NorthEast Radio Watch 12/1/2025: Big Changes on TV

In this week’s issue… Scripps stations face takeover – Sinclair moves more affiliations – CT stations sold – Maine AM surrendered – Remembering WVBR’s Shapiro, WABC’s Morgan 

By SCOTT FYBUSH

[Editor’s note: Thanks for your patience as we work through a few complex weeks. As you’ll see later in the column, there are changes happening behind the scenes, as we announce the likely end of the Tower Site Calendar after the upcoming 25th edition. And we’re living in an industry full of changes, as you’ll read in our lead story. We’ll be back on a weekly schedule for the next three weeks of December, news permitting.]

*It’s hard to process just how fast the world of broadcast and network TV is changing right now. Later this week, the FCC will begin accepting comments about the proposed Nexstar acquisition of TEGNA, a move that could significantly consolidate the remaining TV newsrooms in markets such as Buffalo (Nexstar’s WIVB/WNLO and Tegna’s WGRZ) and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (Tegna’s WNEP and Nexstar’s WBRE/WYOU).

Against that backdrop, Sinclair’s proposal to acquire Scripps’ TV holdings for more than $600 million doesn’t look quite as enormous.

While it will combine existing newsrooms in several other markets including Cincinnati, West Palm Beach and Denver, its biggest effect in NERW-land would be in Buffalo, where Scripps’ ABC affiliate, WKBW (Channel 7), would pair up with Sinclair’s Fox affiliate, WUTV (Channel 29), and its MyNetwork outlet, WNYO-TV (Channel 49). But since WUTV doesn’t currently do local news, a merger with WKBW could, if anything, add a 10 PM newscast in a town where the only current news at that hour comes from WNLO.

(Through its Ion Media unit, Scripps also owns several other stations around the region, including Ion O&Os in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Portland and Scranton; since none run local news, there wouldn’t be much of an affect from merging those with Sinclair operations in most of those markets.)

In these unusual times, however, these merger proposals have taken on not only business and journalism implications. They’ve also become political, with the White House itself weighing in on the possible changes in ownership rules that would allow for deals like Nexstar-TEGNA to go through.