Nexstar Eyes KDKA
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FTVLive told you that Nexstar and Uncle Perry are looking to bounce into the Burgh.
We reported that Nexstar could be looking to buy either KDKA or WPXI.
And an industry insider emailed FTVLive and says that they believe KDKA will end up in the hands of Nexstar. Also, WPXI will go to Sinclair.
Here is their email to FTVLive:
Scott,
I wouldn't be surprised if Nexstar ends up with KDKA-TV.
KDKA-TV still makes a lot of money for Paramount and is one of their most profitable O&O's, but at number 27 they are also the 2nd smallest O&O--ahead of only WJZ-TV in Baltimore, who gives CBS access to the Washington, DC market due to proximity. Pittsburgh will also likely drop out of the top 30 by the end of the decade, with markets like Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Antonio, Austin, and Columbus growing faster than Western Pennsylvania's stagnant population.
If that sounds familiar, the last time KDKA-TV was sold individually and wasn't part of a larger corporate merger was when locally-based industrial giant Westinghouse bought the then-WDTV from the DuMont Network in 1954. WDTV made more money than the DuMont Network as a whole, and within two years DuMont was shut down.
KDKA-TV also partners with Nexstar now on state public affairs programming, seeing that Pittsburgh is the only Pennsylvania market without a Nexstar station, and is clearly committed to local news--a Nexstar hallmark.
This just makes too much sense. Yes, WPXI is for sale alongside the rest of the Cox stations owned by Apollo, but my money is on Sinclair buying them. Their news-share agreement to produce a 10 PM newscast for Sinclair's WPGH-TV dates to 2006 and has only strengthened under Apollo ownership of Cox, adding morning and early evening newscasts whenever WPXI has NBC Today or the NBC Nightly News airing on their own channel, respectively. Since the FCC apparently allows one company to own three stations in a single market outright due to the Nexstar-Tegna deal as well as the Scripps-Circle City Broadcasting deal in Indianapolis (as well as Sinclair itself having a legal triopoly for years in Salt Lake City), Sinclair could own both stations as well as WPNT without having to sell one off to a sidecar like Cunningham and move its primary subchannel programming to a subchannel of a station it keeps.
And what will all of this do if Nexstar snags KDKA-TV and Sinclair inevitably grabs WPXI? Strengthen Hearst's WTAE-TV. They've already taken advantage of Cox's decline under Apollo as well as KDKA-TV's decline since becoming a CBS O&O in the 1990s when Westinghouse bought the Tiffany Network. It could turn a market that was dominated for decades by KDKA-TV, then became one of the most competitive TV markets in the country, into a market dominated by one of Hearst's flagship stations and one that they built and signed on.
Yinzers might give some attention to WPXI--Sinclair has been in the market for decades anyways and have seen Sinclair's news product before via neighboring stations in WJAC-TV & WTOV-TV, as well as WPGH-TV's own news department before it shut down for the current news share agreement. But its likely they'll tune out KDKA-TV if Nexstar gets involved, maybe only watching for name recognition.
