman. These proposals were suggested as collaborative efforts between the ABC affiliates and the ABC network. While ABC and Disney have not yet adopted these measures, and Sinclair respects their right to make those decisions under our network affiliate agreements, we believe such measures could strengthen trust and accountability."
To us, that sounds like the folks at Disney/ABC said something along the lines of “Thanks for those suggestions, we’ll take them under advisement for when hell freezes over."
And then there is a key paragraph to appease anyone who might think that they did all this because of what anyone in the federal government might have had to say:
"Our decision to preempt this program was independent of any government interaction or influence. Free speech provides broadcasters with the right to exercise judgment as to the content on their local stations. While we understand that not everyone will agree with our decisions about programming, it is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content."
Well, alrighty then. That seems like a very solid denial of any outside influence on your decision-making, then or now. Nice to work in that first amendment callback, which has the whole veneer of nobility just wrapped around this whole episode.
Frankly, we were hoping to see a reference to “truth, justice, and the American way” worked in there, but that should really be reserved for superheroes.
As we have pointed out here, the fact is that Sinclair didn’t have any immediate major matters before the FCC to worry about. This all might be a “clearing of the decks” before some deal in the works is announced that will require the blessing of FCC Chair Brendan Carr, doing his best impersonation of Marlon Brando from “The Godfather.” We certainly won’t be surprised if that turns out to be the case here.
UPDATE: After we originally published this column, Nexstar followed Sinclair’s lead and announced they too were returning “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to their ABC stations.
Even though the second-largest operator of ABC affiliates took a little longer to arrive at their decision— it was only because they too were exercising their first amendment rights to broadcast whatever they want—or not, as the case might have been. Apparently, they concluded that their little 6-plus billion dollar deal to acquire rival TEGNA, isn’t really that much at risk (at least for the moment) of getting approved, because there was absolutely, positively zero outside influence on their decisions.
They may have considered the wisdom from the actor Scott Glenn, who said it so well playing Captain Bart Mancuso in “The Hunt for Red October:"
“The hard part about playing chicken is knowin’ when to flinch."
Ah, we found the blender! Here’s hoping you enjoy your weekend as much as we plan to.
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With Disney/ABC’s “courageous” decision to remember that there are guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Constitution, and end the suspension of "Jimmy Kimmel Live” this evening, the two large broadcast groups that said they wouldn’t carry the show are sticking with their decisions.
Unsurprisingly, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of ABC affiliates, quickly followed ABC’s announcement that Kimmel would be returning to the airwaves with their own version of “not on our airwaves, he won’t.” And just a short time ago, Nexstar Media confirmed that “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will not air on their ABC stations when it returns tonight at 11:35 pm (Eastern/Pacific).
Perry Sook and Company must have known that this was a possible outcome. And the fact that they have decided not to back down speaks volumes about the corner they have painted themselves into by heeding FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s not-so-subtle threats last week.
But the decision-making today at Nexstar’s corporate HQ was never going to be particularly easy. On the one hand, they could stick to their “principled” decision, which would keep Jimmy Kimmel from offending the delicate sensibilities of their local audiences in places like Nashville, Salt Lake City, New Haven, and New Orleans, where some of their ABC stations are based.
Or they could have followed ABC’s lead and allowed Kimmel back on the air tonight. Then they would have faced the potential wrath of “Godfather” Carr, who would follow through on his threat to “do things the hard way” and take his sweet time in allowing and approving the proposed acquisition of group owner TEGNA by Nexstar for 6-plus billion dollars.
Because the last thing that Perry Sook wanted was to fall into the same bureaucratic trap that Standard General’s Soo Kim found himself in when his Standard General tried to take over TEGNA, an 8-plus billion dollar deal that collapsed just over two years ago. To add insult to injury, Standard General also had to pay TEGNA $136 million in termination fees to exit the agreement.
That deal also didn’t require the FCC to make a significant change in lifting the 39% cap rule, which prevents any one owner from controlling local television stations that reach over 39% of the country’s television viewers. Of course, that rule is mostly a joke now, as large groups like Nexstar and Sinclair have gotten around it for years by having so-called “sidecar” companies own the stations that would put the main company over the cap. Then the friendly “sidecar” owners sign agreements turning over the operation of their stations back to the larger group owners.
This explains why there are companies that own local TV stations, such as White Knight Broadcasting, Deerfield Media, Cunningham Broadcasting, and Howard Stirk Holdings, among others. And why they all happen to have either “shared services arrangements” (SSAs) or “joint services arrangements” (JSAs) with the larger group owners, who would be well over the 39% cap if they owned the additional stations.
Even crazier, sometimes these “sidecar” stations are in the same markets as the larger company’s stations, which also provides a way to skirt the FCC’s rules that prevent one owner from having two of the “big four” network affiliates (ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC) in the same city. The ever-vigilant FCC has looked the other way on these convenient arrangements for years—under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
But the current administration has been championing deregulation in nearly every aspect of the federal government, including at the FCC. Carr has been dangling the prospect of eliminating the ownership cap for months now. It had been widely expected that some action would take place on proposed deregulation moves as soon as the FCC’s upcoming public meeting on September 30th.
One might wonder if Nexstar had decided to return Kimmel to the airwaves, that “something unfortunate might happen” and that deregulation could perhaps “slip off the meeting agenda.” (It really helps if you read that last sentence with your best impression of Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, or our personal favorite, the late James Gandolfini.)
