Is Local Television News Going the Way of SportsCenter?

If this Sinclair-Tribune chatter happens, that'll get Sinclair into a lot of real markets at good shops - Denver, KC, Chicago, STL, LA, they'd have to sell a Seattle station.

People didn't think Nexstar would take over Media General/Lin last year. They did and that has wrecked plenty of medium market stations.

 

My company was set to merge with Media General last year before Nexstar stepped in and blew up that deal. Still not sure if we dodged a bullet there. It's a good company... but if we're looking to sell, god knows where we end up. (Management insists that they're not looking to sell, which is kind of a tough argument to make after a deal just fell through.)

 

The smart play for your company (and mine) would be NOT to sell until after the 2020 political cycle.

Sell in 2021.

Five years from now, the method of delivery for news may be different than now and the political money from PACs may not be higher than it is now.

 

If you think the industry is going to enter a secular decline sell now. Trying to time the right moment to get out is really hard. Witness newspapers.

 

The crazy thing about continued deregulation (duoopolies etc.) is that the original deregulation was aimed at helping mom and pops sell out to corporations at a decent price. (it was sold as a way to bring the resources of bigger companies to smaller markets, instead they're just choking them out). Now the media market has become so small, you'll have single companies controlling all of the local news in a market.
Ya' know - dueling meteorologists...where the "loser" of the previous day's forecast is "punished" in some way, might be a fun watch.

 

My understanding of the rules on the same company owning more than one television in a market is permitted. But it is prohibited to combine two of the top four ranked stations, which in practice means that you can combine ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates. But the owner of one of the top four stations can buy the fifth rated station, which is almost invariably the WB affiliate. Do you know if that is correct?

 

No doubt it has. Nexstar just bought the area's top station. I expected mass casualties and it didn't happen. In fact Nexstar appears to be expanding (two new studios in addition to their headquarters and a host of new on-air talent)

 

The standard is a little more complicated than that, as I recall. It has to do with percentage of the market the company is reaching. Just for example, when Gannett bought Belo it had to sell stations in Phoenix and St. Louis because they would have had duopolies in markets where they also owned the newspaper. Somehow the stations combined with the paper became a problem.

 

Not boring. (It's not boring.)

Lonely. Or so they told me.

 

Not to sound flip (yeah, that's a first here), but, there's that much news in New Hampshire in non-primary years?

 

Depends on the market size as well. For small and medium markets, the FCC doesn't care if ownership has control of 2 or 3 stations.

One small market I worked in 20 years ago had four different newsrooms. Two made money. I worked at the number 2. Now the number 2 is made up on NBC, ABC and FOX. They do 6 hours of news, the main slots on the NBC, the 4:30 pm and 5:30 pm on ABC and the 9 pm on FOX. Same news but with different graphics.

When I was there, we did a whopping 2.5 hours each day.