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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

N

NYAZSporty

I find it amusing that they highlight Ohio as a battleground state right at the outset of their press release when in reality there is nothing that station can do in the next seven days to have any effect on the election.
 
skiwest said:
I figured it was only a matter of time until WBNX was acquired by someone. Too bad it wasn't Weigel.
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My guess is that Weigel may have had some interest in buying WBNX a few years back. WBNX was probably not interested in selling, or was asking too much for the station. Weigel likely decided to buy W27EA-D from Media-Com, who was looking to offload the station. This is just my guess.

WBNX would improve Weigel's footprint in the Cleveland market. But if Weigel was to buy the station, they would operate it the same way as they do with WOCV-CD, and directly feed all their networks to the transmitter. There would be no branding or anything, and all the syndicated shows would have to be shoehorned onto other stations.
 
skiwest said:
Would it be possible for WJW and WBNX to do a frequency swap? I assume WBNX has a better coverage area than WJW.
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Since they will be under the same ownership, Nexstar can shuffle the programming. Or add a subchannel on WBNX that relays WJW 8.1 in order to get it to the stronger UHF signal. Tegna does this with some of their network affiliates are still on the VHF dial -- i.e. ABC WFAA 8.1 Dallas simulcasts on sister KFAA's spectrum mapped as 8.8; KHOU 11.1 Houston simulcasts on KTBU's spectrum as 11.11.
 
txchipk said:
Since they will be under the same ownership, Nexstar can shuffle the programming. Or add a subchannel on WBNX that relays WJW 8.1 in order to get it to the stronger UHF signal. Tegna does this with some of their network affiliates are still on the VHF dial -- i.e. ABC WFAA 8.1 Dallas simulcasts on sister KFAA's spectrum mapped as 8.8; KHOU 11.1 Houston simulcasts on KTBU's spectrum as 11.11.
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I hope not. WOIO already does this here, and their main .1 channel is repeated on a DRT and simulcasted on 3 low power stations (WTCL-LD, W28FG-D & WOHZ-CD) as a .10 sub, all of which I can receive at my location except for WOHZ-CD.

Flipping facilities between WBNX and WJW would be nice and will give WJW the UHF broadcast that it needs, but it probably won't/can't happen. Flipping affiliations between the two would involve re-branding everything and create viewer confusion. Maybe Nexstar will flip WJW to ATSC 3.0 and use WBNX to host WJW's ATSC 1.0 subs, essentially combining the two stations together, but that probably can't happen due to WBNX's slightly smaller coverage area.
 
At the end of the day, if Nexstar has both, they can map the channels how they want. They can divide out and map WBNX's RF17 spectrum as 55.1 and 8.1 and use WJW's spectrum for whatever, for example. In Dallas, WFAA is RF8 and has 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 subchannels. Sister KFAA is on RF30 and had channels mapped at one point as 29.1, 29.2, 8.8, and 8.9. Viewers would have to re-scan...
 
Is this a done deal or is it subject to approval? In the past, there have been announcements of local stations being acquired, but then the deal fell through for various reasons.
 
skiwest said:
Is this a done deal or is it subject to approval? In the past, there have been announcements of local stations being acquired, but then the deal fell through for various reasons.
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It still has to be approved by the FCC, which can take at least 3 months to happen.
 
A side effect to this could also mean channel 43 - now free of CW obligations - would be able to air more programming from RESN, including the Monsters, Charge, and (potentially down the line) Cavs.
 
Loganfly said:
If Nexstar actually gets WBNX, will they put Rewind TV in one of WBNX's subchannels? It isn't cleared in Cleveland yet
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There would be no excuse not to. WJW refuses to carry Rewind TV, despite the fact that both WJW and Rewind TV are owned by Nexstar. The affiliation instead went to Gray's WOIO, who carried the network from its launch to the beginning of 2024. This isn't the first time WJW turned down a parent company network. When both WJW and This TV fell under common ownership (Tribune) about a decade ago, WJW also refused to carry the network, which eventually ended up on WIVM-LD and its Canton area repeaters, which are not even receivable in the Cleveland area. In December 2017, WJW ended up carrying Sinclair's Comet and Charge as part of a group deal with Tribune.

Currently, Nexstar doesn't carry any of the multicast networks seen on WBNX on any of their stations, which means all of them will eventually be dropped. What I see happening, if the sale is approved, is that some of the bandwidth will probably be allocated for a WJW 8.1 simulcast, seeing that many viewers to this day still can't receive WJW's VHF broadcast. Rewind TV will be added, and perhaps Sinclair's TBD. Buzzr will probably end up back on one of the HC2 stations (WQDI-LD, WEKA-LD, WUEK-LD or KONV-LD), Binge will be gone, and Movies, H&I & Start TV will move over to WOCV-CD.
 
txchipk said:
Since they will be under the same ownership, Nexstar can shuffle the programming. Or add a subchannel on WBNX that relays WJW 8.1 in order to get it to the stronger UHF signal. Tegna does this with some of their network affiliates are still on the VHF dial -- i.e. ABC WFAA 8.1 Dallas simulcasts on sister KFAA's spectrum mapped as 8.8; KHOU 11.1 Houston simulcasts on KTBU's spectrum as 11.11.
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FOX O&O KMSP in Minneapolis/St. Paul does something like this. They transmit on a VHF channel (RF 9), while their sister station (WFTC) is on the much stronger RF 29. So, KMSP carries the main channel with the FOX affiliation on 9.9, while WFTC's UHF signal carries FOX on 9.1 (all channels from both KMSP and WFTC map to some form of 9.x). Therefore, the legal ID lists both stations (and a satellite station in Bemidji). The official FOX affiliate is still KMSP. In other words, Nexstar could simulcast on both WJW and a WBNX subchannel, enabling WJW to still be the local FOX affiliate.
 


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