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2026 prediction thread.

thenetwork said:
I'll take a stab and say that at least ONE of these TV conglomerates (Nexstar, Sinclair, Cox,...) will experiment with having their own nightly national news show to replace their network affiliate's (CBS/NBC/ABC) nightly news shows.
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But would the networks with which these stations are affiliated put up with their nightly news being pre-empted in favor of a Nexstar/Sinclair/Cox news program?

WPLG Miami does a very decent job with producing what is basically a clone of ABC World News Tonight, but they are Berkshire Hathaway's only TV broadcast property. One of the conglomerates could easily follow suit with far greater resources than those of WPLG.

 
Will_H_69_9 said:
my predictions for TV in 2026

the TEGNA/Nexstar merger is approved and finished, and in a shocking move, Disney reaches a agreement with the post-merger Nexstar to trade WFAA & KFAA in Dallas in exchanged for KFSN in Fresno, CA & WTVD in Durham–Raleigh–Fayetteville, NC so they don't have to worry about having to buy out a local station in Dallas and make sure a ABC O&O can exist in a market that has O&O from CBS, NBC & Fox as well as The CW, Ion & MyNetworkTV (i'm not sure if it still exist) and Telemundo & Univision/UniMas on the Spanish TV side.

Speaking of Nexstar, once their TEGNA merger is complete, they try to acquire either Versant from NBCUniversal or Discovery Global (once the spinoff of WBD is complete), the reason, they want to boost up The CW Sports and maybe merge it with either USA Sports or TNT Sports, and same goes with NewsNation, they want to merge it into either MS Now/CNBC or CNN, also it would boost up their efforts at negotiating with paid TV providers.


The College Football Playoffs controversies leads to the birth of the NCFL, a new college football league founded by the SEC, Big XII, Big Ten, ACC and the reforming PAC 12 along with ESPN, TNT Sports & the NFL with NCAA involved as well in a minority ownership role, they adopt a NFL style system of regions with one group being part of the American College Football Conference and the other part being the National College Football Conference with a East/West/Central/South divisions dividing the teams of the 2 conference up in 4 groups, the championship game is not the CFP National Championship but instead the College Football Super Bowl, this leads to NBA, NHL & MLB teaming up with TV Partners and NCAA to do the same for their respected sports, the sports gambling business is the biggest diving factor for it's creation.

WWE & AEW shocks the wrestling world by agreeing to a work agreement to allow AEW talents on WWE TV and WWE Talents on AEW TV and it helps both companies., especially after WWE's greed under TKO ownership leads to a collapse of ticket sales and viewership for WWE TV.

NASCAR reaches a agreement to end all ties with NBCUniversal and all of the NBC portion of the 2025-2031 TV rights and because of it Amazon Prime's part of the season is extended, TNT gets the amount of races that would have been on NBC, and USA airs the entire playoffs with no NBC as a partner for 2026. this leads to NASCAR ending all deals set to expire in 2031 to end in 2026 as part of the end of the ongoing NASCAR/23XI Racing & Front Row Motorsports lawsuit revealing NASCAR is having money issues due to continuous ratings declines and loss of big million dollar sponsorship deals as many sponsors left the sport in the last 15 years.

Netflix/WB merger is canceled by the US government and Paramount Skydance ends up doing a hostile takeover by buying majority of their stocks and installing their leadership to complete the merger.

Bryon Allen tries and fails to acquire Discovery or Versant and the reason he's trying to buy them, he betting on paid lineal TV making a comeback due to the ever growing expensive of streaming services getting more expensive then Cable & Satellite TV at their peak over 15 to 20 years ago, plus also he wants to merge The Weather Channel into CNN or reunite them with MS Now/CNBC.

New Fox also tries to buy Discovery or Versant and also fails.

Jimmy Kimmel announces retirement from Late Night TV citing the Charlie Kirk controversy and the recent death of his best friend and show's house band leader Cleto Escobedo III, Daily Show moves to Paramount+ exclusively and NBC retires The Tonight Show & Late Night, but moves Seth Myers & Jimmy Fallon to Peacock for Jimmy to host a new interview show while Seth launches a weekly comedy show that is Peacock's answer to Last Week Tonight, and speaking of, Last Week Tonight is moved to HBO Max exclusively.

Lorne Michaels retires from SNL as the man in charge, hands the reigns over to Tina Fey or Keenan Thompson as his successor.
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Jimmy Kimmel Extends Late-Night Deal With Disney For One Year Jimmy Kimmel Extends Late-Night Deal With Disney For One Year
 
thedesk.net

Fox Noticias hires Andrea Linares, plans launch of digital-first programs for 2026

Fox Noticias will roll out new digital-first Spanish programming next year, including a weekly interview series and rolling news updates.
thedesk.net thedesk.net

Heres another one Fox Noticias is estimated to launch sometime in 2026.


Fox News Media has hired veteran journalist Andrea Linares to serve as the anchor of a new one-hour news program for its Fox Noticias brand as the company readies the launch of standalone, digital-first programming in Spanish heading into next year.

Linares succeeds founding anchor Rachel Campos-Duffy, who will shift her focus to “Fox & Friends Weekend,” a forthcoming Fox News Book slated for release in 2026 and potential Fox Noticias digital specials. Katrina Campins and Julie Banderas will continue serving as rotating anchors on the program, the network said in a statement on Monday.

Senior Vice President John Sylvester said Linares’ experience and perspective will help strengthen the network’s connection with Latino viewers.
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WJAR will just rebrand WLNE ABC 6 as ABC 10.2 Rhode Island and WLNE returns as WLNE 6.1 under the branding RI 6 as a independent TV station.
 
