To say these appear to be uncertain times in local television is as big an understatement as saying Buffalo Bills General Manager Brandon Beane has had a busy week.
WGRZ-TV, the local NBC affiliate, is about to get a new owner, a new general manager and a new news director.
WIVB-TV, the local CBS affiliate, is about to get a new general manager when the current one, Brien Kennedy, retires in May.
It is always hard to predict what new owners or new general managers will change, if anything.
After Nexstar bought the station group Media General that owned WIVB five years ago, there were fears that the new owner, nicknamed Deathstar in the industry because it was known for cost-cutting, would damage the powerful local affiliate.
It never happened. WIVB is as strong now or stronger than it was in 2017.
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Staffers at WKBW-TV, the local ABC affiliate, were thrilled when the E.W. Scripps Company bought the station eight years ago and replaced the hedge fund owner that bled the station dry.
Perhaps Scripps has come to the conclusion it can't compete with the two stronger news departments in town and is just trying to live off the retransmission fees it gets from cable and satellite providers to carry its station.
“Scripps was the saving grace of Channel 7,” said anchor Keith Radford before retiring at the end of 2021. “I kissed the ground when I found out Scripps was buying us. They were the first owners in the time I was there that really invested and cared about the product and understood some of the things we had to do to try and do better.”
The WKBW recovery never happened.
After initial indications that Scripps was serious in trying to return WKBW to its former glory, the company that runs a feature “Believe in Buffalo” seems to have given up on Buffalo.
The failed predictions of what the ownership changes at WIVB and WKBW would mean illustrate it can be foolish to predict how any new owners will operate.
One WGRZ staffer told me there is concern over job security and the changing of dynamics at the station after Tegna’s pending sale.
“You are dealing with the unknown,” the staffer said.
“I don’t have a feeling one way or another,” said another staffer of the station’s ownership change. “I don’t know enough about it. It is the world we live in. It is an industry trend.”
Mindful of the faulty predictions in the past, here is what I expect to happen at WGRZ and WIVB under new leadership.
The pending sale of Tegna, which owns WGRZ and 63 other stations, to Standard General for $5.4 billion isn’t expected to get FCC approval for several months. By that time, WGRZ should have a new general manager since the current one, Jim Toellner, has announced his retirement on April 1.
Standard General is a hedge fund founded in 2007 and based in New York City. The words “hedge fund” scare everyone in the media business.
According to a Poynter Institute story, two years ago Standard General worried Tegna employees when “it posted a graphic that said Tegna stations have two times the number of employees per station compared to peers” and lagged in profitability.
The same story noted that Standard General is the largest shareholder in Bally’s, and Soo Kim, the founder partner of Standard General, wants the casino owner to be involved “in sports betting and iGaming offerings to customers on a national scale.”
The Poynter story added, “it is unknown how the purchase of Tegna would add to that plan to increase sports betting.”
In the announcement of the sale, Kim wrote: “As long-term investors in the television broadcasting industry, we have a deep admiration for Tegna and the stations it operates and, in particular, for Tegna’s talented employees and their commitment to serving their communities. We are excited to partner again with Deb McDermott, who previously spearheaded the broadcast group at Media General, where Standard General was a principal shareholder. We believe Tegna has a strong foundation and exciting prospects for continued growth as a result of the stewardship of the Board and the current management team. We look forward to building on the Company’s strong foundation and leveraging Deb’s deep industry experience to drive further growth.”
From reading that, WGRZ’s new owner appears to be relying to a degree on an executive, McDermott, who previously worked for one of WIVB’s old owners, Media General. After the sale closes, McDermott will become CEO and Kim will serve as chairman of a new board.
Standard General now owns only three stations, which appears to increase the likelihood it will heavily rely on broadcasting veterans like McDermott to run the Tegna stations.
According to sources, McDermott never came to Buffalo when Media General briefly owned WIVB. However, she should have some knowledge of the market, which could be encouraging to the WGRZ staff.
The new general manager may have as much influence on the station initially as the new owner will eventually. If I were working at WGRZ, I would hope that the new general manager would come from within, with the most obvious candidate general sales manager Mark Manders. Anyone coming from outside the market might be more apt to change things.
I would doubt the change in general managers will impact the speculation that former WKBW meteorologist Andy Parker eventually will return to WGRZ.
The decision of WIVB’s Kennedy to retire in late May shouldn’t have much impact on the station. Kennedy has only been here about two years and hasn’t had much impact on the community. He rented, rather than owned, an indication that he wasn’t planning to be here that long.
“I love Buffalo, I do not want to move, and I have no intention of going anywhere else but Channel 4,” said Santos, a Rhode Island native.
Not much has changed at WIVB in his two years, with all the fears that Nexstar would negatively impact the station proving unfounded.
Its strategy is to hire young reporters and anchors from smaller markets for middling wages, develop them for a few years before they leave for bigger markets that are perhaps in the Nexstar universe or see them leave the profession for better paying jobs with better hours.
The on-air employees that are valued the most are the news, weather and sports anchors and even they aren’t breaking the bank now that Buffalo is outside the Top 50 markets.
The biggest decision facing the next WIVB general manager is preparing for the eventual retirements of lead anchors Jacquie Walker and Don Postles. Kennedy punted that decision, but Walker and Postles can’t go on forever.
Predicting when they will exit is about as difficult as predicting the impact that the hedge fund that will soon own WGRZ will have on a station that has flourished under Toellner’s leadership.
In the parlance of a casino owner, all bets are off.
