To understand this, you gotta understand the weird rules that apply to TV ownership in markets like ours.
As I understand it, a TV company can only own two stations in a market like ours if one of the stations is outside the top 4 most-viewed channels. When Media General acquired LIN, they were not allowed to keep both WALA and WKRG and WFNA. WFNA is outside the top four, so it would stay no matter what, and MG elected to keep their own station (WKRG) and spin off WALA to Meredith. That explains why WKRG and WFNA are in a carriage dispute together: it must have been re-negotiated since the merger.
This merger stuff is about to get even more complex, by the way.
Media General has just announced they're acquiring Meredith Corporation, which means that once again WALA or WKRG will be a candidate to get spun off. I bet it all on WALA getting sold again!
In unrelated-but-related news, the new chief meteorologist, Chris Dunn, that replaced Derek Beasley at Local 15 is from KPHO 5 in Phoenix, and the word over in that market is he was let go because of this very same pending Meredith-Media General merger. So he managed to get picked up by the only other company in Mobile that isn't affected by the MG-Meredith merger, lol. Dunn also apparently won an online "best meteorologist in Phoenix" contest right before he was let go, so there's that. It seems the Meredith-Media General merger has caused something of a bloodbath in Phoenix as they find ways to combine personnel from their acquired properties in that market.
And a lot of people seem to be upset that Media General has been on this buying spree. I don't think there was any love lost for LIN going away because they are supposedly cheapskates, but Meredith Corporation seems to have a very high regard in the TV industry, and it's getting sucked up by one of the bottom tier players in Media General. The way TV people have commented online, they're second only to Sinclair in "suckiness".