Speaking of would-be “tough guys,” the leadership at Sinclair Broadcast Group wasted no time in coming out a couple of hours after Disney CEO Bob Iger found his spine on Monday, making it clear that they would not be carrying the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on any of its ABC stations. That would include their ABC affiliate in the nation’s capital, WJLA-TV on Channel 7, the station that touts itself as "On Your Side.”
That will prevent anyone in Washington from having to endure watching Jimmy Kimmel, including the FCC Chairman or the Commander-in-Chief.
After all, SBG had said that it wouldn’t air Kimmel until he both apologized for his original monologue about the assassin of Charlie Kirk and made a donation to Kirk’s nonprofit (though very political) organization, Turning Point USA.
While we expect that Kimmel will provide some mea culpa in his return about his original statement that triggered the backlash that led to Disney’s decision to take him off the air, we’d be shocked if he ever signs a check, as Sinclair is demanding.
Sinclair is in a far less vulnerable position with the FCC. At least, at the moment. It has been slowly buying up the stations owned by its “sidecar” partners, in the belief that the deregulation-minded FCC will allow them to own those stations in “the very near future.” But those sales still need FCC approval because they involve the transfer of broadcast licenses.
However, recent developments may change the TV ownership landscape once again. And that takes us to Miami.
Just last month, the ABC affiliation moved in Miami. It went from its longtime home of WPLG, known as Local 10 in South Florida, to the new ABC Miami. ABC Miami is now broadcast on over-the-air channel 7.2, which is a digital subchannel of WSVN, the Sunbeam Television-owned FOX affiliate in South Florida. (The station is also seen on low-power Channel 18, WDFL-LD, which gave ABC Miami carriage on local cable systems. Sunbeam is leasing WDFL for this purpose.)
What all this means is that any one station could follow the ABC deal with Sunbeam to create "ABC Miami", and carry two network signals on its digital channels. What makes this interesting is that if Sinclair and Nexstar continue to keep “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air, each night they do so could be considered a “pre-emption” of the network programming. In recent years, network affiliation contracts have tightened the number of times an affiliate station can “pre-empt” the network without incurring some penalty, including potentially losing the affiliation. So, each night that ABC puts an episode of Kimmel on the network feed and a station chooses not to carry it, they risk violating their network contract. (Note that there are usually exceptions to this pre-emption language for breaking news coverage and the like.)
Not that long ago, when a local station chose not to carry a network program, the network could offer it to another station in the market. This was why, occasionally, if an affiliate didn’t carry a network show, it might appear on another TV station in the market. Now, however, it is not out of the question that if WJLA pre-empts “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for more than a couple of days, they would have exceeded their allowed number of network pre-emptions permitted in their contract, and Disney/ABC could decide to put the show on another station in DC.
Or, if things get really contentious, Disney/ABC could even move their entire network to another station—or one of their digital subchannels. It’s probably unlikely that NBC or FOX would make a home for a new “ABC Washington” on their owned stations on Channel 4 or 5 there.
But just up the dial is Channel 9, WUSA, the CBS affiliate that TEGNA owns. TEGNA never publicly threatened not to carry Jimmy Kimmel, and it owns several major ABC affiliates. Does anyone think that they would take a call in TEGNA’s nearby Virginia headquarters, to discuss the possibility of having a new “ABC Washington” on, say (and we’re just speculating here) maybe a Channel 9.2?
Well, this situation could get even more interesting. We’d tell you to stay tuned, except we don’t know where to tell you to tune in.
Variety.com reports that Disney/ABC will return ”Jimmy Kimmel Live” to its regular time slot of 11:35pm Eastern tomorrow night (Tuesday, September 23rd.) Disney’s statement says, as quoted by Variety, “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
No immediate word on whether Nexstar or Sinclair’s ABC affiliates will be carrying the show, though some people have speculated that the reason Sinclair did not air its promised tribute to Charlie Kirk last Friday night over those ABC stations was because of some potential contract issues with ABC over the pre-emption. The tribute was distributed via YouTube instead.
As details emerge, we will be back with more analysis of what it means and whether our previous column today, “The is the Fate of the Network” was prescient or not…
Our title is the quote that former ABC Daytime executive Brian Frons gave to the industry publication The Wrap about the predicament that Disney/ABC faces with the future of Jimmy Kimmel’s suspended late-night talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live."
And we think he is understating it a bit.
Will the ABC television network go out of business if it knuckles under to pressure from the FCC and some of its own affiliates? Unlikely. Will there be a fatal backlash if ABC brings back Kimmel in the days to come—and he promises to be on his “best behavior?” Probably not. (Though he probably wouldn’t.) Will things die down and get back to normal if ABC continues to remain silent? Absolutely not. Will a boycott of all things Disney gain momentum, leading to significant cancellations of Disney+, reduced attendance at the theme parks, or other economic impacts on the company’s bottom line? Improbable.
What do we think could be the most likely outcome of this sad chapter in broadcasting history?
The nature of the relationship between the broadcast networks and their affiliated stations will likely change, probably significantly—and forever.
A little history is appropriate at this moment. Networks have been around since the late 1920s, when they became the linkage between the nascent radio stations that were popping up across the nation. From KDKA’s first commercial broadcast in November of 1920 covering the returns of the election for President of the United States (which ironically enough was between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox. The latter lending his last name to the media company that still goes by it) through the rest of the decade, radio stations were being licensed and put on the air at a growing pace.
