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Dual Ownership of TV Stations

M

Mario500

Guest
Companies allowed to own two local TV stations have made a great effect on broadcasting in the Mobile-Pensacola TV market. Stations share the same programs and station promotions such as WALA-TV and WBPG-TV both airing "Judge Mathis", "The People's Court", "The Wendy Williams Show", and "Legend of the Seeker", and WPMI-TV and WJTC-TV both airing "Judge Joe Brown", but only on Saturdays for WJTC-TV. WALA-TV, a FOX affiliate, and WJTC-TV, an independent station, aired their co-owned station's fall preview shows (WBPG-TV is a CW Television Network affiliate and WPMI-TV is an NBC affiliate)."Speak Up", a local public affairs program originally produced for WBPG-TV, recently aired on Saturdays at 11:00 AM on both WALA-TV and WBPG-TV, but with different commercials. As of this past Saturday, WALA-TV has replaced "Speak Up" with a local college football program while "Speak Up" continues on WBPG-TV.

The stations simulcast weather reports interrupting regular programming on both stations and have news presenters and reports refer to their “sister station” during newscasts. WBPG-TV is sometimes referred to by WALA-TV employees as "The CW", even though its actual branding is "The Gulf Coast CW".

In the case of WEAR-TV and WFGX-TV, the latter actually serves the Florida side of the market with syndicated programs that have once aired on WEAR-TV, but no longer reach every viewer in the market. "The Daily Buzz", which once aired on WBPG-TV, moved to WFGX-TV and was replaced by paid programming.

Both WBPG-TV and WJTC-TV, which are co-owned with WALA-TV and WPMI-TV respectively, air hourly news segments after some syndicated programming.
 
Here in Columbus Ohio Sinclair owns WSYX and WTTE DT. The way that they got around FCC rules that they created a dummy corporation for WTTE and then LMA out to Sinclair.
 
What about Hartford/New Haven? Tribune owns The Hartford Courant newspaper and WTIC-DT (FOX) channel 31 (old 61) of Hartford. They also operate sister station WTXX-DT (CW) channel 20 (old 20) of Waterbury. The cross promotion of the paper and the stations is sickening at times.
 
The Dis-advantage of having a duopoly station is less competition in the market and less program choices. For example when KPTV merge with KPDX in Portland. They shut down KPDX news department and merge with KPTV. Also, KPTV provide the best or top quality programs while their sister station receives 2nd rate programs. Same thing happen to other duolopy markets across the country.
 
In Seattle We Have 3 Duopolies, Fisher (KOMO/ABC and KUNS/Univision), Belo (KING/NBC and KONG/Ind.)
And Tribune (KCPQ/FOX and KMYQ/My) And KCPQ's 10pm newscast acually beat out the 11pm newscasts
last year in the ratings
 
So, back to Mobile. How long will it be before WKRG picks up a sister station? How much could the selling price for WFBD or WPAN be? And getting full market coverage for the Fort Walton stations should be easy now that WFGX has permission to move to the Mobile-Pensacola tower farm.
 
In Chicago WPWR became a dumping ground for shows WFLD bought but didn't like. Both are owned by FOX.

It will be interesting though since WFLD is dumping "Seinfeld" to WPWR and replacing it with "The Office." I doubt "The Office" will perform as well.
 
"The Dr. Oz Show" will air at 3:00 PM on WPMI-TV and at 9:00 PM on WJTC-TV. The 9:00 PM broadcast will be competing against WALA-TV's one-hour newscast and "The Jay Leno Show" on WPMI-TV five days a week.

As a result of the changes, "Judge Joe Brown" will be moving to 1:00 PM and 1:30 PM on WPMI-TV and "The Martha Stewart Show" will be moving to 10:00 AM on WJTC-TV, which is moving "The Steve Wilkos Show" to 11:00 AM, when paid programming usually aired.
 
For the first time ever I saw "Entertainment Tonight" on WJTC-TV this afternoon after the same weekend edition aired on WPMI-TV yesterday.
 
Here in Columbus Ohio its common to see the syndicated programming bounce between WSYX/WTTE DT. For example Judge Judy and Deal or no Deal. If there is a sporting event on WTTE DT (Fox station) they air the nightly FOX28 10PM on WSYX DT 6.2 of course at 10PM.
 
poledo said:
So, back to Mobile. How long will it be before WKRG picks up a sister station? How much could the selling price for WFBD or WPAN be? And getting full market coverage for the Fort Walton stations should be easy now that WFGX has permission to move to the Mobile-Pensacola tower farm.

Probably never since they're under Media General ownership. Then again, I'm not sure they need a second terrestrial channel to program and fund with WKRG's DTV subchannels (they run RTN/RTV on 5.3 IIRC).

And I can already shoot a guess for what George Flinn's WFBD will feature: America One, with programming constantly interrupted by infomercials. That's what his WBIH-DT 29 in Selma/Montgomery features.
 
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