WGN America rebrand to News nation March 1

[LMckin]

WGN American will disappear from many cable and satellite service

as it will be rebrand to News nation an all news network on March 1

WGN America will change its name to NewsNation, moving to compete with CNN, Fox, MSNBC

 

[satjay]

Had a feeling that was going to happen.

 

[SamCdbs]

"What the USA really needs is another all-news channel that claims to be 'objective'". - - said by nobody never.

It seems Nexstar just got WGN-A along with all the local stations when it bought Tribune and really doesn't know what to do with it. The days of the "general rerun" channel seem numbered, due to many factors: similar programming available on streaming, similar programming available for free on diginets, and the simple fact that most everybody who wants to watch 20 year old reruns probably did so already. But yet another all news outlet from Big Media? Pass.

Ironically, Nexstar stations are often at the bottom of the ratings for their local news programs. That is the situation in my market, and in most others I am familiar with.

 

[NGeorge]

Honestly I like NewsNation and I do hope they succeed. I've found myself watching it in the evenings, and set a recording to keep the most recent episode.

The problem with TV news is that it is almost all laced with opinion. I just want an hour long newscast with headlines, updates on major stories, check-ins on weather and sports, and political reporting that is straightforward without a ton of opinions I don't care about. A step above what HLN used to be, but a couple steps below the opinion junk that fills cable news today. Think of a decently produced local newscast on a national scale.

For those who remember... NewsNation reminds me of the All News Channel but with much better production values (that was a Hubbard product that I believe became ReelzChannel years ago). I also liked ANC back in the day.

I do wish them the best and hope there doesn't start to get "opinion creep" and that it truely can stay fairly close to the middle.

 

[N5XZS]

Since we have Nextstar stations in Albuquerque's TV market.

I wonder if plan to put News Nation on Nextstar's stations on its subchannels fulltime.

If so that will be since we got KASY-DT and might just drop My Network TV, replaced with News Nation full time.

Can that be done this way?

 

[TRG]

The problem with TV news is that it is almost all laced with opinion. I just want an hour long newscast with headlines, updates on major stories, check-ins on weather and sports, and political reporting that is straightforward without a ton of opinions I don't care about.

I agree. I just want the news reported. I'm smart enought to form my own opinion. But all we seem to get is spin these days. 24/7 news agencies that want to be first to report dirt without any fact checking. That's why I no longer tune in. I typically go to newsola.com for my updates. It's easy to spot the spin and opinion pieces and ignore them. I'm afraid that for the most part journalism is dead in America. There are some exceptions but they are few and far between.

 

[lparsons21]

I agree. I just want the news reported. I'm smart enought to form my own opinion. But all we seem to get is spin these days. 24/7 news agencies that want to be first to report dirt without any fact checking. That's why I no longer tune in. I typically go to newsola.com for my updates. It's easy to spot the spin and opinion pieces and ignore them. I'm afraid that for the most part journalism is dead in America. There are some exceptions but they are few and far between.

I don’t spend much time with news channels either, for pretty much the same reasons you give. I read the news because most of the articles, even opinion pieces more often than not provide source links. Sometimes those links lead you down the rabbit hole, but not always and it is easy to figure out when they do.

 

[Cobra611]

Oh great...where am I going to watch "Blue Bloods" reruns

 

[Justin Hill]

The days of the "Superstation" on cable TV are long gone...channels like WOR-TV 9 (now WWOR-TV 9) of New York City, WTBS 17 (now WPCH-TV 17) of Atlanta, and now WGN 9 of Chicago are no longer staples of cable TV lineups (thanks to cordcutters/cordnevers, cable TV is a dying form of entertainment, since people are using streaming services and are back to using TV antennas to find their local programs).

 

[Howard Simmons]

Oh great...where am I going to watch "Blue Bloods" reruns

ION network has them and of course CBS All Access.

 

[TNGuy84]

I think what helped kill off the Superstaton is that they all played the same programming as a bunch of other channels. One only has to flip a few channels before they're shown the same show on a different channel. Like someone mentioned about Blue Bloods, Law and Order seems to be another show that's overplayed on every channel.

 

[SamCdbs]

The "superstations" existed because they exploited a loophole in the FCC regs and the law at the time. They were legally just a broadcast station and a cable company carrying them was no different than a cable company that pulled in a broadcast station from another town. The catch was they were not entitled to be paid for the signal, and had to live on ad revenue alone.
Eventually the system caught up with them and they all converted to being regular cable channels. Such as WTBS becomes TBS and WGN becomes WGN America.