Initially, those stations all featured their own programming, generated locally from makeshift studios that saw a stream of performers, musicians, politicians, and even members of the public. The quality of the programs ranged from relatively professional and polished—to anything but. The American Telephone & Telegraph company (AT&T) created the first radio network, then called a “chain”, by linking together stations in the Northeastern U.S. using specially developed long-distance telephone lines. The chain was centered around AT&T’s flagship station in New York City, WEAF (which is now known as WFAN). The chain grew slowly, with only 26 stations connected by 1925.
At the same time, the Radio Corporation of America launched its own radio network, led by the company’s New York City station, WJZ (now WABC). The RCA network was considered inferior because AT&T would only lease lower-quality telegraph lines to the upstart competitor. In 1926, AT&T decided to leave the less profitable radio business to concentrate on its primary product, telephones. It would sell its radio network to RCA, which would form the National Broadcasting Company. NBC would turn the WEAF-based chain into the NBC Red Network and the WJZ-led chain into the NBC Blue Network.
With that, the network business was off and running.
The early history of the radio networks, as NBC would be joined by CBS, Mutual, ABC, and others, is well documented by Erik Barnouw’s impeccable three-volume history of broadcasting in the United States. The 2nd volume, titled “The Golden Web,” centers on the growth of radio and, in turn, the radio networks from the years 1933 to 1953. In the foreword of the book, Barnouw tackles the question: “What Is A Network?"
“In a way it is—strangely enough— almost nothing, a phantom. It is mainly a tissue of contracts by which a number of stations are linked in operation. The linkage has been done largely through leased telephone cables, which the entrepreneur, the “network,” does not own. Each of the stations so linked uses an air channel which is a public resource and which neither network nor station can own.” Barnouw continues with, “Thus networks as businesses would seem to rest on the flimsiest foundations. Yet they have become a major power center—having in an age of American hegemony, world-wide ramifications."
While you might find Barnouw’s language a little too stately, his points are still relevant in 2025. And it is the “tissue of contracts” that he refers to that is being tested in this moment, as the controversy of ABC’s decision to take Jimmy Kimmel’s weeknight program off the air has no good outcome in sight.
Putting aside for the moment the existential questions of government influence on free speech and a free press, there are the business concerns that stem from the apparent stalemate between ABC and its affiliated stations—at least those owned by the two large players in Nexstar Media and Sinclair Broadcast Group. Both of them announced that they would not air “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as long as the namesake host was in the host chair, at least until the network made some changes. While Nexstar was not specific on what changes it would require to return to carrying the program, Sinclair demanded publicly that Kimmel apologize and make a financial donation to “Turning Point USA,” the political organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk.
Because we live in a country that is sharply divided by ideology to the point of extremism on both sides, there are many strong opinions about what should happen next. And at the center of deciding is one CEO, who has been notable throughout his career in navigating his image-conscious company through tricky public relations crises.
It could be argued that this might be the trickiest moment that Bob Iger has ever faced.
And that’s because as we noted earlier, there is no path forward that does not displease some vital constituency, be it the creative community that Disney employs and contracts with to create all of its offerings, or the federal government, that licenses both the eight local television stations that ABC owns, as well as the nearly 250 stations that are affiliates of the ABC television network.
Not to mention the millions of customers of the many divisions of The Walt Disney Company empire. Including, of course, the Galactic Empire ruled by Emperor Palpatine in the “Star Wars” saga. We’re assuming that right about now, Mr. Iger wishes that he had some Jedi-like abilities to get out of this cliffhanger.
And even though this episode is about the relationship between ABC and its affiliates, in markets large and small, the reality is that the larger saga playing out will likely impact all of the broadcast networks in the months and years ahead. The apparent connection was quickly made to this year’s earlier dramas with Paramount-CBS, and their abrupt announcement of the final season for Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show.” The future for Comcast-NBC’s late-night offerings in “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” is uncertain at best, especially after the Commander-in-Chief called for them to be next on social media.
What the networks will offer in place of the current programming in the late time period is a significant question for the affiliates, especially when each of those stations hands over a considerable amount of the money it makes just for the “privilege” of carrying their network throughout each day. And they do so with the growing knowledge that if they don’t want to hand over more of their revenues in future contract negotiations, their “loyal partners” at each network will not hesitate to take their affiliation to another station in any local market. (Ask Atlanta’s WANF and Miami’s WPLG about how that might happen.)
Or what if the networks decide to skip having affiliates altogether and stream their offerings “direct to consumer(s)”? Given how the audience is moving, it isn’t that far-fetched an idea.
So yes, we await all of the week’s developments right along with you. And whether or not that “tissue” that author Barnouw referenced will survive the current mess, which certainly needs to be cleaned up.
And soon.
UPDATE: About an hour after we first published this column, Disney/ABC announced that it was returning “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from suspension beginning Tuesday night, September 23rd at its regular time. What follows that announcement will certainly be the subject of future coverage here on TVND.com
We’ll just leave this post from Michael Eisner below, so that if you hadn’t seen it yet, then you’ll know what we are talking about, because this actually carries more weight than anything we could possibly say about the situation.
Also, anyone else notice that Pittsburgh’s ABC affiliate, WTAE (owned by Hearst), apparently is not running the fill in programming for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” from the network, but is doing a one hour late newscast at 11pm, then airing their local show “4 The Record” at 12:05 am—and then finally rejoining the network for “Nightline” at 12:35am?
Let’s make our view clear right off the top. We have arrived at a fraught moment in our nearly 250-year experiment known as democracy.
