High school championships to remain on free TV Even though the future of WCIU’s affiliation with The CW is unclear due to the sale of the network to Nexstar, there is one guarantee set for the future – Weigel’s stations will be home to the high school sports for sometime to come. On Monday, Chicago-based Weigel and the Illinois […]
No cash is exchanged; big changes are planned Television’s worst kept secret was finally made official Monday as Irving, Tex.-based Nexstar has acquired a majority stake in The CW from Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global. Speculation has been branded about since January, when word came both Warner and Paramount were looking to unload the fifth network and Nexstar […]
Also: NBC 5 makes a new hire while a Baltimore TV reporter gets fired. The second edition of The Field Of Dreams game didn’t have the theatrics of last year’s contest, but still drew a healthy amount of eyeballs. The game featured two teams who were already out of playoff contention this season: The 44-64 Chicago Cubs and the […]
Chicago Bears fans will have to tune in to a new radio station in 2023 to hear games The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting the radio rights for the Chicago Bears are up for grabs after this season after the team and WBBM-AM did not come to terms on a renewal. Courting the Bears are Good Karma Brands-owned ESPN 1000 […]
The Worldwide Leader frozen out of the Big Ten after carrying games from the conference for 40 years After 40 years, ESPN is apparently out of the Big Ten business. The network on Tuesday withdrew from negotiations on trying to keep a Big Ten package in some form after the conference is expected to strike mega-deals with Fox, CBS, and […]
The Drive is tops for the third straight month; WOJO dominates demos Who needs Rudolph anyway? That’s the attitude iHeartMedia’s classic hits heavy-AC outlet WLIT has after scoring its highest non-Christmas ratings in years. According the July Nielsen Audio numbers released Monday, WLIT place second, up 13 percent from June, finishing behind Hubbard’s The Drive (WDRV-FM). Generally, WLIT dominates in […]
Also: ABC 7 hires new person for its creative services programming team; Fox’s Chicago duopoly to air new game show; Devil in White City to be adapted for the small screen After leading the paper through a difficult transition as a non-profit, Chicago Reader publisher Tracy Baim is stepping down after four years at the paper and three months as […]
Star Trek actress was pioneer Last Saturday, Nichelle Nichols – who broke barriers as Lt. Uhara on the 1960s series Star Trek, died of natural causes at the age of 89 in her New Mexico home. Nicholls was born in south suburban Robbins on Dec. 28, 1932 and later moved to Chicago and attended Englewood High School and studied dance […]
NBC’s longest-running entertainment program moves to streaming after 57 years. In a stunning move, NBC announced Wednesday long-running soap Days Of Our Lives would now air exclusively on its Peacock streaming service, effective September 12. The show currently airs on both. The shift means NBC becomes the first broadcast network to exit the daytime susder business; the network was the […]
Also: Peoria’s WEEK absorbs rival’s news operation; name change ahead for CBS Media Ventures?; L.A. independent TV station ends long run [Editor’s Note: An earlier post had the incorrect title of a Beyonce song as the word “Ring” was replaced with…something else. It has since been corrected. – T.H.] It’s not a format change per se, but a slogan one: […]
Moves to a membership model instead It’s rare for a newspaper to drop its paywall, given it helps pay the bills because as you know, journalism doesn’t come free. But the Sun-Times is betting a new model would attract more readers and visitors to its website. Crain’s Chicago Business reported Thursday the paper is dropping its paywall five months after […]
The CNN castoff finds new home thanks to Nexstar You probably figured Chris Cuomo’s appearance on NewsNation’s Dan Abrams Live Tuesday night would leave to something more for the ex-CNN host down the line. It was so carefully orchestrated you’d think Abrams offered Cuomo a job right on the air. And boom – shortly after his appearance, the Nexstar-owned cable […]
The media entrepreneur comes to the rescue with an $11 million buyout Black media entrepreneur Byron Allen has been building his empire one by one and this week, he added another piece. A bankruptcy court judge in Tallahassee, Fla. approved an $11 million buyout of the Black News Channel by Allen Media Group, a company whose holdings include The Weather […]
iHeartMedia’s news network targeting African-Americans get full-time signal on Peotone station The Black Information Network has landed its first, full-time outlet in the Chicago area. Birach Broadcasting’s WMFN-AM (640) has inked a deal to carry BIN on a full-time basis. The flip came last Thursday, replacing a Spanish-language Regional Mexican format. WMFN is licensed to south suburban Peotone, a city […]
New offerings include devoted channels to Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Judge Judy; National Geographic, and Canada’s CBC as business continues to grow The growth of free, ad-supported streaming television channels – or FAST for short, isn’t just blooming – it’s exploding. On Monday, Paramount Global’s Pluto TV announced the addition of channels dedicated to classic Jeopardy! and Wheel of […]