Which Stations Are Next on the Sinclair Cut List?

[Chrysler375Freeway]

After the dust settled on the dismantling of KTUL by parent Sinclair this month after two months of announcements, a meeting between employees and corporate mentioning a merge and therefore, staff reduction, individual meetings to discuss the fate of their employment (where even managers had no clue what was happening), and swinging the corporate axe with the force of an Oklahoma tornado, dismantling most of the local production, leaving only 6 and 10pm production weeknights local, and sourcing everything else from Oklahoma City, including part of a hybrid 5pm newscast, which is mostly Tulsa based, but with national and state content piped in from OKC. Mornings were replaced with a simulcast of Good Day Oklahoma from 5-7 am, with the 4:30-5am segment cancelled altogether due to KOKH not producing newscasts during that time, displacing a locally-produced morning newscast, Good Day Tulsa was canned, midday was rebranded as Good Day Oklahoma, sourced from OKC (simulcast), displacing a locally-produced midday newscast, along with 4pm and local production of 6 and 10pm on weekends being phased out in favor of KOKH-produced weekend 6 and 10pm newscasts and no 4pm newscast. In other words, nationally-produced programming or warmed-over KOKH broadcasts are airing on 8 where their old locally-produced programming/newscasts once aired, and morning and a large chunk of production staff being canned once the dust settled. It begs the question: which markets are or could be next? I had discovered all of this on FTVLive.

P.S. Anyone with a FTVLive paid subscription on Patreon can tell me the details of some of the Patreon-exclusive stories, as I have Patreon, but no paid subscription.

[vdeane]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

I say local because the production is local as opposed to national, although in this case, only select newscasts are local, like weekday 6 and 10pm. As for this change: I took to watching NewsON newscasts of both KOKH and KTUL, and in one newscast of the latter, someone in master control forgot to change the weather graphic from Fox 25 Storm Watch to First Warning. In both newscasts, the stories in the morning, midday and some of the 5pm newscast were heavily slanted towards OKC, making it obvious where it originates when you watch KTUL. In both Tulsa and OKC, the Griffin-owned CBS affiliates are pretty strong ratings-wise, and the NBC product from Scripps (Tulsa) and Nexstar (OKC) are pretty good. Once you hit ABC, that's where the differences begin. KOCO is doing well, while KTUL has been going downhill since Sinclair bought Allbritton. Fox-wise, KOKI is improving, while KOKH has never been that strong in the ratings. If they wanted to merge so bad, it should have been the other way around (KOKH merging with KTUL and the combined operation in Tulsa) considering how weak KOKH is in the ratings.

[The Nature Boy]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

WJLA in DC still has a decent amount of local news. It seems to be an outlier within Sinclair though.

[vdeane]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

WJLA in DC still has a decent amount of local news. It seems to be an outlier within Sinclair though.

It's also an outlier in the DC area in that it seems to consider its local area to primarily be northern Virginia rather than the DC area as a whole.  Still had more national-level stuff than would be typical for non-Sinclair stations the one time I watched, however.

[WillWeaverRVA]

I'm waiting for them to drop WRLH in Richmond. It's a Fox affiliate, but it does very little on its own and their local news programs are produced by WWBT (a NBC affiliate owned by Gray, which curiously recently dropped all their NBC branding).

[Chrysler375Freeway]

I'm waiting for them to drop WRLH in Richmond. It's a Fox affiliate, but it does very little on its own and their local news programs are produced by WWBT (a NBC affiliate owned by Gray, which curiously recently dropped all their NBC branding).

From what I saw, the separate studios for WRLH moved their operations to an office suite elsewhere in the city. For some time, master control has been operated by another station owned by the company outside the market, in either Baltimore or at the large Columbus hub, mirroring similar moves by KDNL and WTVZ, where KDNL presumably moved its master control to Columbus and vacated their longtime Cole Street studio in favor of an office tower in Richmond Heights (because Sinclair would rather let the old studio building rot than try to build a second independent news operation for KDNL (even the weather cut-ins during Good Morning America come from Columbus), AND the move to leave its studio that they've had since day 1, hour 1 make the station less valuable to a potential buyer, meaning the new owners would need to start over due to Sinclair basically running KDNL into the ground), and WTVZ moved its office to the Audacy Hampton Roads radio stations' office, and it's not known where master control originates. It's becoming a pattern here: they vacate their studios in favor of office spaces in office buildings in the same city or a different one, and then farm the master control off to another station. WUCW was recently the subject of cuts, but the details are still murky. Some have speculated that WKEF/WRGT will be cut, and they will finish the job when it comes to destroying WEYI/WSMH.

[SectorZ]

I appreciate living somewhere where two of the four network affiliates are owner-operated. Our Fox station was until the late-2010's or so.

Even our PBS affiliate is the flagship station of the system.

[algorerhythms]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

WJLA in DC still has a decent amount of local news. It seems to be an outlier within Sinclair though.

It's also an outlier in the DC area in that it seems to consider its local area to primarily be northern Virginia rather than the DC area as a whole.  Still had more national-level stuff than would be typical for non-Sinclair stations the one time I watched, however.

It's been weird seeing what Nextar has done to WHAG since NBC dropped it. Despite being licensed in Hagerstown, it now only seems to only cover northern Virginia news and nothing else.