What we are seeing now is the death of the "general rerun" channel. All have about the same formula. Off-network reruns, with an occasional "original" series. The same reruns over and over and over and over.

With the networks producing less and less filmed shows, the stream is drying up. Plus streaming can provide (commercial free and on demand) similar or better fare, while the diginets are 99% the same M-O, off-network reruns, albeit generally a little older, and the diginets are free.

I think the next 5-8 year will see plenty of attempts to convert these types of channels into other things (personally I think News Nation is a stupid idea), merge these channels, or simply put them on auto pilot without any attempt at being relevant. Several will shut down.

 

[SamCdbs]

The Hill is sold for $130 million to local news powerhouse Nexstar

The political news hub's current owner will be moving to new business opportunities as the The Hill folds into Nexstar's massive network of news outlets.

www.yahoo.com

Nexstar buys the inside the beltway newspaper The Hill. Aim is to shore up NewsNation and the local news. Previous management will retain "some editorial control".

IMHO, The Hill is a very niche publication, for political junkies and DC insiders. It leans left, but not to the extreme.

 

[Jillian2]

Oh great...where am I going to watch "Blue Bloods" reruns

Watch Blue Blood reruns on the ION Channel.

 

[Justin Hill]

This is nothing new, we've seen it on basic cable before, starting in the mid-late 1990s, a phenomenon called "channel drift" (a.k.a. network decay), where cable networks shift from one set of program categories to another set of categories, like in the case of MTV during the 1990s, when they focused less and less on music videos and focused more on low-class reality programs, like Road Rules, MTV Cribs, Pimp My Ride, Jackass, etc. Sometimes the channel drift is so dire, that it leads to a name change for network, like The Sci-Fi Channel changing its name to SYFY or The Nashville Network becoming The National Network, then Spike TV, before eventually becoming The Paramount Network. There's nearly hundreds of examples at this point, I can not seem to go through them all...

 

[SamCdbs]

Relative to “channel drift”, this is certainly a thing. My explanation for a lot of it is, as channels were being created, mostly back in the 90s, people said “hey, how about an all * channel?” Which sounded good until everyone realized that all of the A level * was still on the OTA networks and the mainline cable channels, and they were left with niche stuff and drifted into reruns.

I will always say that the killing of TNN was a huge mistake. That channel, while, yes, it skewed rural, old, and poor, had a real presence that it has not had sense.

WGNA to NN is a little more than “channel drift” IMHO. It is the abandonment of what, IMHO, is a dying format, the “general rerun” channel and trying to come up with something to avoid just shutting down and walking away from all those carriage slots on all those cable systems. This is not the last we will see as this genre slowly dies.

 

[Justin Hill]

Relative to “channel drift”, this is certainly a thing. My explanation for a lot of it is, as channels were being created, mostly back in the 90s, people said “hey, how about an all * channel?” Which sounded good until everyone realized that all of the A level * was still on the OTA networks and the mainline cable channels, and they were left with niche stuff and drifted into reruns.

I will always say that the killing of TNN was a huge mistake. That channel, while, yes, it skewed rural, old, and poor, had a real presence that it has not had sense.

WGNA to NN is a little more than “channel drift” IMHO. It is the abandonment of what, IMHO, is a dying format, the “general rerun” channel and trying to come up with something to avoid just shutting down and walking away from all those carriage slots on all those cable systems. This is not the last we will see as this genre slowly dies.

Cable TV itself is dying a slow-as-molasses death as people cut the cord and more people depend on streaming and digital broadcast TV for their news, weather, sports and entertainment needs...
Soon, most cable TV providers will just have to rely on broadband internet sales to stay relevant...

 

[Captain Midnight]

Soon, most cable TV providers will just have to rely on broadband internet sales to stay relevant...

That will drop too with more competition from different sources of high speed internet popping up.

 

[ty1273]

NewsNation is a train wreck. They state unbiased coverage but they are just another arm of the right wing media. Uncle Perry is going to sink $10 million to get the word out. He said nobody knows about his fine channel thus the pathetic ratings.

 

[Justin Hill]

NewsNation is a train wreck. They state unbiased coverage but they are just another arm of the right wing media. Uncle Perry is going to sink $10 million to get the word out. He said nobody knows about his fine channel thus the pathetic ratings.

I tend to avoid the right-wing media like the plague, and instead watch media that covers all other sides of an issue.