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KDKA-TV to Nexstar?

Y2kTheNewOldies

Y2kTheNewOldies

www.ftvlive.com

Nexstar Eyes KDKA — FTVLive

Don’t be surprised if two Pittsburgh stations have new owners in the near future. We’re talking KDKA and WPXI.
www.ftvlive.com www.ftvlive.com

Umm this is too crazy to be true given that Nexstar just took over Tegna Inc and the antitrust lawsuits that are surrounding that one. On the other hand there’s the WB/Paramount deal that’s also waiting for approval. But I get the other argument that Networks are protecting their TV apps like CBS is protecting the Paramount+ app in this argument.

Here is their email to FTVLive:

Scott,

I wouldn't be surprised if Nexstar ends up with KDKA-TV.

KDKA-TV still makes a lot of money for Paramount and is one of their most profitable O&O's, but at number 27 they are also the 2nd smallest O&O--ahead of only WJZ-TV in Baltimore, who gives CBS access to the Washington, DC market due to proximity. Pittsburgh will also likely drop out of the top 30 by the end of the decade, with markets like Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Antonio, Austin, and Columbus growing faster than Western Pennsylvania's stagnant population.

If that sounds familiar, the last time KDKA-TV was sold individually and wasn't part of a larger corporate merger was when locally-based industrial giant Westinghouse bought the then-WDTV from the DuMont Network in 1954. WDTV made more money than the DuMont Network as a whole, and within two years DuMont was shut down.

KDKA-TV also partners with Nexstar now on state public affairs programming, seeing that Pittsburgh is the only Pennsylvania market without a Nexstar station, and is clearly committed to local news--a Nexstar hallmark.

This just makes too much sense. Yes, WPXI is for sale alongside the rest of the Cox stations owned by Apollo, but my money is on Sinclair buying them. Their news-share agreement to produce a 10 PM newscast for Sinclair's WPGH-TV dates to 2006 and has only strengthened under Apollo ownership of Cox, adding morning and early evening newscasts whenever WPXI has NBC Today or the NBC Nightly News airing on their own channel, respectively. Since the FCC apparently allows one company to own three stations in a single market outright due to the Nexstar-Tegna deal as well as the Scripps-Circle City Broadcasting deal in Indianapolis (as well as Sinclair itself having a legal triopoly for years in Salt Lake City), Sinclair could own both stations as well as WPNT without having to sell one off to a sidecar like Cunningham and move its primary subchannel programming to a subchannel of a station it keeps.

And what will all of this do if Nexstar snags KDKA-TV and Sinclair inevitably grabs WPXI? Strengthen Hearst's WTAE-TV. They've already taken advantage of Cox's decline under Apollo as well as KDKA-TV's decline since becoming a CBS O&O in the 1990s when Westinghouse bought the Tiffany Network. It could turn a market that was dominated for decades by KDKA-TV, then became one of the most competitive TV markets in the country, into a market dominated by one of Hearst's flagship stations and one that they built and signed on.
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