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CBS Leaving Ch 46

IM42A said:
Sounds like WANF is stuck with having to make lemonade out of lemons, the "lemons" in this case being the loss of their CBS affiliation.
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No one on this site is in the Gray HQ. Gray had leverage to keep CBS on 46 simply by the number of CBS affiliates they have nationwide. One can only guess Gray is trying to improve revenue in the long run. Local news most likely will out live the national networks. Why they kept CW over CBS is a great question.

CBS / Paramount was getting ready to get bought out so IMHO the last thing they need is the expense and distraction of starting an O & O affiliate and local news operation in Atlanta. Also for a few weeks there will be some confusion of the give or take 20% OTA viewers which can't help ratings.

I believe CBS was happy with 46 and the fact that Gray was spending serious money on their local news which leads into their national newscast. 69's ownership by CBS was smarter than a lot of folks thought.
 
secondchoice said:
No one on this site is in the Gray HQ. Gray had leverage to keep CBS on 46 simply by the number of CBS affiliates they have nationwide.
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I don't think anyone is claiming inside knowledge, but number of affiliates isn't the leverage it once was. CBS has disaffiliated properties owned by Media General and, I believe, Nexstar (in addition to Graham, which had fewer CBS affiliates). CBS wants what it wants, and it's not willing to negotiate much on reverse comp when it has somewhere else to go. The reality is also that only a handful of the CBS affiliates Gray owns would be able to switch to another network quickly. I'm sure ABC would love to get on KMOV in St. Louis, and NBC would love to be on KCTV in Kansas City, but Gray doesn't have many options elsewhere (and even those two might not be realistic options if KDNL's and KSHB's agreements with ABC and NBC don't expire shortly). Plus, threatening to move in Topeka and Wichita wouldn't even scare the Cowardly Lion, let alone CBS!

secondchoice said:
One can only guess Gray is trying to improve revenue in the long run. Local news most likely will out live the national networks. Why they kept CW over CBS is a great question.
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Reverse comp, the answer to why Gray kept the CW over CBS is reverse comp. CBS and Fox have reputations for demanding the highest reverse comp rates in the industry, and neither negotiates when it has willing buyers elsewhere. Ask WISH and WJXT how that went. Again, I wasn't in either of the boardrooms, but, if the past is any indication, CBS told Gray, "you'll give us what we want for Atlanta, or we're gone."
 
Kent said:
CBS told Gray, "you'll give us what we want for Atlanta, or we're gone."
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According to the GM (I assume that was him in the interview) at WPLG Miami, that is exactly what happened with them and ABC. WPLG did not feel the amount of money ABC demanded was worth it in the long term. So, they are now independent. Here are some thoughts:

  • Some of the streaming services do not carry independent stations. According to the WPLG website, they state they will be dropped by YouTube TV and other streamers.
  • WPLG will have to compete with WSVN which already has a very heavy news schedule since it carries FOX. Luckily WANF will not have that kind of competition.
  • WANF has the resources of Gray behind them. They have the scale of a newsroom that feeds not only Atlanta, but many other local Gray stations in the southeast. Gray is willing to spend.
  • WPLG has much better ratings for their news than WANF does. WANF has not really made a dent in their basement ratings even with all of the money and resources invested in the news.
I agree with the earlier post about all day news is going to be like CNN Headline news. It will divide the core audience over many time periods. This is going to be really interesting.
 
BarryATL said:
According to the GM (I assume that was him in the interview) at WPLG Miami, that is exactly what happened with them and ABC. WPLG did not feel the amount of money ABC demanded was worth it in the long term.
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That is what I heard, too. ABC doesn’t have the reputation of being as demanding for reverse comp as CBS and Fox, but, the times, they are a-changing. I can’t imagine the network business is easy either these days with cord cutters going up and advertising mired in a recession. The number of people getting their video entertainment exclusively on demand is going up rapidly.

BarryATL said:
So, they are now independent. Here are some thoughts:
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I believe that happens on Monday, but, yes, it's happening.

BarryATL said:
Some of the streaming services do not carry independent stations. According to the WPLG website, they state they will be dropped by YouTube TV and other streamers.
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Correct. The must-carry rule doesn’t apply to IP and streaming services. They don’t negotiate with the individual TV stations. They negotiate with the networks. Having no network means they don’t negotiate with you, and you can’t invoke must-carry. I may have mentioned it on this thread, but, in Indy, the CW, which is carried by WISH, had its own feed that didn’t include any WISH programming on YouTube TV. Our AirBNB didn’t have a TV; so, Kara and I used my YouTube TV app on my iPad. I didn’t check to see if WNDY was available. When we wanted the news at 10:00, our choices were WISH or WXIN (Fox 59). WISH used its own app. Not sure what WPLG or WANF will carry on their own apps, but WISH only carried news and locally produced programming. We had to watch the national CW feed for network programming.

