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WBNX to be acquired by Nexstar & re-affiliate with the CW in Fall 2025 creating a duopoly with FOX affiliate WJW

Nathan Obral said:
They had a daily in-house informercial that ran multiple times a day when Ernest Angely was still alive. It was called The 90 and 9 Club.
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I mean, like infomercials for products, services, etc. Or local paid programming like Fred Martian, real estate, and such outside of Grace Cathedral.
 
snowdog88 said:
I mean, like infomercials for products, services, etc. Or local paid programming like Fred Martian, real estate, and such outside of Grace Cathedral.
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But that's my point. The station was, first and foremost, a vanity project for Ernest Angely and Grace Cathedral. They surely didn't make any money off of all those Cathedral Buffet ads.

That it had success running Fox Kids, the WB and the CW was a byproduct of Angely not directly interfering in the station like Rev. Larry Rice infamously did with his St. Louis station (airing anti-abortion messages during Fox Kids programming).
 
Nathan Obral said:
But that's my point. The station was, first and foremost, a vanity project for Ernest Angely and Grace Cathedral. They surely didn't make any money off of all those Cathedral Buffet ads.

That it had success running Fox Kids, the WB and the CW was a byproduct of Angely not directly interfering in the station like Rev. Larry Rice infamously did with his St. Louis station (airing anti-abortion messages during Fox Kids programming).
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And it wasn't even Angley who originally filed for channel 55 :

History of UHF Television

uhfhistory.com uhfhistory.com
 
It definitely wouldn't be a move. All Fox 8 has to replace lost programming with is news, and I don't think anyone in the morning would be able to talk from 4am until 1pm without being rotated out at some point. Either that, or they'll try some "new" news-adjacent content that will eventually just morph into another hour of the news, like what happened to the 4pm show.

If they repeat NDC over on 55, it would probably be reruns from at least a week ago. I don't think they'd do same-day, but who knows?

If Fox 8 tries to do a 19/43 and produce additional news shows for 55, when do we think they'd air them? 8 runs news from 4am-10am, Noon-1pm, 4-7:30pm, and 10-11pm (which gets rerun twice overnight, the second of which leads into the 4am show the next morning!). If they absolutely wanted to do more news, I'd bring in some new/fresh talent that could integrate social media into the newscasts, focus things on the Akron side of the viewing area, and broadcast adjacent to the Fox shows, so as to not step on any toes: 10am-noon and an evening show at 7:30. (If you really wanted to, maybe do a newscast at 11, but that's a pretty crowded market. At least, at 10, you're only competing against 19/43.) Produce it down in a smaller Akron-based studio with CW branding (Doesn't Fox 8 still have a micro studio at Summit Mall?), do the heavy lifting out of the main Fox 8 building in Cleveland, and you're all set.

Could you imagine if they dusted off the "55 hours of..." mantra from when WBNX had Every Kids' Show Ever and made it about news? "55 hours of news, every week on WBNX, your home of The CW!" Those poor Fox 8 reporters would just be doing nothing BUT reading the same news scripts ALL DAY LONG. That's, what, about 8 hours more of news a day to fulfill "55 hours of news on TV55"? 10-noon, 1-4, 7:30-8, 11-midnight... That's six and a half hours a day, times five days is 32 and a half hours, which leaves 22.5 hours to fill on the weekends... That's pretty much THE ENTIRE WEEKEND. There's no way for Fox 8 to produce another 55 hours of news a week for TV55 without broadcasting against themselves, not when they're producing 11 and a half hours a day on their own network. At that point, you're just begging for the 8/55 duopoly to become a news network with the occasional programming break.

... Just like how WGN morphed into NewsNation! NEWSNATION CLEVELAND!
 
fybush said:
Minor typo alert on an otherwise excellent article: WPGH was of course 53, not 56.
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I wrote that article somewhere around three or four years ago, and you're the first person to notice that, Scott. Thanks!
 
Nathan Obral said:
But that's my point. The station was, first and foremost, a vanity project for Ernest Angely and Grace Cathedral. They surely didn't make any money off of all those Cathedral Buffet ads.

That it had success running Fox Kids, the WB and the CW was a byproduct of Angely not directly interfering in the station like Rev. Larry Rice infamously did with his St. Louis station (airing anti-abortion messages during Fox Kids programming).
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I think in a way, WBNX during its years with Fox Kids and the WB was a spirited successor for WUAB (from its Independent hey day) and WOIO (when it was FOX 19 or FOX nineteen).

55 is not the same anymore after Nexstar took over. I don't think the station is going to even release its fall schedule online anymore.
 
MediaLover said:
I think in a way, WBNX during its years with Fox Kids and the WB was a spirited successor for WUAB (from its Independent hey day) and WOIO (when it was FOX 19 or FOX nineteen).
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Had none of this ever happened (picking up Fox Kids programming due to the 1994 affiliation swap between WJW and WOIO and The WB affiliation later in 1997), WBNX could have been sold off much sooner, perhaps by 2000? All of these played a role in the station's success and profits.

