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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Rosie is over and out; Canadian media consolidates further; and other items of note A lot of items to cover in this week’s Grab bag: In a move that was speculated for some time, struggling cable network OWN finally canceled The Rosie Show after five months on the air. The series’ future was questioned after Rosie O’Donnell sold her Lakeview […]
Will Nielsen ratings play in Peoria? Not anymore. Peoria-Bloomington’s commercial television stations have recently told the ratings service to take a hike. According to this TVNewscheck story, the downstate market’s two owners – Nextstar and Granite – has ditched Nielsen as their main television ratings provider. Instead, the stations are replacing the service with “qualitative research and smart sales promotion” […]
Playing in Peoria is hard these days… The owners of NBC affiliate WEEK-TV and ABC affiliate WHOI-TV in Peoria have decided to merge their operations, effective immediately. WEEK’s owner (Granite Broadcasting) took over the operations of Barrington Broadcasting-owned WHOI in a local marketing agreement, leaving just Nextstar’s CBS affiliate (WMBD-TV) as their sole local competitor. A similar scenario has played […]
– Twentieth Television has renewed The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet for a second season the Fox O&O’s, including WFLD-TV in Chicago. The program has done on many stations, especially in southern markets such as Birmingham (WBRC) and Greensboro, N.C. (WGHP). Other pickups include San Francisco (KTVU), Seattle (KCPQ-TV), and Portland, Ore. (KPTV). – Mighty Oak’s Whacked Out Sports […]
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