BarryATL said:
  • WPLG will have to compete with WSVN which already has a very heavy news schedule since it carries FOX. Luckily WANF will not have that kind of competition.
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You're obviously more familiar with Atlanta than I am as you live there while I was last there in early 2001. I was always under the impression WAGA had a news heavy schedule. Is that no longer the case? Do you know how it compares to WSVN in terms of news programming?

BarryATL said:
  • WANF has the resources of Gray behind them. They have the scale of a newsroom that feeds not only Atlanta, but many other local Gray stations in the southeast. Gray is willing to spend.
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I agree Gray seems willing to spend. Not sure how much difference it will make. I usually hate to see businesses fail. So, I wish it well, but it's going to take a lot of effort.
 
Kent said:
You're obviously more familiar with Atlanta than I am as you live there while I was last there in early 2001. I was always under the impression WAGA had a news heavy schedule. Is that no longer the case? Do you know how it compares to WSVN in terms of news programming?
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Fox 5 in Atlanta does 12.5 hours of original news content daily and WSVN does 11.5 hours plus the 30 minute Deco Drive. WANF produces 11 hours of news daily including 3.5 hours of original content that is exclusively on Peachtree TV. No word if Gray will add any new hours to Atlanta News First on Independence Day August 16. But they dynamics are different in Atlanta because WANF has poor ratings compared to the Fox station which produces the most local news.
​
 
I looked at the listings this morning (Saturday) for 8/16 on TitanTV.com. WANF is listing the 8/16 day as if they have CBS all day. WUPA is only showing a few CBS shows. It curious.
 
IM42A said:
Beyond a certain point, non-stop news becomes "too much of muchness", a fortiori at a local level. Attempts to create localized clones of the old CNN Headline News end up running the same stories, or at least coverage of the same events, over and over. You're basically capturing viewers who seek out their news at different times, which has some internal logic to it, but is it viable?

Sounds like WANF is stuck with having to make lemonade out of lemons, the "lemons" in this case being the loss of their CBS affiliation.
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Very true. And let's not forget that the ratings for WANF's newscasts stink in the first place.

Despite the B.S. spin from Gray corporate, the loss of CBS programming will prove to be a very, very bad thing for WANF.

Then again I question why Gray didn't put ANF on 17 and kept CBS on 46. I know CBS / Paramount really didn't need the expense of starting a local news operation.
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CBS is doing this by choice. They evidently feel they need local news. Personally, I think it's a stupid move. TV news ratings have cratered over the past 15 to 20 years, and it's often difficult for a TV news upstart to get a leghold in any case. Adding more offerings in a space that is shrinking makes no sense to me.

The TV news operation that CBS launched on their O&O in Detroit two and a half years ago is a dumpster fire. Their streaming channel when live news is not airing is a disgrace. 70% of the "programming," if one can even call it that, consists of still slides or promos; there is little in the way of actual, desirable content. The station is thin on reporters, has zero investigative reporting, is terrible at covering breaking news, and in a sports obsessed market employs only 1 (!!!) sports anchor. Their newscast set looks like something cobbled together with spare parts from the bargain bin.
 
BarryATL said:
I looked at the listings this morning (Saturday) for 8/16 on TitanTV.com. WANF is listing the 8/16 day as if they have CBS all day. WUPA is only showing a few CBS shows. It curious.
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I would wait until tomorrow via TV Passport or Zap2it (through Gracenote). Titan TV is not the most accurate at times.
 
MarkW said:
CBS is doing this by choice. They evidently feel they need local news. Personally, I think it's a stupid move. TV news ratings have cratered over the past 15 to 20 years, and it's often difficult for a TV news upstart to get a leghold in any case. Adding more offerings in a space that is shrinking makes no sense to me.
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To be quite blunt, CBS is doing this because they have a station in a top-10 market that they have no idea what to do with and currently cannot sell. CBS is not in the business of operating standalone indies and may be offloading their entire portfolio in at least one year.
 
I largely agree. Their portfolio of secondary stations (largely CW affiliated stations) has already been on the market for many months. It will be difficult to sell those stations unless the FCC loosens or removes the national HH penetration cap.

Nexstar is the one major group (at least to my knowledge) that has expressed interest in entering new markets of any substantial size, but they're already very close to the 40% national HH penetration limit.

