“Peanuts” gang heads to Apple

Longtime Charles Schulz characters head to new streaming service in 2019 as viewers’ preferences shift Good grief, you’re heading to a streaming service, Chuck. Apple and DHX Media announced Friday an exclusive deal to bring Charles M. Schulz’s iconic characters to the tech company’s new streaming service, scheduled to launch in 2019 in new series and shorts. The Halifax, Nova […]

Court TV to return as a digital subchannel

New Katz network signs with Tribune Media’s WGN-TV and 21 others First, we have TV shows such as Magnum P.I. and Murphy Brown being rebooted. Now, we have whole cable networks getting the treatment. Scripps-owned Katz Broadcasting announced Monday it has acquired the intellectual rights to the Court TV name from Turner Broadcasting and re-launching it as a digital subchannel […]

Nexstar to buy Tribune Media

DFW-area company to buy Chicago-based broadcaster for record price (Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with new information.) Nexstar Broadcasting is purchasing Chicago-based Tribune Media for $4.1 billion or $46.50 a share, making them the country’s largest broadcaster. The bid is larger than the one Sinclair made for Tribune in May 2017 before the FCC derailed the deal due […]

Sinclair to divest WGN-TV? Not so fast

Sinclair selling off WPIX, WGN to win approval? Meet the Shell Answer Man. During the eight years I worked at the Better Business Bureau, yours truly has seen plenty of scams perpetrated onto by the public the organization had to warn about. But even those can’t compare to what Sinclair and the FCC are pulling. In a filing revealed on […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Bigger is not better – maybe

A rebuttal to Harry Jessell’s piece: Media consolidation has resulted in bad managerial decisions and lots of layoffs. But bad decision making knows no size. For the last eleven years, yours truly has been writing about media consolidation and how bad it is. On Friday, TVNewscheck’s Harry Jessell wrote a piece saying “bigger is better”, regarding the growing profiles of Sinclair Broadcasting […]

WLS-TV suspends Mark Giangreco for anti-Trump tweet

Second incident in a week where as someone in the media is disciplined for tweeting As first reported by Robert Feder Thursday evening, WLS-TV sports anchor and director Mark Giangreco has been suspended for “multiple weeks” after sending a tweet critical of President Donald Trump. On Sunday, the 35-year veteran of Chicago television responded to a tweet sent by a […]

T Dog’s Media Notepad: Back in the saddle again

Hello, and welcome back to T Dog Media! Here are some notable news and notes from the last two weeks: Tom Doerr has resigned as news director of Fox-owned WFLD-TV here in Chicago after just three years and six years overall at the station. Doerr is heading back to Florida to deal with personal family issues. During his tenure, ratings […]

Media Notepad: Blackhawks renew pact with WGN Radio

Also: WGN Radio renews Chicago Blackhawks pact through 2024; Paternity Court renewed two more years -WGN Radio has extended its pact with the Chicago Blackhawks through the 2023-24 season, the team announced on Thursday. The deal keeps a sports presence on WGN, after the station lost Cubs telecasts in 2014. The news comes as the Blackhawks scored the highest local […]

2016: A look ahead

  With 2015 in the rearview mirror, here are the stories to look for in 2016: 1. The spectrum auction. The upcoming – and complicated – spectrum auction the FCC is holding is likely to change the face of television as we know it. Some over-the-air stations could pack it in and call it a career as the FCC plans […]

T Dog’s Media Notepad: White Sox sink into the ratings abyss

The White Sox may not have the worst record in MLB for 2015, but earned an even-worse honor. According to Sports Business Journal, the South Siders again finished dead last among all 29 U.S. teams, with a 0.8 live-plus-same day household rating on CSN Chicago, down 29 percent from 2014, where they finished 27th out of 27 teams excluding Houston […]

Tribune buys Local TV LLC for $2.7 billion

    Tribune adds stations from Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Memphis to its stable About a year or so ago, there was speculation on whether or not Tribune Broadcasting, planning to exit Chapter 11, would stay in the broadcast business. Consider this a definite answer. Chicago-based Tribune announced Monday it was acquiring Newport, Ky.-based Local TV LLC for $2.7 billion. The […]

Fox threatens to move its programming to cable

Is this legitimate? Or nothing more than an empty threat? Who’d thought something as small as a dime-sized antenna would cause this much trouble? The industry was a buzz about on Monday at the annual National Association of Broadcasters gathering in Las Vegas after comments made by News Corp. president and COO Chase Carey in the opening session, threatening to remove Fox […]

The Radio Firing Squad: The Sequel

Eddie & JoBo, Glenn Cosby, Effie Rolfe join ranks of radio’s unemployed For the second time this year, one-day mass layoffs have rocked the radio industry (and just like before, the layoffs happened… on a Thursday.) And similar to last March when they laid off more than 70 employees, Clear Channel was front and center of these mass layoffs: an estimated […]

T Dog’s Grab Bag: Julian Nieh exits B96

Another all-local edition of the Grab Bag… including an item on a possible sale of some downstate TV stations: – Julian Nieh, one half of the duo of B96’s (WBBM-FM’s) The JNiice & Julian Morning Show, exited the station on Wednesday to pursue other interests. The seven-year veteran of the contemporary-hit station was paired with Jamar “JNiice” McNeil in January […]

Tribune pulls signals from DirecTV

  Seems like a cruel April Fools’ prank to play on your viewers. It seemed DirecTV had a deal with Tribune Broadcasting – owner of WGN-TV in Chicago and WGN America, with a new retransmission deal. Or so we thought. DirecTV announced a deal Saturday stating it reached an agreement with Tribune two days earlier to compensate them for transmitting […]