Florida News Center

(edited from SFLTV.com) - West Palm Beach’s WPBF petitioned the FCC and won exclusivity rights against Miami’s WPLG in Belle Glade, Delray Beach, Greenacres City, Palm Beach Gardens, Riviera Beach, Wellington and West Palm Beach to carry the ABC network.

WPLG was available in those markets on the Comcast system (on channels between 20-30) alongside WPBF but WPBF sought a waiver from the FCC that prevented cable operators from deleting duplicate programming of “significantly viewed” stations. The FCC granted the waiver because no opposition to the petition was received (did any one out there even know of it?) and because it found that WPLG was no longer “significantly viewed” over the air.

According to FCC rules for a TV station be considered significantly viewed it must have 3% share of total weekly viewing hours in the market and 25% net weekly circulation share….Cont….

(from AL.com) – Sinclair Broadcast Group says it has reached an agreement in which 9 of its TV stations — including WEAR TV, which serves Pensacola, Fla. and Mobile, Ala. — will remain ABC affiliates into 2015.

The deal covers TV stations in Missouri, Ohio, the Carolinas, Alabama, Florida, West Virginia and Illinois. It replaces a contract that had expired Dec. 31 and was extended to March 31….Cont….

(from BroadcastingCable.com) – Sinclair Broadcast Group and ABC have extended negotiations over affiliate agreements once again, pushing the would-be deadline back to March 31. The two parties continue to negotiate the terms of the agreements, which were set to expire Dec. 31, 2009, and have been extended several times. ABC has been pushing its affiliates to share programming costs as part of their agreements with the networks. Some station groups have chafed, and some deem it reasonable.

(from ABCNews.com) - Toyota dealers in five southeast states have pulled their commercials off ABC TV local affiliates, complaining about the coverage of Toyota safety problems by ABC News and its chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross. 

The ad agency representing the 173 dealers told ABC affiliates last week that the shift was due to “excessive stories on the Toyota issues.” The dealers shifted their commercial time buys to non-ABC stations in the same markets, “as punishment for the reporting,” according to an ABC station manager.

ABC News and Ross began reporting on the problem of “runaway Toyotas” last November in a series of stories that preceded the large recalls ordered by the company, and apologies for quality shortcomings as well as misstatements about the extent of the defects. Toyota is now expected to add the 2010 Prius to its list of recalled vehicles.

While not directly FL TV related, Pensacola’s WEAR-TV is a Sinclair and ABC affiliate….read on….

 (from TelevisionBroadcast.com) – Sinclair Broadcast Group said today that its affiliation negotiations with the ABC Network have been extended for another month. Sinclair has nine stations affiliated with the network. This marks the second, one-month extension for negotiations. Sinclair’s contract with ABC expired Dec. 31, but were extended at that time by a month. Sinclair recently closed carriage deals with cable operators that include some of its ABC stations. Its December agreement with Time Warner Cable included three. The contentious battle with Mediacom included Sinclair ABC affiliates in St. Louis, Mo., Mobile, Ala., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa….Cont….

Two weeks ago Florida News Center quietly added a “skyscraper” banner advertisement, to the right side column, under the “TV Industry Links” box. Of course I did this to hopefully offset the cost of keeping Florida News Center online and free to you. The advertisement is from Google Adsense, in rotating ad category fashion (any topic ad, except for politics and religion – those were left out on purpose).

So, this morning I was clicking through my usual roll of newspapers and blogs looking for stories for the website, when I noticed a flashy ad touting Diane Sawyer for her debut on World News this coming Monday 12/21. I found this quite comical and was curious if ABC knew that they were advertising on a website that reports on them (occasionally) and their affiliates. This is also one of first advertisements for Sawyer’s move to World News that we have seen since her departure from Good Morning America. The flash ad shows scenes of Sawyer interviewing President Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and wearing a lighted hard hat for some investigation piece. The captions read: “It’s one thing to cover the news, it’s another to uncover it.”

 I usually like to play fair in my coverage of all media outlets, but I don’t mind Diane making a little money for Florida News Center – show me the money!

(from TampaBay.com) – Rich Pegram, general manager at local ABC affiliate WFTS Ch. 28, said he’s gotten “many e-mails” from USF fans upset that next week’s game against Louisville won’t be shown, with Ohio State-Michigan being shown instead. “They’re obviously very angry,” Pegram said Thursday, explaining that the station was asked by ABC to carry the national Ohio State-Michigan game rather than the USF game, even though the local game would likely carry higher ratings. “It’s not a financial decision. We would make more money with USF because it’d be higher-rated,” Pegram said. “It purely is a matter of supporting the network. We are an ABC affiliate, and ABC asked us to carry Ohio State-Michigan. We could pre-empt that (and run USF), but quite frankly, if we carried USF, we’d get jus as many e-mails from the Ohio State and Michigan folks.” The USF-Louisville game will be broadcast locally on Bright House Sports Network, which reached more than a million customers locally, but for fans who don’t have Bright House for cable, they’ll have to turn to ESPN’s Game Plan pay-per-view option or elsewhere….Cont….

Viewers on the First Coast were left in the dark, during tonight’s premiere of “V” on ABC. Jacksonville area viewers watching ABC affiliate WJXX had a black screen with poor audio through out the whole show. Tonight’s issue with the reception on WJXX is nothing new. Jacksonville area viewers have been complaining about dropped or poor signals, via antenna or cable/sat for some time now. A few viewers around the country watching “V” on Direct TV also were given a black screen but without any audio. Stay tuned…