The F.C.C. has approved a major station swap between the E.W. Scripps Company & Gray Media.

Beginning today a major swap of licenses starts between television owners Gray Media & E.W. Scripps Company, this affects numerous stations across the country.  

More Specifically it affects 4 stations in Colorado.

• KKCO
• KJCT
• KKTV
• KOAA

Here is what is happening, Gray Television the owners of KKCO, KJCT-LD & KKTV has agreed to exit the Grand Junction/Montrose market, and give Scripps NBC Station KKCO & ABC Station KJCT-LD, while Gray will pick up NBC Station KOAA and merge it in with CBS Station KKTV in Colorado Springs/Pueblo. 

This swap also involves: KMVT & KSVT-LD in Twin Falls Idaho, KATC in Lafayette, LA & WSYM in Lansing, MI.     The biggest takeaway here is there will be NO AFFILIATION SWAPS as a result of this license trading.  

Both companies feel this will better strengthen, news operations and advertising opportunities at these respective stations.   

New Copyright tags at the end of newscasts, will most likely appear sometime today or early tomorrow morning, changing over of the stations websites could take a few weeks. 

It will also mean the KOAA News 5 will return to Xfinity sooner rather than later as it will be under a different contract.  

Here is an article from the Business Times about the swap: https://thebusinesstimes.com/tv-stations-kkco-kjct-moving-toward-new-ownership/ 

Anchor Jimmie Searfoss has joined 9NEWS & Channel 20.

 Anchor Jimmie Searfoss has joined the 9NEWS Sports team as the preps reporter, reporting on student athletes and high school sports across the Denver metro. 

Jimmie comes to 9NEWS & Channel 20 from KYTX---CBS19 in Tyler Texas, a 9NEWS sister station, he joined KYTX out of college.   He started on air this past weekend. 

 

  

Jimmie Searfoss  (Photo: KYTX)

 

 

   

 

   

 

 

 

 

Scripps / Comcast--Xfinity re-trans fight.

Scripps & Comcast are in a contract dispute, Comcast has removed dozens of Scripps stations across the country.  The removal happened at 3:59PM Local time (5:59PM EDT). 

In Colorado stations removed from Comcast's systems are:  KMGH--Denver7 ABC, KCDO---The Spot Denver 3 & KOAA---News5 NBC.  

No word at this time how long these stations will be off the air.   We have a counter going here on the blog as usual. 

TEGNA is still a compnay & is now a subsidiary.....

UPDATE: TEGNA,INC is now a Subsidiary of Nexstar as California, Colorado & other states have sued Nexstar & Tegna over the merger.  In essence this merger has been halted, a judge in California has ordered Nexstar to run Tegna as-is until a decision is made.

https://www.9news.com/article/money/business/judge-grants-temporary-restraining-order-pausing-nexstar-acquisition-of-tegna/73-1db7dfbe-c9a5-4151-92ac-b2c8fc612b04 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-pauses-merger-tv-station-owners-nexstar-tegna-rcna265626 

This means Nexstar can not terminate anyone or change any contracts of any Tegna station & it must leave the ad platform Permion & the Locked-On-Podcast network as-is and is not allowed to run them until the court has made a final decision, a hearing will take place on April 7th.

The court is looking at whether Nexstar has divested enough property, or if more divestitures are required, currently 6 are slated to go to another party/3 from Tegna & 3 from Nexstar.   The court is also going to look at whether Nexstar would be allowed to divest these stations to a "Partner" (IE:Mission Broadcasting, Inc), which while a separate company-relies on Nexstar heavily for operating it's stations websites & producing it's stations newscasts.  

Nexstar has not said yet who would buy the 6 stations that are to be spun off, Nexstar says that they have 6 months to spin these stations off.  

Currently the divested stations would be:

• KTVD  (My Network TV)
• WTHR (NBC)
• WCTX (My Network TV)
• WUPL (My Network TV) 
• WAVY (NBC)
• KNWA (NBC)   

  

 

  

   

 

TEGNA is no more and is now a part of Nexstar Media.

 BREAKING NEWS  

TEGNA Is now a part of Nexstar Media Group, the transaction was approved by the FCC & the DOJ this afternoon.  This means as of now 9NEWS & Channel 20 are owned by Nexstar, the owners of FOX31 & Colorado's Own Channel 2.  

When will we see any changes on air we don't know yet, it should be fairly quick though.    

And will a pending lawsuit by the state of Colorado and other states +  DirecTV even matter?  

If this is allowed to stand, Nexstar would control programing & news content in 80% of the country.  

 

Nexstar would own:60 NBC Stations, 37 ABC Stations, 50 CBS Stations, 39 My Network TV Stations, 68 CW Stations & 58 FOX Stations.    

Now Nexstar has said they will divest the following stations, although we don't know when, that could take 2years according to F.C.C Documents and to whom (That could possibly be a Nexstar side car company IE:Mission Broadcasting, Inc). 

• KTVD 
• WTHR
• WAVY
• WUPL
• KNWA
• WCTX 

In total they would own 306 local stations across the country and in most cases the newsrooms will be combined leading to massive job losses in the coming year.

 

  

 

 

 

    

 

 

Lauren Scafidi is leaving 9NEWS & Channel 20 Sunday March 8th.

9NEWS Anchor & Reporter Lauren Scafidi is leaving KUSA & KTVD, her final news cast will be Sunday Morning, she has been with the Denver duopoly since Labor Day weekend of 2023.  She is leaving Denver for a new opportunity, we will find out on Sunday and update this post at that time.

9NEWS is continuing to add newscasts.

Beginning Monday 9NEWS @ NOON expands to an entire hour, the first 30 mins on NBC & the last 30 mins on KTVD/My Network TV.   Also starting Monday 9NEWS@5 expands to an hour the first 30 mins on NBC & the last 30mins on KTVD/My Network TV. 

NBC Nightly News will remain at 5:30PM on KUSA.

This is the first time 9NEWS@5 has been an hour long since late summer of 1992 when they were still an ABC station, World News Tonight was shown at 6PM back then, because the 5PM news was a full hour, with a 4:30PM Newscast.