We are in the wake of a terrible act of political violence. From what we know as of writing this, a lone gunman decided to take the life of an outspoken and controversial political figure as he was speaking on the campus of a Utah university last week. In the days that have followed, the rhetoric on nearly all points of the political spectrum has been supercharged by social media platforms that actually profit from a lack of civil discourse, antagonized by anonymous agitators and egged on by autonomous bots from hostile actors.
With little hard evidence or proof of any real substance, each side has accused the other of somehow being responsible for the single shot that ended Charlie Kirk’s life. And that act requires this simple declaration: no matter your opinion of the man’s words, he had the absolute right to express them, without fear or threat to his life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.
He had the same guarantee to that right as every Man, Woman, or Child in this country. The founders of this nation said so in The Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
There is absolutely no pretense that can be a justification in any way for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Nor is there one for the assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Both killings are equally heinous and should be resoundingly denounced by all. The perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of our justice system and subject to the maximum penalty if found guilty of those crimes.
Civilized people should not debate this. We can and should debate policy, big and small. We can challenge each other on ideas and beliefs. We can practice real citizenship, defending the rights of those with whom we disagree the most. Their equality requires the right to express their views, thoughts, and beliefs, even when they differ entirely from our own. But democracy demands that they defend our equal rights as well.
The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution spells this out rather clearly in the First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Freedom of Religion. Freedom to Worship. Freedom of Speech. Freedom of the Press. Freedom to Assemble and Protest in a peaceable manner.
Those things are bedrock to our democracy. No one person or the many elected to represent us can deny these rights. Our nation has fought wars over these rights, both on our own soil and that of other nations. Two of those wars were large enough to be called World Wars. Too many of those who have worn our country’s uniforms in military service have made the ultimate sacrifice to secure these rights.
Free Speech and a Free Press are two hallmarks of our democracy. Our founding fathers could not have conceived of the Internet. They couldn’t have conceived of “the media” much beyond the printing press back when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It would be nearly 100 years more before Edison made the electric light bulb practical. Then, 40 more years passed before the first commercial radio broadcast. And 20 more years before television.
Congress would constitute an agency to regulate the newly found airwaves "in the public interest, convenience, or necessity." Originally called the Federal Radio Commission, the Federal Communications Commission would succeed it under the Communications Act of 1934. The Commission’s purview has been expanded over the years to oversee all communications by radio, television, wire, internet, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cable across the United States.
But it is Broadcasting, the operation of the nation’s radio and television stations, where the FCC has unique authority. Because of the fundamental idea that the broadcast spectrum is a finite resource, the FCC licenses all radio and television stations. It has always required that broadcasters operate “in the public interest.” The process of obtaining and renewing a broadcasting license requires proof that a broadcaster demonstrates how their services meet the needs of the communities in which they operate.
Other than regulating content deemed to be obscene or unlawful in some manner, the FCC has typically not told broadcasters what content should be in the programs they air. Even the doctrine that required political balance in broadcast programming was removed in 1987, when the FCC determined that its own “fairness doctrine,” which had been in place since 1949, had “a chilling effect on free speech.” The FCC’s move came after Congress passed a bill to codify the fairness doctrine into federal law. President Ronald Reagan then vetoed the bill, calling it “antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment."
Fast forward to September 17th, 2025. The current chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, made this declaration on Fox News: “We at the FCC are going to force the public interest obligation. There are broadcasters out there that don’t like it, they can turn in their license in to the FCC,” Carr said. “But that’s our job. Again, we’re making some progress now.”
The progress that Carr is referring to is that earlier in the evening, the ABC television network announced it was suspending indefinitely the production and airing of its late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The network took the unprecedented step following growing criticism over this comment made by host Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night’s show: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it."
FCC Chairman Carr joined a backlash of growing criticism of Kimmel, primarily from the right, in an interview on Wednesday. That’s when he told podcaster Benny Johnson that Kimmel’s remarks were “a concerted effort to lie to the American people.” Carr went on to not so subtly threaten the nation’s broadcasters directly, stating, “these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”
Shortly after Carr’s remarks were released, the nation’s largest television station owner, Nexstar, told ABC that 32 of its stations, which are ABC affiliates, would be “preempting” Kimmel’s TV show for the foreseeable future.” As the taping for Wednesday night’s edition of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was about to get underway in Hollywood, CEO Bob Iger and Television head Dana Walden of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, made the decision to suspend the program, according to reporting from The New York Times.
Kimmel’s remarks were seen differently by Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic appointed commissioner on the FCC. She told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Wednesday night interview: “I saw the clip. He did not make any unfounded claims, but he did make a joke, one that others may even find crude, but that is neither illegal nor grounds for companies to capitulate to this administration in ways that violate the First Amendment,” Gomez went on to say, “This sets a dangerous new precedent, and companies must stand firm against any efforts to trade away First Amendment freedom.”
By later Wednesday evening, another large owner of ABC affiliates, Sinclair Broadcast Group, weighed in and said that it had told ABC before it announced it was suspending Kimmel’s show that it would also be preempting the program across its ABC-affiliated stations. Sinclair also said it planned to replace Kimmel’s program this Friday night with a one-hour tribute to the late Charlie Kirk.
We couldn’t help but remember when Sinclair pre-empted a special edition of ABC’s “Nightline” back in 2004. The Nightline special called “The Fallen” featured host Ted Koppel reading the names of the 700-plus U.S. servicemen and women who had died in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sinclair said at the time that the program “appears to be motivated by a political agenda to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.” History would note that the primary motivation for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to disarm Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, of “weapons of mass destruction.”
A reminder that no such weapons were ever located.