Don CT said:
We haven’t even gotten to 2026 yet and we are already destroying people’s fantasies.
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I was thinking the same thing ... especially that the idiot-in-chief's fantasy about Kimmel is now a burst balloon.

nomadcowatbk said:
he could still announce retirement next year
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We'll have to wait and see. As @michael hagerty has said in the thread about Kimmel, a lot is going to depend on how much of Colbert's audience he picks up after the latter's end of his run. It is not outside the realm of probability that ABC will see their numbers go up by as much as 50% over what they are now, and neither the network nor Jimmy are going to want to end the show when the audience level is increasing.

I still think it will be the last talk show standing in late night in a couple of years. (Sorry, Jimmy Fallon.)
 
K.M. Richards said:
I was thinking the same thing ... especially that the idiot-in-chief's fantasy about Kimmel is now a burst balloon.



We'll have to wait and see. As @michael hagerty has said in the thread about Kimmel, a lot is going to depend on how much of Colbert's audience he picks up after the latter's end of his run. It is not outside the realm of probability that ABC will see their numbers go up by as much as 50% over what they are now, and neither the network nor Jimmy are going to want to end the show when the audience level is increasing.

I still think it will be the last talk show standing in late night in a couple of years. (Sorry, Jimmy Fallon.)
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The Tonight Show is still the marquee brand in the industry. Would it go on without Fallon.
 
Don CT said:
The Tonight Show is still the marquee brand in the industry. Would it go on without Fallon.
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Johnny Carson, arguably the best-remembered host of the franchise, retired in 1992. He had the longest run as host (30 years, with second place going to Jay Leno if you combine both pre- and post-Conan O'Brien for around two decades) and made the show into the "marquee brand" you rightly call it.

Presuming that the demographic for Carson was 35-54 by the end of his run, the youngest of those viewers would now be almost 70. The oldest viewers have already been dying off. Even if some of that audience stayed during Leno's run, that ended eleven years ago and the likelihood of those viewers "getting" Fallon's humor is not exactly guaranteed.

Fallon's audience is younger than was Johnny's or Jay's ... and not into linear TV in huge numbers. Remember, Carson started his incredible run back in the days when most of the country that stayed up late had the choice of him or whatever the ABC and CBS affiliates were running (and that timeslot was locally programmed until Joey Bishop debuted in 1967 on ABC and Merv Griffin moved from syndication to CBS two years later).

So it is entirely probable that -- marquee brand or not -- it could disappear tomorrow and be largely forgotten within a year or two.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Johnny Carson, arguably the best-remembered host of the franchise, retired in 1992. He had the longest run as host (30 years, with second place going to Jay Leno if you combine both pre- and post-Conan O'Brien for around two decades) and made the show into the "marquee brand" you rightly call it.

Presuming that the demographic for Carson was 35-54 by the end of his run, the youngest of those viewers would now be almost 70. The oldest viewers have already been dying off. Even if some of that audience stayed during Leno's run, that ended eleven years ago and the likelihood of those viewers "getting" Fallon's humor is not exactly guaranteed.

Fallon's audience is younger than was Johnny's or Jay's ... and not into linear TV in huge numbers. Remember, Carson started his incredible run back in the days when most of the country that stayed up late had the choice of him or whatever the ABC and CBS affiliates were running (and that timeslot was locally programmed until Joey Bishop debuted in 1967 on ABC and Merv Griffin moved from syndication to CBS two years later).

So it is entirely probable that -- marquee brand or not -- it could disappear tomorrow and be largely forgotten within a year or two.
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All true, but I also can’t see NBC doing what CBS did to the Late Show. I’m sure the Tonight brand alone makes more money than Late Show ever did. There is a reason Letterman wanted the gig so badly. Yes it’s not 30 years ago, but I’d bet NBC still sees value in it.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Johnny Carson, arguably the best-remembered host of the franchise, retired in 1992. He had the longest run as host (30 years, with second place going to Jay Leno if you combine both pre- and post-Conan O'Brien for around two decades) and made the show into the "marquee brand" you rightly call it.

Presuming that the demographic for Carson was 35-54 by the end of his run, the youngest of those viewers would now be almost 70. The oldest viewers have already been dying off. Even if some of that audience stayed during Leno's run, that ended eleven years ago and the likelihood of those viewers "getting" Fallon's humor is not exactly guaranteed.
Click to expand...
One of my high school classmates is always posting clips of Johnny on Facebook and he's hardly an outlier. We're not yet old enough for Social Security.
 
Can something be both a "marquee brand" and in third place?

The Q3 nightly average:

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: 2.8 million viewers.

Jimmy Kimmel Live!: 1.8 million viewers.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: 1.2 million viewers.

This to me is like calling something "The Cadillac of..." in the 1990s.

NBC doesn't sell a "brand". It sells viewers to advertisers.

I think (and I've said this before) Fallon stays as long as Lorne Michaels is in charge of NBC late night programming. Once Lorne's gone, all bets are off, and not just for Jimmy, but for the show itself.

As for Carson---by the end (not counting the parade of stars during farewell week or month or whatever), I think his was primarily a 55-plus audience. So 88-plus now.

I'm about to turn 70. I like Johnny. I watched Johnny---sometimes. Overall, though, that was my parents' show, and I was thrilled when Letterman came along to turn the genre on its head.
 
Boy, Michael, you took my basic hypothesis and made it sound even more like doom for Fallon!

And ... so much for @Don CT's theory.
 
I won't link since it is purely political, but I did find a newspaper column with 2026 predictions that would make a lot of people here happy. If the predictions came true, I can only assume it would be good news for freedom of the press for broadcasters.
 


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