Randall E. King is a Professor Of Communication/Associate Dean at North Greenville University.
King has been professor of communication for 35 years, much of it teaching media literacy and video journalism at Christian universities.
He has also worked professionally in television news and media ministry.
News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com
Herer’s King’s Substack article:
Eye on CBS and the Future of Local TV
We’ve getting some disruption in my home TV market, Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson and I thought it might be worth a quick analysis for TURN IT OFF readers who need to know what may be coming to local TV everywhere.
News broke last week of the CBS network moving its affiliation away from 6 markets where Nexstar – the largest owner of individual stations, apparently refused to pay the price CBS wanted for an ongoing contract.
Credit to theDesk.net for breaking the story nationally and forcing some local stations – I believe – to scramble around and release statements maybe a little earlier than they planned.
As of Monday morning, July 27, our local CBS affiliate WSPA-TV/Nexstar had not released its version of the news and it is the most significantly impacted by the change.
This gets us a bit in the digital weeds because many viewers think their local CBS or NBC or ABC are – for all intents and purposes – CBS, NBC and ABC. That’s understandable because some of those stations have been the only way to watch those networks since the 1950’s when most local stations signed on.
Affiliations DO change – many local stations switched to the FOX network in the early 90’s when it acquired NFL football games away from CBS.
I was an Indianapolis TV viewer in 2015 when Nexstar made a big play to take CBS away from WISH-TV and consolidate newsrooms for the new CBS-4 and FOX-59 under one roof. Professional broadcasters in that town are still reeling from that and other changes.
The biggest difference here is rather than moving a big network to another full-power station, the network is going to WYFF-TV, the longtime NBC affiliate in Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville and market leader in local news.
WYFF is owned by Hearst Communications, which has fewer stations overall than Nexstar but may have deeper pockets and a different business strategy. (full disclosure: I worked for WYFF nearly 40 years ago, but have no insider information on this corporate decision)
And – important and confusing for local viewers – WYFF-CBS will be a different channel than the News-4 people around here have known forever. On cable, satellite and live-streaming, it will just show up on the guide Saturday morning in the usual way. On over-the-air antennas, it will be channel 4.3. We’ll wait and see how or if WYFF news appears on the “new” channel.
So, while those of us in these affected markets watch Nexstar lose CBS affiliation to Hearst and track the social media comments of some viewers freaking out – let’s remember, the younger generation DOES NOT CARE (if they watch “TV” at all)
Those of us of a certain age experienced TV through a “channel” metaphor and an actual physical channel – but it’s the metaphor that is more interesting to me than the delivery system.
The channel (s) packaged identity, structure, schedule and gratification – you knew what you were getting, when you were getting it and what you had to do to keep getting it. Cable TV just expanded the choices without changing the metaphor.
In the same way for more than a century, the news came in a news-PAPER, along with a lot of other content before it was cool. (I still don’t like the term, but my readers have heard that rant). The paper was a metaphor for everything in the package, dropped on your doorstep in the morning.
Today’s teens and 20-somethings grew up with a “show” (or “content” 🙄) metaphor. Sure, they have some loyalty to platforms such as Netflix, but it’s show-on-demand-driven.
In my view, the biggest revolution in television wasn’t from cable to streaming but from channel metaphor to show. Once we detached the show from the structure, schedule and hardware – which really took off with the DVR and full-season sales on DVD – we changed the fundamental understanding of what “TV” could be.
So today, people my age and older in upstate SC, Birmingham, Albuquerque and other markets are asking – “how will I get my CBS stuff? The young crowd is just asking, like they always do, “where can I stream that and why do I have to pay for it?”
The Boomers will change the channel while their grandchildren swipe left…and so it goes.
Behind the screens, though, turmoil – because somewhere, somehow, I believe fewer people are going to get paid to create that content and the company that signs their paycheck means a whole lot more to them than the viewers just looking for their stuff.
