Why The F Are We Surprised Anymore?

This week has brought a series of developments in the television business that we have decided to group under the same question. It is not so much that the developments themselves are that surprising, but rather the reactions to each that we find ourselves asking the same question about:

“Why The F (word) Are We Surprised Anymore?”

(Yes, we could use the entire F-word, but we’re trying to cut down on the amount of cursing we do in public. It’s already far too much.)

So let’s take a look at the week’s industry news items that fall into the “WTFAWSA” category:

Surprise #1: The Mass Firing In Indianapolis

The Federal Communications Commission decided to approve the acquisition of Scripps-owned WRTV, the ABC affiliate in Indy, by Circle City Broadcasting, the owner of WISH-TV and WNDY, the 25th largest market’s CW and MyTV affiliates. Circle City leadership held a staff meeting at WRTV on Tuesday, and by the end of it, about 95% of WRTV’s staff had learned that their jobs were being eliminated. While we certainly join everyone in feeling sad for so many people who suddenly find themselves out of work, we have to ask: Did this really come as a surprise to anyone paying attention?

This pattern of how things go after one TV station in a market is acquired by another isn’t really new anymore. Except for the grandiose promises provided to the aforementioned FCC of “investing more in local news” in order to get such acquisitions approved, these combinations almost always result in job losses. The whole business case for combining stations is to reduce expenses in the combined operation.

Call it “streamlining”, “synergy,” or whatever business school term is in vogue at the moment. It’s always about doing more with less.

One interesting question post the WRTV acquisition is what will become of that station’s home on North Meridian Street, now that Channel 6 is moving a few doors down the street into the WISH-TV complex. The former home of WRTV also houses the Scripps master control hub, which remains operational and controls switching for nearly all of the stations owned by the Cincinnati-based group. We hear that Scripps has a deal that will give it a year to determine just where it might relocate its station hub.

Surprise #2: The Total Travesty in Tulsa

If there has been one group owner who has written the playbook on combining stations under one roof and slashing the payroll in the process, it would be Sinclair Broadcast Group. The saga in Tulsa is just another example of executing that playbook. Sinclair acquired Tulsa’s KTUL as part of its 2013 acquisition of Allbritton Communications and its eight local ABC stations. The deal made Sinclair the largest owner and operator of ABC affiliates in the nation. In an interesting twist, the FCC held up Sinclair’s acquisition of the Allbritton stations for nearly a year. At the time, the FCC expressed concerns over (wait for it) “broadcast transactions that propose new combinations of sharing arrangements and financial entanglements between a dominant licensee and a so-called sidecar entity.” In three markets, Harrisburg, PA, Birmingham, AL, and Charleston, SC, Sinclair already owned a station and was adding a second; the FCC required either the sale of a station or the termination of a local marketing agreement (LMA) or shared services agreement (SSA) to approve the transaction.

Back to the present day in market #61, where Sinclair has just acquired Tulsa’s Fox affiliate, KOKI, from the very-short-lived Rincon Broadcasting Group, marking the sixth different owner for “Fox 23” in the last two decades. (Extra points if you can name them all.) A short time back, Sinclair had hollowed out the local news operation at the once-dominant KTUL, known as “Total 8 Tulsa” in its heyday, shifting much of it to co-owned KOKH, the Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City. Now, with the full acquisition of KOKI in Tulsa, Sinclair has announced it is moving the few remaining folks in the KTUL studio on Lookout Mountain to the newly acquired KOKI building. Also, during the consolidation, as it has in other markets, Sinclair moved the Fox programming from KOKI’s channel 23.1 signal to the 8.2 subchannel of KTUL's signal.

(If you’re still wondering, those six owners would be Clear Channel, Newport Television, Cox Media, Imagicomm, Rincon, and now Sinclair.)

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, the ever intrepid Scott Jones of FTVLive fame reports that Sinclair is following up on its latest moves in Tulsa with a similar situation in Washington, where it has acquired Rincon’s KIMA, the CBS affiliate in Yakima. That station’s local newsroom has been decimated, with most of the staff cut, as Sinclair is now having KEPR, their CBS station in Pasco, Washington, provide local news programming for KIMA. While both Yakima and Pasco are technically both in market #114, about 85 miles separate the two cities. No immediate word on how many folks will be losing their jobs as a result of this latest stop on the ever-shrinking local news express.

One thing is for sure, it certainly won’t be the last one.

Surprise #3 (and the biggest one): The Novel Legal Theory from Nexstar

After a federal judge slapped a 14-day temporary restraining order on Nexstar for its lightning quick close on acquiring rival TEGNA, especially because that happened just one day after legal challenges were announced to the $6.2 billion deal being approved by both the FCC and the Department of Justice, Nexstar’s legal eagles have filed a response to the judge, which states, in so many words, a sentiment echoed in the 1972 R&B hit song by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, “It’s too late to turn back now.”

Nexstar contends that it and TEGNA have taken “...many typical steps that may not have been apparent to the Court when it issued its TRO. It is particularly difficult to freeze integration that was already taking place, unlike a conventional hold-separate order. Complying with certain aspects of the TRO is impossible and could jeopardize Nexstar and the Tegna assets the Court seeks to preserve.” So they told the judge, We can’t comply with your order because…well, Your Honor, that horse is out of the barn.

In a document that looks more heavily redacted than one from the “Epstein files,” Nexstar’s argument is, that because the retransmission agreements that were in place for the TEGNA stations were immediately changed (with a few short-term exceptions) to now be governed by the agreements in place between Nexstar stations and the various multichannel video programning distributors (aka “MVPDs.”) The MVPDs include cable systems, both big and small, along with the direct-to-home satellite providers, DISH and DIRECTV, the latter being the party suing Nexstar over the merger, which in turn led to the judge’s temporary restraining order in the first place.

The Nexstar response includes many other examples of how the TRO is definitely making life impossible for both Nexstar and its newly formed TEGNA subsidiary. In fact, complying with the judge’s order could imperil TEGNA’s previously announced plans to implement a cost-savings plan, valued at $90 to $100 million, which is already underway and will “eliminate newsroom positions and support positions, consolidate station operations and management, and develop technologies like AI automation.” We certainly can’t slow that down now, Judge.

Apparently, the one thing that could be reversed was the addition of the animated Nexstar logo to the copyright tag that was quickly added to all of the TEGNA stations’ newscasts last week.

The legal challenges so far appear to be mostly just speed bumps that Nexstar CEO Perry Sook will have to navigate on the road to getting all the corporate synergies in place that will make the $90-$100 million in costs TEGNA was going to reduce look like the proverbial “chicken feed.” And yes, more people are likely to lose their jobs on the way down that road. Among them are those in the TEGNA executive suite who we’re told have been missing in action as all of these “unstoppable” changes have been playing out.

As we asked off the top: Why The F Are We Surprised Anymore? By Anything?

Maybe President Harry Truman put it best when he said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

Remember, he was the guy who had the sign on his Oval Office desk that read “The buck stops here.”

-30-