Fox Gets A Station in The Bay Area

[AKA]

Re: FOX WANTS A TV STATION IN THE SF BAY AREA

I know the standard practice the past several years for stations that lose their network affiliation has been to go news-heavy. Is it out of the question, though, for a former Fox affiliate to add two hours of syndicated programming in primetime and leave their news broadcasts as is?

It seems to me that sometimes it's just not in a station's overall best interests to saturate itself with news.

 

[michael hagerty]

Re: FOX WANTS A TV STATION IN THE SF BAY AREA

I know the standard practice the past several years for stations that lose their network affiliation has been to go news-heavy. Is it out of the question, though, for a former Fox affiliate to add two hours of syndicated programming in primetime and leave their news broadcasts as is?

It seems to me that sometimes it's just not in a station's overall best interests to saturate itself with news.

When you have an existing news operation, producing two more hours of news with the same staff is much less expensive than syndicated programming. Syndication is sold two to five years in advance, so you'd have to tread water with what you already own the rights to during that time or buy bottom-feeder stuff. And...once you get top-notch syndication, you're giving up 8 minutes of the hour to national spots the syndicator owns and then you have to get good enough ratings against everyone else's prime-time to make a profit selling the six minutes of commercials in that hour that belong to you.

If a syndicated hour costs $90,000 a week, you have to get $3,000 for every minute of advertising you control in that show just to break even. Tall order, even in San Francisco unless you're killing in the ratings against the other guys.

 

[LKellerIII]

Re: FOX WANTS A TV STATION IN THE SF BAY AREA

Fox would be wise to try and work a swap deal with Comcast/NBC Universal, Media General and Cox. KNTV is right in the backyard of the new 49'rs stadium. The Fox Sports Network and the NFL will all be players now that a deal has been reached and why would Fox want to buy KRON on Van Ness.

First of all the building is a fire trap and has sustained damage from the last big earthquake in 1989. Secondly sending a crew down there on the 101 freeway during peak hours is a holy nightmare.

The best way to go is to have a station swap with Fox taking 11, NBC on 4 and the My Network syndicated programming on either KTVU or KOFY.

Okay....

First of all, the proximity of the station to the stadium is irrelevant. That's what trucks are for. The network sends its own for the games. As for the local news coverage of the games, all the stations do that, and NBC11 probably enjoys the proximity.

Second, if KRON on Van Ness is an earthquake-damaged firetrap that FOX should avoid buying, why shouldn't NBC avoid it too? The peacock didn't spend the bucks it has to bring KNTV up to specs to hand it off to a competitor and start over with another fixer-upper.

Third, affiliation swaps are extremely disruptive and the effects can last 10 years or more.

Fourth, you're seriously suggesting that Cox would be better off losing FOX and picking up MyNetworkTV than they would getting 8 or 9 figures (a massive profit) selling KTVU to FOX?

Best move for FOX and Cox: FOX buys KTVU. No disruption, Cox gets a nice payday.

Second best move for FOX if it can't get a deal to buy KTVU: Buy KRON. It gets them a heritage station they don't have to tell people how to find and a good dial position on cable without having to buy their way up. Downsides: Disruption, promotion cost, cost of re-habbing KRON or building new studios. Very bad for Cox, though.

Past that, it gets ugly for everybody unless FOX skips San Francisco and settles for continuing affiliation with KTVU.

Hopefully, Cox is smart enough not to pull a "Young" - and would sell to Fox rather than go independent, or settle with the weak My Network TV.

"Fox 4" does alliterate nicely.

 

[michael hagerty]

Re: FOX WANTS A TV STATION IN THE SF BAY AREA

Fox would be wise to try and work a swap deal with Comcast/NBC Universal, Media General and Cox. KNTV is right in the backyard of the new 49'rs stadium. The Fox Sports Network and the NFL will all be players now that a deal has been reached and why would Fox want to buy KRON on Van Ness.

First of all the building is a fire trap and has sustained damage from the last big earthquake in 1989. Secondly sending a crew down there on the 101 freeway during peak hours is a holy nightmare.

The best way to go is to have a station swap with Fox taking 11, NBC on 4 and the My Network syndicated programming on either KTVU or KOFY.

Okay....

First of all, the proximity of the station to the stadium is irrelevant. That's what trucks are for. The network sends its own for the games. As for the local news coverage of the games, all the stations do that, and NBC11 probably enjoys the proximity.

Second, if KRON on Van Ness is an earthquake-damaged firetrap that FOX should avoid buying, why shouldn't NBC avoid it too? The peacock didn't spend the bucks it has to bring KNTV up to specs to hand it off to a competitor and start over with another fixer-upper.

Third, affiliation swaps are extremely disruptive and the effects can last 10 years or more.