It is hard to imagine a private equity-backed financial buyer emerging, either. I suspect Wall Street - and private equity - each view broadcast TV licenses as toxic as AM/FM radio at this point. A large part of the reason is the availability of network TV programming on a cadre of streaming services.

Scripps bet on ION and bet wrongly. Apollo reportedly is looking to exit its investment in Cox Media Group. In spring 2024, it was widely reported that Sinclair wants to divest close to one-third of its broadcast TV stations. Hearst hasn't acquired any new stations in forever. Graham hasn't acquired any new stations in forever. Allen, who owns stations mostly in small markets, has reportedly hoisted a "for sale" sign on its entire broadcast TV property portfolio. Tegna's last major acquisition was 2019, it attempted to sell the entire company & go private in 2022 (but the deal ran into multiple roadblocks and had to be terminated), and has expressed on recent earnings calls an openness to selling assets.

Plenty of (would-be) sellers out there; very few buyers.

As an intermediate move, after the Skydance / Paramount merger closes, it would not surprise me in the least if the CBS TV station group were spun off into its own publicly traded company in the months ahead.
 
A few years ago CBS sold off its radio stations to Audacy so I can see with new owners that CBS TV stations would be spun off or sold.
So far TV passport and titan tv has 69 updated but not 46. Its a few more days until I can check tvguide.com
 
RadioRonnie285 said:
A few years ago CBS sold off its radio stations to Audacy so I can see with new owners that CBS TV stations would be spun off or sold.
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That's been hypothesize several times. SkyDance really only wants Paramount Pictures and the very deep movie catalog. They may also want all the old TV shows that were part of the old Viacom. What they don't want is linear TV, such as CBS or the cable channels.
 
MarkW said:
Nexstar is the one major group (at least to my knowledge) that has expressed interest in entering new markets of any substantial size, but they're already very close to the 40% national HH penetration limit.
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With Nexstar owning the CW now, it would be a logical buyer for those CW affiliates, but, as you mentioned, it would have to divest if the 40% cap isn't lifted.

MarkW said:
It is hard to imagine a private equity-backed financial buyer emerging, either. I suspect Wall Street - and private equity - each view broadcast TV licenses as toxic as AM/FM radio at this point. A large part of the reason is the availability of network TV programming on a cadre of streaming services.
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Don't forget also that advertising revenue is down across the board. For at least a handful of large broadcasting companies, retrans fees are more of their revenue than advertising dollars are now.

MarkW said:
Scripps bet on ION and bet wrongly. Apollo reportedly is looking to exit its investment in Cox Media Group.
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I've heard Apollo would like to divest Cox at some point soon, too. Apollo tends to invest in fields it thinks are declining so it can buy them for cheap, squeeze the revenue out while it can, and unload them. You might've heard of CenturyLink, the telephone and internet provider. Two or three years ago, it divested many of its markets to a company called Brightspeed. Who is Brightspeed? Apollo Global Management.

MarkW said:
In spring 2024, it was widely reported that Sinclair wants to divest close to one-third of its broadcast TV stations.
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Sinclair divested a few small markets about an hour and a half to two hours from where I live. The company that bought them is Rincon Broadcasting. Rincon recently bought Imagicomm's TV stations, including a handful of former Cox owned properties. Don't know what Rincon's strategy is, but it's at least buying.

MarkW said:
As an intermediate move, after the Skydance / Paramount merger closes, it would not surprise me in the least if the CBS TV station group were spun off into its own publicly traded company in the months ahead.
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TheBigA said:
That's been hypothesize several times. SkyDance really only wants Paramount Pictures and the very deep movie catalog. They may also want all the old TV shows that were part of the old Viacom. What they don't want is linear TV, such as CBS or the cable channels.
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I tend to think, if the CBS TV stations are spun, the network will go, too. Seems like I read one of the parties rumored to be interested in CBS should that happen is Apollo. If I were guessing, the network that would be most likely to spin its O&O's while continuing to own the network would be ABC.
 
MarkW said:
Nexstar is the one major group (at least to my knowledge) that has expressed interest in entering new markets of any substantial size, but they're already very close to the 40% national HH penetration limit.
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Apparently, Gray announced over the weekend that it is buying Block's four station portfolio.

FTV Live reports someone is kicking tires at TEGNA and Cox, but I don't subscribe. So, I'm not sure who the rumored suitor is. If those rumors are true, it would seem deals might start happening again. The Gray/Block deal is relatively small as Block is a family owned operation that has a small portfolio, but the floodgates usually open gradually, then all-at-once.
 


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