It should be noted that both Nexstar and Sinclair have business reasons to heed the intent of the comments made by FCC Chairman Carr. Nexstar will likely need FCC approval to acquire major broadcast group owner Tegna, announcing its intention to do so just one day after a news report stated that Sinclair was proposing its own merger with Tegna. Either deal would be worth billions of dollars, and the FCC's most recent experience in “slow walking” the Paramount-Skydance deal shows that the commission can make it significantly more challenging to get a deal done in the media world now.
At the end of the day, we certainly acknowledge that broadcasters have the authority to determine what they air on their stations. They alone are responsible for the federal licenses that allow them to be in business. Networks are also free to decide on what they produce and distribute to their affiliates. These are businesses that have the right to operate as they see fit. But audiences also have the right to watch what they want to, and last we checked, every screen comes with both a way to change what is shown on it--or even to turn it off, if so desired by the viewer.
History will be the ultimate judge of the wisdom of the decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air, for however long that might be. But ABC’s decision doesn’t mean that he will be off for good. Given the state of the media universe and the choices available to viewers, it is likely that there will be ways for him and competitor Stephen Colbert to appear on other platforms after their network contracts end.
Because these days, A.J. Libeling’s 1960 quote "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” has a very different context, especially in a world where almost anyone can have their own TV show that can be seen by millions.
The FCC Chairman told Sean Hannity on Fox News Wednesday night that “This is an important turning point."
We suspect that he has no idea just how big of one it might actually turn out to be.
Robert Redford, the prodigious award-winning actor, director, and producer, passed away earlier today. Redford’s long Hollywood career, which developed initially as a television actor in the beginning of the 1960s, would lead to him breaking into movies with 1965’s “Inside Daisy Clover” and continuing as a leading man until 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.” He would also work behind the camera, beginning in 1980, to become a renowned director with his debut with the film “Ordinary People” for which he won the Oscar for Best Director in 1981. Redford was also a prolific producer and, along the way, found time to champion the development of the Sundance Film Festival.
The obvious place to start is the movie adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “All The President’s Men,” which chronicled their reporting of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Redford would play Woodward, who had the contact with the anonymous source called “Deep Throat” who fed the reporters, and ultimately The Washington Post, the missing pieces of the story of the cover-up of the break-in of the offices of the Democratic National Committee. These key tips from the source who revealed himself in 2005 were from Mark Felt, a Deputy Director of the FBI, who helped unravel the largest story of a political cover-up in the nation’s history.
At least it was at the time.
Redford’s leading man looks were questioned as being perhaps “too pretty” to portray Woodward, playing opposite a Dustin Hoffman who bore a bit more of a resemblance to reporter Carl Bernstein. But Redford delivered a strong performance in the role, even though neither he nor Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar. Their co-star, Jason Robards, was nominated and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his razor-sharp portrayal of Post publisher Ben Bradlee.
For our money, “All the President’s Men” is one of the best movies about the work of journalism, and a pretty dramatic behind-the-scenes look at the process that uncovered the conspiracy that led to the end of the 37th presidency. As with many movies, the original book provides a more detailed account of the story behind the story, while the film remains largely faithful to the narrative of the reporting duo.
For his part, Redford stated that he felt like the film was about more than Richard Nixon’s downfall. The actor said he was drawn to the movie because “It’s about investigative journalism and hard work.” Redford noted on more than one occasion that he believed the film was necessary to remind people of "the power and importance of the press. In 2006, on the thirtieth anniversary of the film, Redford told NBC’s “The Today Show” that “Accuracy was the big, big objective.” Many people were unaware that Redford himself had initially approached Woodward and Bernstein while they were still writing the book about the idea of turning their story into a movie. He recounted that the prevailing opinion in Hollywood was that “No one cares, and no one wants to see this."
Redford would become a co-producer of the seminal film and felt that its message was still relevant to the state of politics some three decades later. He believed similar developments were happening during the administration of President George W. Bush, telling “The Today Show” in 2006: “Watergate is happening every day, it’s pretty transparent. It’s not something you have to reach for or exaggerate."
The intersection of the movies and journalism would come again in another Redford movie, some 20 years after “All The President’s Men."
In 1996’s “Up Close and Personal,” Robert Redford plays a local television news director who discovers and mentors an attractive and eager young reporter played by Michele Pfeiffer., The movie follows her professional rise through the business of TV news. But this being Hollywood and all, Redford and Pfeiffer’s characters fall for each other, and their relationship is the thread that ties the acts of the movie together. The portrayal of the drama when Pfeiffer’s character unseats the experienced female news anchor played by Stockard Channing may be the best scenes in this soapy cinematic look at the “rough and tumble” world of TV news.
But the source material for “Up Close and Personal” was, in part, based on the story of real-life TV news anchor Jessica Savitch. Savitch’s life was chronicled in the 1998 book by Alanna Nash titled “Golden Girl.” The book detailed the meteoric career of Savitch, who went from an administrative assistant at New York’s WCBS Radio in 1969 to getting a first job as a TV reporter in Houston at KHOU. She would then move to Philadelphia’s KYW as a reporter and weekend anchor in 1972, while working for news director Jim Topping. Savitch would move into the main weekday anchor role opposite co-anchor Mort Crim, and she became a major celebrity in Philly. She would join NBC News in 1977, where she would later become the second woman (after Catherine Mackin) to anchor a national network newscast.