My other concern is for the future of local broadcasting. This disruption is just an early shot across the bow. A pending merger between Nexstar and Tegna will create the largest group owner of individual stations in the history of U.S. TV.
And next month, the FCC is poised to eliminate a long-standing cap on the percentage of TV viewers any one company can reach through owning multiple stations. That might be good for the business of local TV, because of strength in numbers, but I fear it could be bad for the local employees who may lose their jobs through mergers, consolidation and workforce contraction.
For the rest of us, TV may look much the same, for a while. The networks have a vested interest in keeping us oldies comfortable with our shows and channels, even while they try to get the younglings off their phones and on to a network show through streaming platforms they own such as Hulu, Peacock and Paramount.
The problem is – every time any of us gets one of those shows or games on a stream, we’re bypassing the local TV station, taking potential ad revenue off its plate and bit by bit diminishing its footprint in the media universe.
Maybe that doesn’t matter to the millions swiping around for content, but I believe in the American broadcasting concept of localism – that TV and radio are best when they serve a local audience with local programs, news, weather and, yes, local commercials for local businesses.
My communitarian instincts and my Christian faith tell me we will lose something if localism keeps ebbing away. We already spend less time talking to each other in our homes, churches and neighborhoods. If all our media habits go national and tribal, we could have even fewer conversations that matter, facilitated by our media in the communities where we live together,
Even with all the things we criticize in this space – Media still Matter – to the greatest extent that they are ways to bring humans together.
A major TV network leaving one channel and moving to another isn’t a big deal on top. Beneath the iceberg, however, it represents a glacier of problems that just won’t go away.
If we stop supporting our local media, we may wake up one day and find out they’re gone – melted into a sea of content with no identity or purpose beyond holding our attention for another 10 seconds before we click “next.”
Paul Greeley is the manager and a writer for News Blues.
- Guest Commentary
July 28, 2026Network Affiliate Swaps in Several Markets Could be a Foretaste of Chaos Everywhere
By Paul Greeley
NOTE: This is from Randall E. King’s Substack column, Turn it Off: Media Literacy for Followers
Randall E. King is a Professor Of Communication/Associate Dean at North Greenville University.
King has been professor of communication for 35 years, much of it teaching media literacy and video journalism at Christian universities.
He has also worked professionally in television news and media ministry.
News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com
Herer’s King’s Substack article:
Eye on CBS and the Future of Local TV
We’ve getting some disruption in my home TV market, Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson and I thought it might be worth a quick analysis for TURN IT OFF readers who need to know what may be coming to local TV everywhere.
News broke last week of the CBS network moving its affiliation away from 6 markets where Nexstar – the largest owner of individual stations, apparently refused to pay the price CBS wanted for an ongoing contract.
Credit to theDesk.net for breaking the story nationally and forcing some local stations – I believe – to scramble around and release statements maybe a little earlier than they planned.
As of Monday morning, July 27, our local CBS affiliate WSPA-TV/Nexstar had not released its version of the news and it is the most significantly impacted by the change.
This gets us a bit in the digital weeds because many viewers think their local CBS or NBC or ABC are – for all intents and purposes – CBS, NBC and ABC. That’s understandable because some of those stations have been the only way to watch those networks since the 1950’s when most local stations signed on.
Affiliations DO change – many local stations switched to the FOX network in the early 90’s when it acquired NFL football games away from CBS.
I was an Indianapolis TV viewer in 2015 when Nexstar made a big play to take CBS away from WISH-TV and consolidate newsrooms for the new CBS-4 and FOX-59 under one roof. Professional broadcasters in that town are still reeling from that and other changes.
The biggest difference here is rather than moving a big network to another full-power station, the network is going to WYFF-TV, the longtime NBC affiliate in Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville and market leader in local news.
