The Long Hot Summer Begins...

Welcome back, everyone, from your Memorial Day weekend and to the start of the summer season.

Yes, we know that summer doesn’t officially start until the 21st of June, but does anyone think the proverbial starting gun for summer isn’t the arrival of Memorial Day? And this summer might be a doozy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service, apparently still has a few scientists working who study climate change. NOAA is forecasting an 80% chance that a strong “El Niño” climate pattern will develop by this July. Should that come to pass, the fear is that the world will continue to see even higher temperatures for over a year, including the oddly opposed phenomena of a weak hurricane season this year and a truly brutal winter weather season next year.

Which seems, to us at least, a pretty interesting corollary to the television business at the moment.

Given the fact that the Republican primary race in Kentucky, which just unseated Representative Thomas Massie, has been labeled as “the most expensive in history” with a projected spend of $32 Million in the contest, one can only imagine how many total political dollars are going to flow into broadcast television later this year. The fight for control of both chambers in Congress is going to be an expensive endeavor in democracy and a political advertising windfall for many local television stations.

Should this “El Niño” of political advertising come to pass, regardless of the final numbers on Steve Kornacki’s “Big Board”, the cold reality of next January will be the start of a non-political year that will be brutal for budgets and the subsequent cost-cutting efforts to meet those inevitably lower revenue projections.

And that will be on top of the ongoing consolidation in the local television business, which still seems inevitable in some form, depending on the outcome of the now-uncertain union of Nexstar and TEGNA.

And on that front, there was some interesting news this very morning, with the announcement that TEGNA, which is still doing business in the odd dimension of being owned by Nexstar (as a subsidiary) — but not allowed to be directly operated by Perry Sook and Company (per that judge’s order), has itself a new CEO.

The TEGNA board named Fox Television Stations veteran Patrick Paolini as the company’s new CEO. Paolini has a long career with Fox’s owned-and-operated stations in major markets such as New York City, Philadelphia, and, most recently, Washington, DC. He was a corporate VP of sales at Fox for the last few years, a role he left just last week. We have to assume that Mr. Paolini has been promised something to get him to leave his long tenure at Fox to join the uncertain situation at TEGNA, even if it is the CEO’s office.

The previous occupant of that office was one Mike Steib, who has been curiously quiet since Nexstar’s lightning-fast close of TEGNA back in March of this year. Steib, reportedly along with the rest of the corporate officers, submitted their resignations from their positions when they were “cashed out” of their TEGNA stock positions. But when the legal decisions of U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley dropped a “not so fast there folks” edict on the acquisition, none of the nameplates on the executive offices in the TEGNA HQ changed. That left Steib in an odd limbo, not being CEO but still around. Today’s announcement says that it will end this Friday.

Of course, for its part, Nexstar isn’t at all happy with the situation it finds itself in. The company’s legal brief, filed last week in the federal court of appeals over Judge Nunley’s injunction, states that Nexstar is in “a straitjacket”. At the same time, it has to hold TEGNA at arm’s length, as the lawsuits against the merger from DIRECTV and a significant group of Attorneys General from various states proceed to trial. It added a stark prediction about the future, stating that it is “more likely TEGNA will not survive while waiting for the transaction to be vindicated.”

So welcome aboard, Pat Paolini, who said in today’s press release that he is “honored to be joining TEGNA,” adding, “I am excited by the opportunities ahead.”

We’re pretty sure that the passengers boarding the RMS Titanic for its maiden voyage back in 1912 said pretty much the same thing.

Nevertheless, the ongoing legal battle over the ultimate fate of Nexstar’s $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA’s 64 local TV stations continues to have an oddly chilling effect on the buying and selling of other properties while the thermometer rises this summer. The pending smaller deals with Scripps and Gray swapping stations and Gray buying some stations from Byron Allen, the newly crowned king of buying his way into late-night network television, have crossed the finish line with the FCC.

But you aren’t hearing about any new deals being done these days, and it is likely you won’t through the dog days of summer ahead. At least not until there is some clarity from some corner about what the regulatory environment is likely to be after the resolution of the Nexstar-TEGNA deal, one way or the other.

The only thing we know for certain is what an unnamed executive told Matthew Belloni of Puck.News, for his “What I’m Hearing” column: “The business reinvents itself every five years’ is no longer true. The business reinvents itself every five months, if not quicker.”

That executive was talking about the movie business in Hollywood. He could have just as easily been talking about any aspect of the media business right now. Especially since, at least according to our calendar, five months from now will put us well past this coming summer of overheated discontent — and right on the eve of the November elections.

MEANWHILE… (To borrow one of Stephen Colbert’s signature bits)

Speaking of discontent, we have to note here the odd moves by Paramount/CBS in the wake of Colbert’s final edition of “The Late Show” last Thursday night. First, there was the seemingly petty decision by the “CBS Mornings” broadcast on the very next morning to completely ignore Colbert’s final broadcast, as if it didn’t happen. According to Belloni’s Puck column (again): “It wasn’t an oversight.” The ghosting of the story was a “specific directive from CBS News President Tom Cibrowski.”

If that wasn’t petty enough for the network’s overlords at Paramount, there was the perhaps even odder story of CBS trying to squash YouTube videos of Colbert’s surprise weekend appearance hosting “Only In Monroe.” That’s the same community-access cable show in Michigan that Colbert appeared on just before starting his time on CBS’s “The Late Show” some 11 years prior.

Our friend Matthew Keys over at TheDesk.Net reported this strange story arc that began with YouTube taking down videos of Colbert’s “Only In Monroe” show appearance, seemingly due to copyright claims. Admittedly, Colbert positively roasts his former network employer with the help of some celebrity friends who appear in the program. But it was never made clear what the substance of CBS’s claim to having copyright of the video actually was. By Memorial Day, it appeared that the network was backing off its purported ownership claims, at least for the time being.

And we’re all waiting to see what Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss does with (or to) the gang across West 57th street in the offices of “60 Minutes.” That’s assuming that she still has any say over that part of the CBS News operation, given the recent reporting from another correspondent at Puck. This time, it’s Dylan Byers who scooped that Bari’s stumbles on the TV side might lead to her portfolio being trimmed a bit.

Well, at least there is now room for Bari to move the “60 Minutes” crew across West 57th Street and into the CBS Broadcast Center, given all the space CBS News Radio vacated when it signed off for the final time last week.

For our money, the place where this summer is the longest and hottest one to survive will be — as the network itself used to like to say: “Only CBS.”

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