If Pfeiffer’s character in the movie was based somewhat on the real-life story of Jessica Savitch, then Redford’s TV news director character was likely based in part on the real-life character of Ron Kershaw. A later book about Savitch from 1989, titled “Almost Golden - Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News” by Gwenda Blair, details the intermittent and often stormy relationship between Savitch and Kershaw over the years. Kershaw was a local television news director in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City’s WNBC-TV, where he is credited with turning that station’s fortunes around and creating the breezy newscast titled “Live At Five."
Kershaw died from pancreatic and liver cancer in 1988. Savitch died earlier in 1983, in a bizarre auto accident with Martin Fishbein, a VP with the New York Post, whom she had been briefly dating. The car, driven by Fishbein, took a wrong turn in a storm and landed in a canal. Both Fishbein and Savitch drowned in the vehicle, which went off the road into the water, then sank into heavy mud and was filled with water.
Needless to say, the ending of the movie “Up Close and Personal” is quite different, though still melodramatic, as befitting a Hollywood movie.
Update: After we originally published this column, one of our favorite colleagues and a loyal reader of “The Topline” pointed out a third intersection of Redford’s acting career with journalism that we totally forgot about. Redford played the role of CBS Anchor Dan Rather in the 2015 movie “Truth.” Co-starring with Cate Blanchett as Rather’s real-life producer Mary Mapes, the film explores the events surrounding Rather’s controversial report for “60 Minutes II” in 2004, questioning the circumstances of President George W. Bush’s military service in the National Guard. The massive criticism of the reporting ultimately ended the careers of both Rather and Mapes. She resigned shortly after the report aired. Rather retired two months later. Mapes wrote the book on which the movie was based, and both she and Rather participated in the production of the film. For its part, CBS did not cooperate with the production and put out a statement at the time the movie was released that it was “astounding how little truth there is in “Truth.”
We regret missing this third film with Redford as a journalist, and you can be sure we’ll be watching it in the coming days.
Of course, by 2015, Robert Redford had already made a long string of major motion picture classics such as 1973’s “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, 1975’s spy thriller, “Three Days of the Condor”, 1984’s ode to baseball, “The Natural” and 1985’s stunning “Out of Africa” just to name a few titles from Redford’s extensive filmography. His two pairings with the legendary Paul Newman, notably in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” and 1973’s “The Sting,” are perhaps two of the movies he will be most remembered for. The latter role in “The Sting” earned him the Oscar for Best Actor.
But Redford’s three dramatic turns as a newsman will be personal favorites of ours. If you haven’t seen either lately (or at all), we’d suggest you add them to your watch list for a viewing in the near future.
And as any good obituary should end, Robert Redford died early today at his home in Utah of unspecified causes. He was 89 years old.
Anyone who has worked in television for more than a minute or so learns that there are three sets of numbers that you have to care about.
The first are the ones that appear on your paycheck. Working in television is a job, and while your internal motivation for choosing this business may vary, we are pretty sure the main reason is that, like anyone, you would like to be paid for your work. (Last time we checked, we didn’t find that anyone was being forced to work in this industry.)
And as a person working in television, the second set of numbers that you should care about are the ones that you likely will never see. Those numbers would be the ones on the profit and loss statements that your employer generates each month, quarter, and year. Contrary to the belief of some, television is still a for-profit business. If your employer isn’t making any money — and continues for a period of time — it is probable that you won’t be making money from them at some point in the future.
Finally, the third set of numbers that you should care about are what are usually referred to as simply “The numbers.” And those digits would be the ratings. More formally known as the measurement of the audience watching your station (or show, group, or network, as the particular case may be). The ratings are, simply put, the report card on what is shown on television at any given time. That report card can be issued as soon as the next day, or in some cases at the end of the month, or the end of a season—depending on the time period being measured.
Why ratings matter is that they determine how much your outlet can charge advertisers to run commercials on the station, so they directly determine a station’s bottom line numbers (the second set mentioned above), which in turn directly impacts the money your outlet has available to put into your paycheck (the first set we previously mentioned).
Much like your report card back in school, learning the ratings is how we all measure who is winning and who is losing. And not unlike the marks you received on your school report card, the numbers in the ratings can determine the future of your employer and ultimately, you.
Ratings come from two companies that exist in the industry. The proverbial 800-pound gorilla is, of course, Nielsen, a company that traces its roots back to radio in 1923. Originally known as The A.C. Nielsen Company, it has been the primary provider of ratings, first for radio, and later for television, over the course of its 100-plus-year history. The company has evolved from a methodology of asking a statistically representative number of people in the audience (known as “The Sample”) to record their viewing over a period of time, through the use of technologies that have evolved over the years. In the beginning, Nielsen asked viewers to keep a written record of what they watched (a “diary” of their viewing) over a period of time. Over the years, the same kind of discrepancies found in the testimony of “eyewitnesses” to events, led the company to develop technoloiges like the “Audiometer” and more recently the “People Meter” to make the process of accurately recording what viewers in the sample watched an automatic one that didn’t rely on anyone’s memory or their diligence in writing and mailing a paper record.
In 1949, Nielsen got a competitor in providing television ratings information. The new company was called the American Research Bureau or ARB. It would later change its name to Arbitron. In the mid-1960s, Arbitron began focusing exclusively on providing radio ratings, in part because of the larger number of radio markets and station clientele available. Some would suggest it was also motivated by the dominance of Nielsen in providing ratings for television. Ultimately, Arbitron would leave the television ratings business and focus only on radio. In 2013, it was acquired by Nielsen and is now known as “Nielsen Audio,” operating as the company’s radio ratings division.
