"And now for something completely different"

We have gotten feedback from some of our regular readers that they may not always be in the mood for our longer "write-thrus” (as the AP wire used to call them). These folks suggest that perhaps some shorter dispatches from us might be a nice break from time to time. Never let it be said that we didn’t listen to our readers’ feedback, and so we present you today with an alternate version of “The Topline.”

Think of it as “The Headlines from The Topline.”

Dateline: Washington! (Urgent sound effect goes here. Use your imagination.)

The FCC appears to have entered its spring-cleaning mode now. After suddenly sweeping out the approval of the Nexstar-TEGNA deal last week, it moved this week to approve the transfer of three TV station licenses from Allen Media to Gray. The Atlanta-based Gray now adds two Indiana properties (WTHI in Terre Haute and WLFI in Lafayette) and one in Mississippi (WTVA in Tupelo) to its existing roster of 180 stations. Seven other Allen Media stations were part of the original deal with Gray announced last August—no word from the commission on why they weren’t approved alongside the initial trio.

Also, Dateline: Washington! (Another hit of the SFX)

Punchbowl News reports that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz isn’t happy about the fact that the FCC approved the Nexstar acquisition of TEGNA without a formal vote of the commissioners. We found that a bit funny too. Speaking of funny, we found some humor buried in the FCC’s approvals of the “transfer of control” actions for all TEGNA stations. There, we could see the actual licensees named for each television station. Most were just the station’s name as an LLC, such as “WFAA-TV, LLC,” but a few names were interesting holdovers from long-gone group owners. For instance, “Multimedia Holdings Corporation” is a throwback to Multimedia, the Greenville, SC-based company that owned newspaper, radio, and television stations, as well as syndicated programming (including “The Phil Donahue Show”) until 1995. After a deal for General Electric to acquire Multimedia didn’t materialize, Gannett acquired the company in 1995 for $1.7 billion. Another name from broadcasting history was Pacific & Southern, a radio group that operated until the late 1970s. Finally, the Belo name appears on the list of TEGNA licensees. Just before TEGNA was created in 2015, when Gannett spun off its television stations from the core newspaper business (now known as USA Today), Gannett acquired Belo’s 20 television stations from the Texas media company, which was known for owning the Dallas Morning News. None of these names from the past really mean much of anything; they were just legal entities that were listed on the station license documents. Ultimately, all were owned by TEGNA, which is—for now at least—operating as a subsidiary of Nexstar.

Dateline: New York City! (SFX again)

As the initial shock and mourning for the announced end of CBS Radio News begins to subside a bit, are we the only folks wondering why Paramount-Skydance didn’t try to sell the radio news network rather than just shutting it down? After all, the network had some 700 radio stations as clients, and though it was reportedly not making a lot of money, surely it was a business that someone might have taken off of David Ellison’s hands for, say, “a fistful of dollars”? Is it possible that Bari Weiss never explored the possibility of selling rather than slashing the place where, as Keith Olbermann correctly noted on his “Countdown” podcast, “broadcast journalism was born.” Olbermann also opines that Ms. Weiss’s mission is not to save CBS News, but rather to destroy it. With the network’s ratings sinking faster than our war-impacted retirement investments balance, we can’t argue with that conclusion. Meanwhile, Oliver Darcy in last night’s edition of his Status newsletter labelled the ratings situation at CBS News as “catastrophic.”

Dateline: Philadelphia! (Maybe the “Move Closer To Your World” theme music here)

Speaking of bad situations, one has to wonder just what is going on at ABC O&O and long-time market leader WPVI in the “City of Brotherly Love? Rick Gevers and his eponymous newsletter sent out the news at the beginning of this week that “veteran” news director Tom Davis, who had led “Action News” for some 15 years, went out for a meeting and never came back to work. ABC O&O chief Chad Matthews then put out an email announcing Davis “had made the decision to leave 6ABC.” (Sounds to us like maybe the decision was made for him.) The departure now leaves the station with no news director or general manager. WPVI’s previous long-time GM, Bernie Prazenica, retired from the station after 17 years, back in January. One might assume that the O&O chief (Matthews) decided to hand now-former ND Davis his walking papers, rather than stick a new GM with that unpleasant chore. But what’s wrong inside 4100 City Avenue is what many are now wondering about.

Dateline: Indianapolis! (The NCAA Tournament theme from CBS would go here)

And from the place the aforementioned Rick Gevers calls home, we suspect there have to be a lot of smiles here in the NCAA’s offices this week. The Hollywood Reporter says the Nielsen ratings show that the numbers for both the Men’s basketball tournament on CBS/TBS et al., and the Women’s tournament on ESPN/ABC are up year over year. The first two rounds of the Men’s tournament averaged just over 10 million viewers, while the Women’s tournament had games peaking at just under 1 million viewers.

Proud to say we were among both numbers for a good portion of Thursday through Monday. Even if our brackets were a total bust by the end of Friday.

Those are our headlines for now. We’ll be back here with our next big story on The Topline by week’s end.

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