For weeks, there has been much speculation as to what Nexstar Media Group would do regarding its affiliates for The CW Network, which it controls, in Detroit and in Miami.
Just after Tuesday’s Opening Bell on Wall Street, an answer — one perhaps unexpected to market observers — emerged. CBS News & Stations properties in the Motor City and in South Florida are getting The CW once current affiliations with The E.W. Scripps Co.-owned stations ends at the end of August.
The selection of a Paramount Global-owned station in Detroit brings The CW back to a station that ended its affiliation with the network one year ago. And, it signals Nexstar’s unwillingness to work with Adell Broadcasting on getting an arrangement involving WADL-TV finalized. WADL was to be sold to Nexstar’s close shared services partner Mission Broadcasting, but the deal was scuttled after the FCC placed scrutiny over the proposed transaction.
Confirmation of the deals placing The CW on WKBD-50 in Detroit and on WBFS-33 in Miami came alongside word that Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting concurrently reached “comprehensive multi-year agreements” to renew CBS Television Network affiliations in 42 markets across the country, including 40 stations owned by Nexstar and two stations
owned by Mission.
Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed.
WKBD and WBFS had been the home for The CW until Scripps agreed to take the network and place it on its WMYD-20 in Detroit and WSFL-39 in Miami, respectively. Then, it became known that the Scripps stations would be ending their affiliations with The CW after just one year. Talk of “reverse comps” — industry lingo for carriage rights payments — emerged, with unconfirmed reports suggesting Nexstar was seeking dollars from affiliates for The CW that were incompatible with their profit and loss charts.
Meanwhile, Adell head Kevin Adell has been speaking regularly to trade publications such as RBR+TVBR, Broadcasting & Cable and The Desk, eager to share details of what he hoped would be Nexstar eventually coming to him for an affiliation deal for The CW because nothing else was long-term in the Detroit DMA, he believes.
Indeed, Paramount Global did not indicate if the WKBD deal was for more than one broadcast season.
For Adell, carrying a single Harlem Globetrotters game through an arrangement with Gray Television gained notice, along with his desires to work with the Detroit Pistons NBA franchise on getting local over-the-air coverage of its games on WADL.
Speaking with RBR+TVBR, Adell said, “I am not surprised. Deals are made at the very last minute in our industry. Let me know how that works out for them. It doesn’t do your audience any good bouncing from station to station. If you’re a network, you want to be consistent with your viewers; [The CW] has been displaced four times in [Detroit] in less than a year. I don’t believe that’s the strategy of the top four networks. I’ve never seen this in my 34 years of broadcasting.”
For now, WADL will remain a MyNetwork TV affiliate, with three years for all of the station’s programming deals, as The CW bounces back to Channel 50. What happens in 12 months remains anyone’s guess. Should President Trump return to the White House, a Carr Commission could allow a fresh purchase of WADL-38 by Nexstar. Should Vice President Kamala Harris win, more negotiations for The CW would be on the horizon in twelve months’ time.