It wouldn’t be until 1999 that another competitor to Nielsen would emerge. That year, a company called “Comscore” would begin using the still-emerging digital technologies around the internet to provide audience measurements for both digital and TV programming. It now bills itself as a “global provider of digital intelligence and cross-platform measurement.”
Today, the business of providing audience measurement and ultimately “ratings” is a case of a small company (Comscore) competing against the dominance of the larger and older player in the space, that being Nielsen.
And yet, for as dependent as the television industry is on the measurement of the number and demographic breakdown of the viewers, the reality is that no available measurement and reporting of those viewers is without flaws and serious questions, which has left an uneasy relationship between those who produce and distribute television shows and those who make and distribute the audience data that drives most every other part of the television industry.
So when that most important of television programming, a National Football League game, recently appeared for the first time on the 800-pound gorilla of the streaming space (Google’s YouTube), the most asked question was, of course, “How many people watched?” Thus, the ratings for that particular television program would immediately be seen as a report card on streaming’s ability to deliver a football audience that was once the exclusive domain of traditional broadcast and cable television.
And Nielsen dutifully delivered the answer. YouTube had delivered its inaugural football contest to approximately 17 million viewers.
But a week after the game, YouTube said that the audience estimate was being adjusted upwards by about 2 million viewers, making the total nearly 20 million viewers.
Much like in a football game, when the replay officials change the original call, the folks in charge of analyzing the data at both Fox Sports and Disney threw their own red flag to challenge the ratings of the YouTube-delivered game. They claim that Nielsen created a special version of the method to measure the audience.
This is not the first time Nielsen has been accused of something similar to the notion that George H.W. Bush used when he described Ronald Reagan's economic strategies back in 1980 as “voodoo economics.” (That term would later be part of a hilarious scene in the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” when it was part of a lesson being taught by a high school teacher brilliantly played by actor Ben Stein.)
The “voodoo economics” of television ratings centers around just how a relatively small sample of television viewers can accurately reflect the actual behavior of millions of television viewers. And given the vital importance of the ratings to the television industry—especially at this crucial juncture when the very nature of how people are (or aren’t) watching television is fundamentally changing—the trust in the accuracy of those ratings is no small thing.
For years, those of us who have worked in television have had our work judged by “the numbers” which television networks, stations, advertising agencies, and others spend a small fortune to obtain. In recent years, some local broadcasters have pushed back on Nielsen’s near monopoly in the ratings game, with some going so far as to drop the service for a period of time and either use Comscore’s ratings (which have their own potential shortcomings) or operate with no ratings numbers at all.
The various questions about the accuracy of Nielsen ratings have usually been swept aside by the assertions of the industry’s association that accredits audience measurement services, known as the Media Rating Council. This non-profit group oversees the standards and independent auditing of the ratings services, namely Nielsen and Comscore, along with newer digital upstarts such as VideoAmp and iSpotTV. The MRC gives ratings services their accreditation credential, which is meant to assure users of the accuracy of the ratings data provided by a given service.
In 2021, the MRC found that Nielsen undercounted viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic and took the dramatic step of temporarily suspending Nielsen accreditation. Just this past January, the MRC gave its approval to Nielsen for their new method of analyzing the data of audience viewing from “45 million households and 75 million devices.” This new measurement is known as “Big Data + Panel TV.” Nielsen’s CEO dutifully said at the time: “I believe Big Data+Panel gives the industry the most accurate measurement in the history of TV.”
Well, we’re certainly glad that it has only taken 75 years to get to this point.
You know, where the entire business is based on numbers that somehow still feel like…(remembering Ben Stein’s monotone voice from the movie now) “Anyone…anyone? Something... D-O-O economics?"
The dust-up over the Nielsen ratings for the inaugural NFL game on YouTube will likely settle down as these things always seem to do. After all, the co-dependency relationship between Television and the Ratings isn’t about to end, because each has too much invested in the other. And, as is often the case in such situations, even with the current reality which includes technology that can identify whatever you are doing online and deliver you an ad for that thing you were first thinking about just a few minutes ago, the TV ratings are still, as one station executive said to us years ago, "pretty much the only game in town."
We’ve been talking with some people over the past few weeks about our nagging feeling that the new owners of Paramount, David Ellison’s Skydance Media, which is now trading under the new stock ticker PSKY, could have aspirations to do more than just “right-sizing” CBS News and Stations, which is the division of Paramount that operates the Network News division and the Owned Stations group. (That interesting divisional structure was created under the previous regime of Wendy McMahon.)
And we said, out loud, and more than once, that we could see CBS News being a potential acquirer of the now semi-struggling CNN. It makes perfect sense, really. CBS is still a major news network here in the United States, despite whatever is going on with the leadership of the newsroom. And CNN is still a major international force in news for the rest of the world. Combining the two could create a global news giant to rival the BBC in many ways.
What we didn’t think was that PSKY would make a bid to swallow the whole Warner Bros. Discovery empire. But this afternoon, the Wall Street Journal reports that this is precisely what might happen. (Hat tip to TheDesk.Net for sending us the first alert on the story.)
Though details are slim in the early story, it seems based on substantial reporting that Paramount is preparing an all-cash offer that could lead to the putting of two major movie studios (Warner Brothers and Paramount) under the same roof, along with a broad spread of television brands from CBS and CNN to MTV and Discovery. Not to mention two significant digital streamers of Paramount+ and HBO Max, along with the free streamer PlutoTV.