Fourth, you're seriously suggesting that Cox would be better off losing FOX and picking up MyNetworkTV than they would getting 8 or 9 figures (a massive profit) selling KTVU to FOX?

Best move for FOX and Cox: FOX buys KTVU. No disruption, Cox gets a nice payday.

Second best move for FOX if it can't get a deal to buy KTVU: Buy KRON. It gets them a heritage station they don't have to tell people how to find and a good dial position on cable without having to buy their way up. Downsides: Disruption, promotion cost, cost of re-habbing KRON or building new studios. Very bad for Cox, though.

Past that, it gets ugly for everybody unless FOX skips San Francisco and settles for continuing affiliation with KTVU.

Hopefully, Cox is smart enough not to pull a "Young" - and would sell to Fox rather than go independent, or settle with the weak My Network TV.

"Fox 4" does alliterate nicely.

Every business should know when to take the money and run. Even with declining sale prices compared to 10 or 15 years ago, it'll still be a huge profit for Cox, which bought it for $12 million 50 years ago, and it's probably more than they'll ever be offered again.

 

[AKA]

When you have an existing news operation, producing two more hours of news with the same staff is much less expensive than syndicated programming. Syndication is sold two to five years in advance, so you'd have to tread water with what you already own the rights to during that time or buy bottom-feeder stuff. And...once you get top-notch syndication, you're giving up 8 minutes of the hour to national spots the syndicator owns and then you have to get good enough ratings against everyone else's prime-time to make a profit selling the six minutes of commercials in that hour that belong to you.

If a syndicated hour costs $90,000 a week, you have to get $3,000 for every minute of advertising you control in that show just to break even. Tall order, even in San Francisco unless you're killing in the ratings against the other guys.

That makes sense. Thanks for the education, Michael.

 

[timanny]

Fox had a station in St. Louis and they sold it. Where is this info coming from?

 

[ajc_trw]

KRON would be a good choice as "Fox 4" sounds right.

 

[1069_KIFR]

'4 fox'

 

[bpatrick]

KTVU would most likely identify itself as FOX 2; if Fox bought KRON it would
most likely identify as FOX 4. I can't think of any station that doesn't continue
to identify itself by its analog channel; in my area we have WFMY News 2, WGHP
FOX 8, WXII NewsChannel 12, and WXLV ABC 45; all of those channels were their
analog channels.

I'm also hearing that Fox is looking for an o&o in Seattle; KIRO/7 is a sister station
to KTVU, although I'm not sure it wants to go through another switch; it was a UPN
affiliate for two years before going back to CBS. KSTW/11 and KCPQ/13 might be
in play there, however, and KCPQ is already the Fox affiliate.

 

[News4BayArea]

What might happen is you will see:

Fox11 -
NBC4
MyNetwork 2 or My TV20

Fox may buy KRON or NBC may buy KTVU and that this is what you may end up with.

We are seeing a solid Comcast presence on KRON - Fox would like to be on 11 as they are in LA and we could see the My Network affiliation on 2. Another possibilty is you could see NBC KNTV on 4 and KRON MY 2 and KTVU jumping to 11 as Fox11 Bay Area.

These ofcourse are all just possibilities we really won't know the outcome of this until Media General, Cox, Comcast/NBC Universal and Fox working out what they may do.

 

[timanny]

Why would Fox want to be on 11 like LA? O&O uniformity was only done in the 50s, and seemingly only truly done by ABC, who have always had their O&O ABC7 in the Bay Area from day one.
If Fox buys 4 and trades it for 11 based on this logic, then CBS would swap KPIX to Cox for KTVU, or at least their frequencies. But what happens to 5? Do they go MyNet, or does CBS keep 5 for the CW like KTLA? But CBS doesn't own KTLA. So they trade 44 for KQED to have a KCAL equivalent? And there's no My13 available because 13 is Sacramento, so where does MyNet go?
Fox doesn't have to be 11 and NBC doesn't have to be 4. The proof is that in Chicago before 1953, that city's CBS station was on channel 4, while NBC had their O&O on channel 5, as they still do today. And NBC didn't trade for 4 either, CBS bought it outright because the station's owner merged with ABC, and it was ABC that had to be on 7 at the time. The FCC changed Chicago's 4 to 2 because they had to change Milwaukee's 3 to 4. CBS being on 2 in NY, LA, and Chicago was more of a coincidence.

 

[timanny]

Also, the ABC on 7 stipulation was specifically the mandate of original ABC owner Edward Noble. Leonard Goldenson, who was part of the company that merged with ABC and later led ABC to its peak, was furious that Noble sold the profitable channel 4 in favor of the unprofitable at the time channel 7.

