In a $6 billion + deal, Nexstar is buying up the former Gannett, now TEGNA. They spent about a year in Seattle owning KCPQ-KZJO before they were sold to Fox Television Stations. Will there be some news and local programming changes for KING 5? Discuss away
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Nexstar buying Tegna. KING-5 / KONG impacts?
- Thread starter crainbebo
- Start date
KONG is assuredly tabbed to become the new CW affiliate for Seattle as it'd be network-owned-and-operated. Probably quicker than we think.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Better question: Did Nexstar put a clause in the CW affiliation contracts giving themselves an early "out" if they should acquire a station in the same market?
They won’t let anyone else monkey with those calls!
“It was Nexstar that killed the beast.”🙄
The KONG calls predated KING's involvement in operations by nearly a decade to the point then-owner King Broadcasting openly considered legal action. (You read that right, KING fought KONG before KING bought KONG.)
Sounds like KING was ready to go ape over KONG
6 months- Mid September 2019 to March 2, 2020. The Tribune logo came down off of the wall by the "Multipurpose Room" where station meetings were held and announcements were made and the Nexstar logo went up for about a month so the Nexstar suits could come through. That logo was then peeled off of the wall well in advance of the announcement of the sale to Fox. We all knew what was up anyway.
Val
And why would Comcast want more television stations when they are far more likely to leave linear television behind in the next few years? Peacock is quickly turning from a massive money loser into one that isn't losing as much; it'll likely be making money in a year. They know where the audience is going.
If anything, they're probably going to sell the NBC owned-stations off to a willing
Good point given that Comcast has an ongoing spinoff with Versant Media sending CNBC and soon to be MSNOW to Versant. So Far no proof that NBC even wants to buy divested Tegna or Nexstar stations given that Comcast is protecting Peacock one way or another.
I don't even remember what the programming was on KONG before KING bought them and went all in on classic TV syndication.
The other unaffiliated stations 11, 13, 22 I remember. But 16 must have been just informercials or something similarly uninteresting for a kid.
KONG was an independent without a way to actually operate. It would have gone on in the mid-80s had it not been snarled in expensive tower siting litigation (Cougar Mountain and neighbors) that sank the original permittees. They had studio equipment and facilities that were auctioned off. It wasn't until 1996, by which time LMAs were more common, that the licenseholders finally found a partner to go in with them to build the station. KING also had, you guessed it, tower space on which the station could actually be located.
It was probably a good thing, too. Had KONG gone on in 1986, it would have been fighting for third indie with KTZZ. That station did terribly from a financial standpoint. The market had two strong VHF indies, the indie boom was over, and stations like that were vulnerable.
A good comparison market is Portland, which had three independent stations serving it from 1983 to 1986. You had KPTV (a VHF indie comparable to KSTW in many ways) and two UHF indies: KPDX and KECH. KECH was undercapitalized, hamstrung by subscription TV, and had a somewhat weaker signal in Portland. In 1986, it became a home shopping station. That might well have been the fate of 16, with a KHSW-TV call sign or something. It would not have been pretty.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Sidebar: If it were not for George Haggarty purchasing KLOR-TV on channel 12, then moving the KPTV calls there and taking the UHF station dark, Portland might have ended up with four indies ... 12, 22, 27, and 49.
History of UHF Television
Oh, BTW, the CP for channel 16 in Seattle -- issued in 1982 -- always had the KONG call letters. And that immediately sparked legal action from KING-TV and the CP was sold in 1989 at bankruptcy auction to a partnership that eventually arranged for a LMA with channel 5 when they finally went on the air in 1997. I don't know where you pulled that KHSW-TV call sign from.
Hypothetical. "Might well have been the fate" had it gone on in the early- to mid-1980s.
Nexstar is a good operator and given that TEGNA has been trying to sell their stations for awhile, new ownership may well prove to be a good thing. I'm not sure what all the excitement is about CW - the network delivers essentially ZERO ratings. If it were me I'd be happy to have it on a competitor so they can't run anything better (less competition for the syndicated shows and other programming out there)
Nexstar is a company that was founded solely to buy up stations. Nothing else. They are caretakers of legacy stations like KTLA, WJW and WGN but little more.
It will be ugly in other markets next spring once Nexstar shuts down the newsrooms at WKYC and KUSA once this deal is ramrodded through.
Nexstar owns the CW. They are taking a cue from Canada television and trying to get control of as many affiliates as possible. Vertical integration.