It is a potentially massive media deal that, if true, would require significant government approval from the Federal Trade Commission. But, curiously, there would be no obvious clearance needed from the Federal Communications Commission, because Warner Bros. Discovery has no broadcast properties and therefore no license transfers that would need to be approved by Brendan Carr and company. (Not that they might not have something to say about the deal just the same.)
So now we are thinking, is there even more on PSKY’s potential list of acquisitions?
After all, David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, became the richest man in the world yesterday with a worth of about $393 billion.
And we hate to use the clichéd tag here, but this is certainly a breaking story and we’ll have more for you... as it develops.
As has been the case for many years now, yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook welcomed everyone to the company’s uber-futuristic headquarters in Cupertino, California, to get the first look at the latest and greatest versions of what the company has to offer.
If you haven’t seen it, it is worth the time to watch. Here is a link you can click to do so. (And if you are really busy and pressed for time, the folks at The Verge have a streamlined version of all the key highlights available here.)
You have to hand it to the folks at Apple. The annual introduction of the new iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods is a significant enough event that it gets covered as a major news story. And not just in the tech-oriented press. The instant impressions of the strengths and weaknesses of the new devices were being reported on as closely as the latest economic figures to come out of Washington.
And with good reason. No matter what the initial reviews might say, the fact is that Apple will likely sell millions of these devices around the world. The products are a global commodity and an economic engine of fundamental importance. They compete with similar offerings from Google and Samsung, as well as some Chinese electronics giants that you likely have never heard of. Even where iPhones are assembled has now become a significant concern, both for economic and political reasons.
Like it or not, the iPhone is a cultural touchstone. And it has been since it was first introduced by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on a darkened San Francisco stage some 18 years ago. What used to be a live, in-person presentation, where things could and occasionally did go wrong, became a recorded and highly polished video program during the COVID years. Apple has seen fit to keep it that way ever since. Being amongst those in the live audience back in the Jobs era, we have to admit that we miss watching the live presentations that were called “keynote” events back in the day. The software that Apple developed to support these big-screen tech demos lives on in Apple’s iPhones and Mac computers to this day, under the same name. Search for it on your device—or its App Store—and see.
So just what the heck do we mean when we say that local TV newscasts can learn from the annual event that rolls out the latest and greatest iPhones?
Consider the similarities between the two. Regardless of the time allotted (in Apple’s case, an hour and eleven minutes total), the program will be decently produced and fast-moving, featuring numerous talking heads delivering information that has likely appeared in many other places before being presented in this particular program. While mildly interesting, it won’t necessarily be earth-shattering or groundbreaking enough for most people to stop and take notice of it while it is happening, because, to put it plainly, it is just too predictable in its format—and in the information it is intended to deliver.
Since 2020, the format of Apple events has become formulaic. They are visually impressive to be sure, using all the video wizardry of a Hollywood movie. And sure, your local TV newscast might not feature all of the visual flash that the iPhone maker deploys, but most local TV newscasts deploy a wide range of technical wizardry. From giant video walls to now deploying augmented reality set-ups to feature meteorologists walking across 3D maps, there is no lack of “eye candy” in the daily recaps of news, weather, and sports on your local station.
Not if they are trying to stay competitive and attract as much of the ever-vanishing audience as possible.
There is also the extensive use of reasonably attractive and pleasant people who will be seen on-camera, delivering information ranging from an analysis of various specific details to merely cheerleading over how significant any particular development might be. There will be scenes from multiple locations, accompanied by busy on-screen displays of information that appear to convey a wealth of information. This will be delivered in a quickly paced package and wrapped up with a quick “thank you for joining us” closing.
Then may come the only significant difference between an Apple event and a local TV newscast. The local news anchors will tell you that they will be back in about four hours or so, while we get no idea from Apple when there will be a new announcement on the latest and greatest technical wizardry they will put on sale.
We’d suggest that what both productions are missing now is precisely what used to make them essential to watch: Something truly new and interesting. Whether it was seeing the latest tech marvel or even just the presenters themselves, the Apple events had bits of wonder, some funny moments of humanity, and a bit of anticipation in each edition. The showman aspect that the late Steve Jobs brought to the stage was a significant draw, even as everyone saw his health decline over his later years.
His signature final flourish was to say offhandedly, “Oh, and there’s one more thing...” before springing some surprise on the audience. It could be a new product or even a musical performance from a significant name to wrap everything up. Compare that to yesterday’s event, where the introduction of an impossibly thin new iPhone, dubbed the iPhone Air, was just in the middle of the rundown of all the latest iPhone models. Watching this, we couldn’t help but think of the number of times we have seen a truly amazing story in the midst of a local TV newscast--delivered with the same kind of lack of special showcasing as if to say, “Yeah, we have got just another news story for you now."
And we wonder why the audience feels like they don’t really have to watch the news anymore.
Could it be that both Apple and the channel-whatever-newsteam have become far too predictable and far less interesting than they used to be, despite their visually impressive appearances? We’d suggest that is a question that deserves some serious consideration.
And forgive us, but yes, we do have "one more thing" here:
All of the reactions we have seen so far on the super-svelte "iPhone Air" have been pretty dismissive of the device. Not enough battery, cameras, screen, or anything else are in that thinner-than-a Hershey chocolate bar sliver of recycled titanium. Some reviewers going so far as to recommend that people should not buy this new model. To that, we’ll say that if the iPhone Air starts popping up in the hands of celebrities and influencers, as you know it will, then Apple will sell a bunch of them.
Because, as Wallace Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, once put it so elegantly, “You can never be too rich or too thin."
It was true in the 1930s, and it is still the case today.
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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?
