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Fox Gets A Station in The Bay Area

billrecto said:
Making NBC buy Channel 4 is a dead cause and making fox go to KRON 4 why would Fox do that? Look as long as KTVU gets good ratings during KTVU News and Fox Sports programming and pays the Fox Royalties then I don't see why Fox Needs Channel 4 and Channel 2.
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No one's making anyone do anything.

The original post was the rumor that FOX wants to own a station in the Bay Area.

The advantages to that over an affiliation are:

1) Ownership of an asset.
2) Several million more viewers the sales team for FOX owned stations can sell as a package.
3) Keeping all of the revenue generated by the station 24/7 rather than just the network spots.

The simplest route, if the rumor is true, would be to buy KTVU. Zero viewer confusion about where to find your product.

If Cox is unwilling to sell, though, FOX's best remaining choice for a full-market signal would be KRON.

The previous poster has some Rube Goldberg concept of NBC ditching KNTV after spending untold millions on it to move back to KRON. Not gonna happen, and it has nothing to do with FOX's intentions (if they in fact have any) to own a station in the Bay Area.
 
This whole issue is an open question that really has no answer until Fox either buys someone or quits sniffing around the market.
It's fairly simple: Fox could buy KRON but would need to do a lot of fix it up and make it competitive. They would also lose a ton of viewers who currently watch them on KTVU. Eventually that investment might pay off, but it might not. It would be a pretty big gamble. Or Fox could try to buy KTVU. There is very little chance that would happen. I don't think Cox will ever sell that station unless it is for an absurd amount of money. (a billion dollars or more) I don't see that happening either. So Fox has to decide if it wants to gamble and Cox would have to decide if it wants a big pile of cash.
 
michael hagerty said:
Also, a note that since...my gosh, November, KRON has bailed out of the Van Ness studios and is sharing space with KGO-TV. They've sold the old KRON building for a nice chunk of change, the building will be torn down and a new mid-rise housing unit will be built there: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/05/14/new_housing_at_van_ness_krontv_site_might_look_like_this.php
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Yes - affordable housing - to rent or buy - is in such short supply in San Francisco, that apartments - condos or rentals, are popping up everywhere. It reminds me of growing up in LA in the 60s and seeing big housing tracts go up, only this time, the developments are vertical, not horizontal. I guess I hadn't driven down Dolores to Market Street in a year or more - until a few weeks ago. There I see a 5 or 6 story building where the old S&C Ford dealership used to be....with a Whole Foods at street level, naturally.

RE: KTVU - posters on the SF Gate site (Chronicle) are wringing their hands about the prospect of KTVU's news turning into a right-wing Fox News clone, but as far as I know, Fox News has nothing to do with the production of news at their O&Os, except to provide coverage on national stories. I haven't heard, for instance, that KTTV's news is biased in any way.

Comments?
 
LKellerIII said:
Yes - affordable housing - to rent or buy - is in such short supply in San Francisco, that apartments - condos or rentals, are popping up everywhere. It reminds me of growing up in LA in the 60s and seeing big housing tracts go up, only this time, the developments are vertical, not horizontal. I guess I hadn't driven down Dolores to Market Street in a year or more - until a few weeks ago. There I see a 5 or 6 story building where the old S&C Ford dealership used to be....with a Whole Foods at street level, naturally.

RE: KTVU - posters on the SF Gate site (Chronicle) are wringing their hands about the prospect of KTVU's news turning into a right-wing Fox News clone, but as far as I know, Fox News has nothing to do with the production of news at their O&Os, except to provide coverage on national stories. I haven't heard, for instance, that KTTV's news is biased in any way.

Comments?
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Llew: San Francisco certainly has changed. I've been in the city four or five times in the past seven months, and it bears little resemblance to the town I knew in the 70s and 80s. There's been a major change in attitudes and architecture.

As for Fox News not having influence over the O&Os, that's true. And it's why Fox News has never created an evening newscast for air on Fox O&Os and affiliated stations...it would be a bad fit.
 
FOX News is a different corporation.
FOX O&O's are controlled by the FOX Television Stations, Inc.
 
michael hagerty said:
Llew: San Francisco certainly has changed. I've been in the city four or five times in the past seven months, and it bears little resemblance to the town I knew in the 70s and 80s. There's been a major change in attitudes and architecture.

As for Fox News not having influence over the O&Os, that's true. And it's why Fox News has never created an evening newscast for air on Fox O&Os and affiliated stations...it would be a bad fit.
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Due primarily to the high-tech industry, San Francisco has become the poster child for "gentrification."

RE: "bad fit" - a right wing Fox News style nightly newscast on KTVU would be as welcome in the Bay Area as a 9 point earthquake. Ratings for KTVU News would tank, and lower revenues would follow. If the rest of the USA was like the Bay Area, Republicans would be an endangered species. I suspect Fox will subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" dictum and not change much of anything. For instance, I don't think you'll see the station becoming "Fox2 News" or their iconic number 2-in-the-circle logo being dropped for that generic looking "Fox<channel position>" logo that you see in so many markets.
 