 

[News4BayArea]

Again this may or may not happen just another possible scenario....we can only wait and see what transpires. Once the FCC approves the merger with Media General and New Young then we might see some changes.

 

[bpatrick]

In the late '40s there was a lot of talk that the federal government was going to
take Channels 2 through 6, leaving 7 as the first channel on the analog dial, meaning
the channel with the best reception. Ed Noble picked the five largest markets with
Channel 7: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit, and those
stations became the original ABC o&os.

CBS has been on Channel 2 in New York ever since the station signed on in 1941;
the Eye Network was on KTTV/11 Los Angeles until it bought Channel 2 from, IIRC,
Don Lee Broadcasting, in the early '50s. (The Ronald Colman movie, "Champagne
For Caesar," made in 1950, credits KTTV as the LA CBS station.) Ironically, one of
its former o&o markets, St. Louis, has Channel 2 (ABC, now Fox), but I think CBS
picked Channel 4 as an o&o there because it was then KMOX, and CBS had bought
the radio station in 1945, selling off WBT Charlotte and WJSV Washington, DC, to
get it.

 

[1069_KIFR]

All of this because FOX wants A San Francisco Owned Station? Time to steer this thread back, way back on track

 

[dougw9wi]

Channel 4 in St. Louis wasn't KMOX-TV when CBS bought it, and they couldn't have bought channel 2 at the time because channel 2 didn't yet exist.

Channel 4 went on the air as KWK-TV. CBS had won a permit for a new station on channel 11 there, but when KWK-TV became available they bought the existing station & transferred the channel 11 permit to someone else.

Channel 2 was not initially assigned to St. Louis. It was assigned to Springfield, Illinois. In the early 1950s the FCC decided to "deintermix" the Springfield market -- make it all UHF -- and reassign channel 2 to St. Louis. (that also made it possible to assign a second VHF channel to Terre Haute, Indiana)

But it took a few years to work through all the politics and to decide who would use channel 2 once it was in St. Louis. I would imagine CBS wasn't interested in waiting for that process to complete.

 

[1069_KIFR]

Why has this thread turned to St. Louis? Post on the St. Louis board. We are talking about the Bay Area and how FOX wants to own it own TV station.

 

[bringbackradio]

Every business should know when to take the money and run. Even with declining sale prices compared to 10 or 15 years ago, it'll still be a huge profit for Cox, which bought it for $12 million 50 years ago, and it's probably more than they'll ever be offered again.

Amazingly, when Cox picked up KTVU that time under the original name for its media division, Miami Valley Broadcasting, it was the only tv property that was not affiliated with any major network, not to mention its first independent. KTVU stood out as the only Fox affiliate under Cox not to change ownership unlike its former sister stations in Detroit, St Louis (which no longer run Fox) El Paso or Reno. We all know how Fox will stop at nothing to ensure it has an O&O in every single city with an NFC division NFL team to boost its finances, and KTVU is the last Fox affiliate to stay independent and run the NFC games.

To me, KTVU is to the West of the Mississippi what WSB in Atlanta is to the east of the Mississippi.

 

[nelsonincharlotte]

Amazingly, when Cox picked up KTVU that time under the original name for its media division, Miami Valley Broadcasting, it was the only tv property that was not affiliated with any major network, not to mention its first independent. KTVU stood out as the only Fox affiliate under Cox not to change ownership unlike its former sister stations in Detroit, St Louis (which no longer run Fox) El Paso or Reno. We all know how Fox will stop at nothing to ensure it has an O&O in every single city with an NFC division NFL team to boost its finances, and KTVU is the last Fox affiliate to stay independent and run the NFC games.

To me, KTVU is to the West of the Mississippi what WSB in Atlanta is to the east of the Mississippi.

Seattle, New Orleans and Green Bay are also only Fox affiliates.

 

[bringbackradio]

First, a station just having been sold rules nothing out. Broadcasters can flip properties just like flipping a house if the deal is compelling.

I'd expect FOX to try to make it worth Cox's while to sell KTVU. Much less disruption of viewing habits, which can come back to bite you.

As far as viewing habit disruption goes, I'll have to slightly disagree. If Fox were to land KTVU and convert it from affiliate to network owned, there would be major changes and adjustments that may include:
1) The iconic "laser 2" logo would be gone for the generic red and blue "Fox 2" logo
2) The news desk set would look like the other Fox O&Os, not to mention the graphics and bumpers
3) The news presentation would go slant and sensationalized, and that may not sit well with many longtime channel 2 viewers. It's the most liberal urban area there is, so that's alot to tango with.
4) If KICU is part of the sale too, MyTV would move there from KRON.
5) Fox would have KTVU and KICU pull syndicate shows from other stations to match the others with uniform daytime lineups. (Ex: taking Judge Judy from KPIX and Divorce Court from KBCW.)