When 55.2 launched in 2010 for The Happy Channel, there was an attempt to air some classic syndicated shows along side the Ernest Angley programming, notably The Andy Griffith Show weekday afternoons at 4 PM. I think they wanted to make 55.2 a partial throwback to the early years of WBNX, but program availability and licensing made this cost prohibited. That would later rectified with the rise of diginets, which WBNX slowly started to add, starting with This TV, then with Movies, H&I, Start TV & Decades (now known as Catchy Comedy). Buzzr would eventually replace The Happy Channel, with a few pre-emptions for Ernest Angley programming, and Binge was pretty much a final attempt at airing classic shows.

I actually liked WBNX a bit better after they dropped The CW affiliation, which gave the station more of that independent feel. Even with The WB/CW affiliation, the station manage to maintain its independent look as well. As I mentioned before, there is no reason for Grace Cathedral to maintain a TV station in today's world, hence the sale. They can reach a much wider audience with online streams and apps, which can all be done much cheaper than running a TV station. In 1985, a TV station was pretty much the only way to reach their audience, at least locally, along with buying time on stations in other markets.

MediaLover said:
55 is not the same anymore after Nexstar took over. I don't think the station is going to even release its fall schedule online anymore.
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Agreed. I think the current website has since been abandoned, as they haven't removed references to Movies and Binge. Likely waiting on a change to either a new site managed by Nexstar or a redirect to a sub page on WJW's website.

It could be worse, though. Could you image what WBNX would be if it ended up in the hands of Sinclair?
 
snowdog88 said:
I actually liked WBNX a bit better after they dropped The CW affiliation, which gave the station more of that independent feel. Even with The WB/CW affiliation, the station manage to maintain its independent look as well.
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Honestly, if the syndication market had not collapsed industry-wide, then WBNX might have remained viable. Tough to do when you're running eight straight hours of game shows including three hours of Family Feud. They to me were one of the more oddly-programmed stations and it felt like Weigel was keeping them afloat with all those diginet contracts.
snowdog88 said:
As I mentioned before, there is no reason for Grace Cathedral to maintain a TV station in today's world, hence the sale.
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Look, the owner died four years ago. The estate sale was inevitable. Wouldn't be surprised to see Grace Cathedral also get sold and redeveloped, it's right next to good retail space.
snowdog88 said:
It could be worse, though. Could you image what WBNX would be if it ended up in the hands of Sinclair?
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They probably wouldn't have lost the CW in the first place. Sinclair is a decent operator of CW standalones, even if they are cookie-cutter.
 
Nathan Obral said:
Look, the owner died four years ago. The estate sale was inevitable. Wouldn't be surprised to see Grace Cathedral also get sold and redeveloped, it's right next to good retail space.
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I get that, but had that not been the case, would they still be seeking a buyer? I'm not even sure how much input Ernest Angley even had in his own station within his final years, and even after his death, I would have imagine that WBNX would been placed on the market almost instantly, not 4 years down the road. Yes, they probably wanted to sell, but also wanted a buyer that would pay the most.

And then you had the events in 2018, where Ernest Angley almost lost everything due to payment failure of a loan. WBNX could have been sold off at that time as well if they needed that cash, but there was no evidence that they were going to.

Nathan Obral said:
They probably wouldn't have lost the CW in the first place. Sinclair is a decent operator of CW standalones, even if they are cookie-cutter.
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Not from what I heard. I'm glad that their acquisition of Tribune fell through. I can imagine how much local personality would have been lost if WJW ended up being owned by Sinclair.
 
snowdog88 said:
I get that, but had that not been the case, would they still be seeking a buyer?
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Yes. There's no reason why an estate should continue to own an asset they don't need and will inevitably depreciate in value.
snowdog88 said:
I'm not even sure how much input Ernest Angley even had in his own station within his final years, and even after his death, I would have imagine that WBNX would been placed on the market almost instantly, not 4 years down the road. Yes, they probably wanted to sell, but also wanted a buyer that would pay the most.
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Nexstar frankly didn't need it. That changed after they were gifted The CW. Weigel could have bought it as a diginet coatrack but opted not to.
snowdog88 said:
And then you had the events in 2018, where Ernest Angley almost lost everything due to payment failure of a loan. WBNX could have been sold off at that time as well if they needed that cash, but there was no evidence that they were going to.
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It's not that complicated. Ernest Angely was simply stubborn and carried the station to his grave. You think he wanted to part with a vanity project he owned or operated for over 35 years and held close to his heart?
snowdog88 said:
I can imagine how much local personality would have been lost if WJW ended up being owned by Sinclair.
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That was never going to happen. Sinclair intended to resell WJW back to Fox (mostly for ownership cap relief but also to keep the network happy), and filed paperwork with the FCC on it, but only if Sinclair-Tribune closed. It didn't, Fox was interested in buying back WJW from Nexstar, but Nexstar offered KCPQ and WITI instead.
 


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