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LKellerIII said:
Due primarily to the high-tech industry, San Francisco has become the poster child for "gentrification."

RE: "bad fit" - a right wing Fox News style nightly newscast on KTVU would be as welcome in the Bay Area as a 9 point earthquake. Ratings for KTVU News would tank, and lower revenues would follow. If the rest of the USA was like the Bay Area, Republicans would be an endangered species. I suspect Fox will subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" dictum and not change much of anything. For instance, I don't think you'll see the station becoming "Fox2 News" or their iconic number 2-in-the-circle logo being dropped for that generic looking "Fox<channel position>" logo that you see in so many markets.
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Llew: What's amazing is who's doing the gentrification. Suddenly-wealthy 23-year olds. I'd been gone from Northern California as a resident for 36 years, and hadn't been even as a journalist in 15. My girlfriend took me to dinner in the city for my birthday in March, and in the name of "casual", I skipped the tie, but wore slacks, a nice dress shirt and a charcoal wool blazer. She told me I was overdressed. She was right. It's millionaires in hoodies who are barely old enough to drink. I still love the city, and now that I'm only two hours away, I go whenever we can, but people actually dress better here in Sacramento now than what I've seen in fairly upscale places in San Francisco.

As for Fox, I think you're in for a surprise. That's not a company that allows for a lot of market-by-market variation. Of all the TV chains, they, Gannett and Scripps are the most one-size-fits-all when it comes to branding and graphics. Very few people will stop watching them because they change the logo. Most people deeply offended by the political lean of Fox News don't know that a Fox affiliate is any different from "a Fox station". They're already either boycotting it or watching anyway but not telling their friends.

It's not KQED we're talking about here. This is a couple of newscasts surrounded by Maury Povich, Dr. Oz, re-runs of Modern Family and Big Bang Theory and Fox's primetime, which ain't exactly high-brow.

If Michael Savage can be a star in that town, Fox can slap its name on Channel 2's logo and do just fine. It's what Dr. Don Rose said to me the one time I met him (at Ben Fong-Torres' book signing in '98) and congratulated him on being number one in San Francisco for 13 years. "Michael, I don't think I was ever number one in San Francisco. Probably more like number 17. But I was number one in San Bruno and Millbrae and Hayward and Richmond and Lafayette and Orinda and Walnut Creek, Concord and Danville. That added up to number one in the market as a whole."
 
LKellerIII said:
RE: KTVU - posters on the SF Gate site (Chronicle) are wringing their hands about the prospect of KTVU's news turning into a right-wing Fox News clone, but as far as I know, Fox News has nothing to do with the production of news at their O&Os, except to provide coverage on national stories. I haven't heard, for instance, that KTTV's news is biased in any way.

Comments?
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KSAZ here in Phoenix is a Fox O&O but doesn't seem to share the Fox network's views on news production or content. I cannot stomach Fox News but I find news on KSAZ to be acceptable. Their morning show is my regular breakfast companion but I watch nothing else on this Fox station.

As an old KTVU viewer of the 60's I am disappointed that they now become the lowest bar in USA TV broadcasting. I have always thought KTVU was the class of American independent stations.
 
landtuna said:


KSAZ here in Phoenix is a Fox O&O but doesn't seem to share the Fox network's views on news production or content. I cannot stomach Fox News but I find news on KSAZ to be acceptable. Their morning show is my regular breakfast companion but I watch nothing else on this Fox station.

As an old KTVU viewer of the 60's I am disappointed that they now become the lowest bar in USA TV broadcasting. I have always thought KTVU was the class of American independent stations.
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KTVU's news was certainly the "class" of Bay Area news for a decade or more - from the late 70s until the early 90s. While the other local newscasts were competing with "happy talk" and "if it bleeds, it leads" type sensationalism, KTVU took the high road. I recall that one TV critic laughingly noted that until the camera showed the anchors sitting next to each other, you wouldn't know they were in the same room, because they never engaged in that happy chatter so loved in those decades. To be fair to the late, lamented KRON (NBC affiliate version), they were also doing quality news at that time.

As the other local newscasts, particularly from KGO-TV and KPIX got better in the 90s and 00s, KTVU, though still perfectly decent, hasn't been a stand-out for a long time now.
 
stewie said:
How long has Fox been operating the station at this point?
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Not sure. Their website now notes they are Fox not Cox, but only in small print. Fox seems to be abiding by the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy. Near as I can tell, nothing has changed at KTVU.
 
I was looking at the KTVU website just yesterday and the info said it was owned by Fox. Was not aware that had just happened.
 
Their website should soon change. The name will be something like "myfoxoakland" or "myfoxsanfrancisco" or something similar.
The FOX O&Os have very similar websites. The website Servers are in New Jersey. The individual stations have only minimal control of their websites.
 
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