First, the deal with Clear Channel to program the old WB16 is fairly transparent - you let us run it and we'll actually BROADCAST it as a real OTA station as opposed to the "fake station" it runs as today. That also means you don't have to devote your time and money on it, and we'll make sure you never have a retransmission consent issue with WHAM (and perhaps even other Clear Channel stations TW has to deal with upstate). And perhaps even TW will get a check.
I am personally not terribly concerned about WB16, as it is only slightly more important than WBGT (at least until fall, when the latter will be stuck running repurposed "telenovelas" in English from Fox's "el-cheapo" second network solution -- not since Pax has any corporate entity bought so much into "less is more.")
The majority of the market probably spends zero minutes watching the station anyway, and even as a secondary signal, I doubt it's going to make a big impact with CW programming.
Second, Clear Channel and XM are in the equivalent of marriage counseling. Clear Channel has been sleeping on the couch downstairs since the great lawsuit over commercial injection into CC-run channels. And what started as just two-three minutes an hour is now approaching 10+, and it has made most of their channels unlistenable on a platform that reminds listeners they never have to hear ads on music programming again. And with hourly ads for Oreck vacuums and Brazilian power crystals, you know Clear Channel isn't raking in $$$ with those unless listeners are calling those toll-free numbers.
You can expect Clear Channel to be booted off XM when their bandwidth contract expires in a few years. It has forced XM to further reduce bitrates on channels to launch largely duplicate music channels, commercial-free. They have also stopped promoting all of the CC programming and in fact promote their own stuff as an alternative to CC's junk. Listeners have been made fully aware who is responsible for bloating their channel lineups with advertising - Clear Channel, who they specifically name by name in their promotional stuff, call centers, etc., so the demonization of CC and corporate evil can continue.
XM is also providing almost zero assistance to Clear Channel for their regional news/talk superstation approach, which is one major reason why that service is now three months late. And XM has a point - how interesting is it for their customers to hear the radio stations bloated with ads that they fled to XM to escape in the first place.