WYFF is owned by Hearst Communications, which has fewer stations overall than Nexstar but may have deeper pockets and a different business strategy. (full disclosure: I worked for WYFF nearly 40 years ago, but have no insider information on this corporate decision)
And – important and confusing for local viewers – WYFF-CBS will be a different channel than the News-4 people around here have known forever. On cable, satellite and live-streaming, it will just show up on the guide Saturday morning in the usual way. On over-the-air antennas, it will be channel 4.3. We’ll wait and see how or if WYFF news appears on the “new” channel.
So, while those of us in these affected markets watch Nexstar lose CBS affiliation to Hearst and track the social media comments of some viewers freaking out – let’s remember, the younger generation DOES NOT CARE (if they watch “TV” at all)
Those of us of a certain age experienced TV through a “channel” metaphor and an actual physical channel – but it’s the metaphor that is more interesting to me than the delivery system.
The channel (s) packaged identity, structure, schedule and gratification – you knew what you were getting, when you were getting it and what you had to do to keep getting it. Cable TV just expanded the choices without changing the metaphor.
In the same way for more than a century, the news came in a news-PAPER, along with a lot of other content before it was cool. (I still don’t like the term, but my readers have heard that rant). The paper was a metaphor for everything in the package, dropped on your doorstep in the morning.
Today’s teens and 20-somethings grew up with a “show” (or “content” 🙄) metaphor. Sure, they have some loyalty to platforms such as Netflix, but it’s show-on-demand-driven.
In my view, the biggest revolution in television wasn’t from cable to streaming but from channel metaphor to show. Once we detached the show from the structure, schedule and hardware – which really took off with the DVR and full-season sales on DVD – we changed the fundamental understanding of what “TV” could be.
So today, people my age and older in upstate SC, Birmingham, Albuquerque and other markets are asking – “how will I get my CBS stuff? The young crowd is just asking, like they always do, “where can I stream that and why do I have to pay for it?”
The Boomers will change the channel while their grandchildren swipe left…and so it goes.
Behind the screens, though, turmoil – because somewhere, somehow, I believe fewer people are going to get paid to create that content and the company that signs their paycheck means a whole lot more to them than the viewers just looking for their stuff.
My other concern is for the future of local broadcasting. This disruption is just an early shot across the bow. A pending merger between Nexstar and Tegna will create the largest group owner of individual stations in the history of U.S. TV.
And next month, the FCC is poised to eliminate a long-standing cap on the percentage of TV viewers any one company can reach through owning multiple stations. That might be good for the business of local TV, because of strength in numbers, but I fear it could be bad for the local employees who may lose their jobs through mergers, consolidation and workforce contraction.
For the rest of us, TV may look much the same, for a while. The networks have a vested interest in keeping us oldies comfortable with our shows and channels, even while they try to get the younglings off their phones and on to a network show through streaming platforms they own such as Hulu, Peacock and Paramount.
The problem is – every time any of us gets one of those shows or games on a stream, we’re bypassing the local TV station, taking potential ad revenue off its plate and bit by bit diminishing its footprint in the media universe.
Maybe that doesn’t matter to the millions swiping around for content, but I believe in the American broadcasting concept of localism – that TV and radio are best when they serve a local audience with local programs, news, weather and, yes, local commercials for local businesses.
My communitarian instincts and my Christian faith tell me we will lose something if localism keeps ebbing away. We already spend less time talking to each other in our homes, churches and neighborhoods. If all our media habits go national and tribal, we could have even fewer conversations that matter, facilitated by our media in the communities where we live together,
Even with all the things we criticize in this space – Media still Matter – to the greatest extent that they are ways to bring humans together.
A major TV network leaving one channel and moving to another isn’t a big deal on top. Beneath the iceberg, however, it represents a glacier of problems that just won’t go away.
If we stop supporting our local media, we may wake up one day and find out they’re gone – melted into a sea of content with no identity or purpose beyond holding our attention for another 10 seconds before we click “next.”
He can be reached at Paul@NewsBlues.com or 817-578-6324.
More News from Tuesday, July 28, 2026View As Newsletter
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