Relatedly, I now realize I haven't watched NBC at all since at least 2020 (not that there's likely anything worth watching on it), since the only time I see any network broadcasting is when I'm visiting family in Maryland, and as far as I know the cable system there still hasn't picked up another NBC station to replace WHAG (at least I didn't notice an NBC station in the listings the last time I was there). I don't watch any network broadcasting here, because I got rid of cable TV a while ago and where I'm currently living I can't pick up any channels on an antenna.

[rickmastfan67]

I remember when WPGH-FOX-53 here in Pittsburgh still had their own local news at night (10PM).  I loved their full 30m of Sports coverage on Sunday nights which even had a dedicated NASCAR segment (when there were races that weekend).

However, they dumped their own crew broadcasting it, in favor of having WPXI-NBC-11's teams do it for them now.  So, at least we didn't lose the local aspect of it.  But we did lose the 30m of Sunday sports coverage, as it's now streamlined for mostly only Pittsburgh sports for about 5-8m.

[tmoore952]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

WJLA in DC still has a decent amount of local news. It seems to be an outlier within Sinclair though.

It's also an outlier in the DC area in that it seems to consider its local area to primarily be northern Virginia rather than the DC area as a whole.  Still had more national-level stuff than would be typical for non-Sinclair stations the one time I watched, however.

Here's a single data point from my observations, being off this week.

We had a minor earthquake near Rockville MD at 12:50 AM on Tuesday Jan 2, 2024.

The NBC affiliate in DC has local news from 11 AM-12 Noon. The ABC affiliate (WJLA) has local news from 12 Noon-1 PM.
So it it possible to watch both (or parts of both) if you are so inclined, which I did on the 2nd.

The NBC affiliate had the earthquake as one of the 2 top stories.
The ABC affiliate (WJLA) did not mention it until 15 to 20 minutes into their broadcast, after many other stories.

[US 89]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

I have never had this experience watching KUTV in Salt Lake City. On a lot of programming on the other local stations, any stories involving the Mormon church tend to get some extra time and very careful writing to make sure the church doesn't get put in a negative light on other stations, and also seem to have a lot more feel-good stories as opposed to a more neutral and hard-news style. KSL is especially guilty of that as they are owned by the Mormon church itself.

Of course, I personally knew one of KUTV's former anchors before she got a promotion out of state, and I've met two of their meteorologists. So I might be just a little biased.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

Sinclair has local news?  The (very) few times I've had the uh, pleasure, of watching a "local" newscast on a Sinclair station, it was basically national news with a couple local stories thrown in for flavor.  The only difference from a cable news network was the local weather and the fact that news wasn't 24/7.

WJLA in DC still has a decent amount of local news. It seems to be an outlier within Sinclair though.

It's also an outlier in the DC area in that it seems to consider its local area to primarily be northern Virginia rather than the DC area as a whole.  Still had more national-level stuff than would be typical for non-Sinclair stations the one time I watched, however.

Here's a single data point from my observations, being off this week.

We had a minor earthquake near Rockville MD at 12:50 AM on Tuesday Jan 2, 2024.

The NBC affiliate in DC has local news from 11 AM-12 Noon. The ABC affiliate (WJLA) has local news from 12 Noon-1 PM.
So it it possible to watch both (or parts of both) if you are so inclined, which I did on the 2nd.

The NBC affiliate had the earthquake as one of the 2 top stories.
The ABC affiliate (WJLA) did not mention it until 15 to 20 minutes into their broadcast, after many other stories.

I wonder how many of those stories were national stories.

[ZLoth]

Not to defend Sinclair, but the over-the-air broadcast market is, in my opinion, in terrible shape for both television and radio. The stations are highly dependent on the local advertising revenue which has been hit hard over the past few years. To make up for it, they are trying to increase the per-subscriber retransmission fees charged by the multichannel providers (cable, streaming, satellite), and are receiving pushback. (There is currently a retransmission dispute involving DirecTV and TEGNA that has been going on since December 1st with no end in sight). This has also meant a consolidation of operations with the stations in the smaller markets being run by the master control in the larger markets. I'm concerned about this because both radio and television are used to communicate information during a emergency or severe weather situation. If the master control is a distance away, then only the information in a EAS broadcast is sent to viewers and listeners.

[Chrysler375Freeway]

Not to defend Sinclair, but the over-the-air broadcast market is, in my opinion, in terrible shape for both television and radio. The stations are highly dependent on the local advertising revenue which has been hit hard over the past few years. To make up for it, they are trying to increase the per-subscriber retransmission fees charged by the multichannel providers (cable, streaming, satellite), and are receiving pushback. (There is currently a retransmission dispute involving DirecTV and TEGNA that has been going on since December 1st with no end in sight). This has also meant a consolidation of operations with the stations in the smaller markets being run by the master control in the larger markets. I'm concerned about this because both radio and television are used to communicate information during a emergency or severe weather situation. If the master control is a distance away, then only the information in a EAS broadcast is sent to viewers and listeners.

WEYI staff had raised concerns when the cuts happened there due to the impact on major events. As for one other hubbing of MC: Nexstar hubbed the master control from five places: Springfield (MA, not IL), Spartanburg, Indianapolis, Dallas and Denver. And the cuts at Sinclair: If they are REALLY bleeding that much money, they need to sell stations and clean house at the corporate level from the top down, not cut local newscasts.