PEORIA — Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying 18 television stations from Barrington Broadcasting, including WHOI (channel 19) in Peoria, Ill. Sinclair already owns a television station in the Peoria/Bloomington market, WYZZ (channel 43), but FCC rules say they can only own one due to the size of the market. Thus, Sinclair has also announced they will be selling WYZZ.
Currently, WHOI is being operated by Granite Broadcasting (owner of WEEK, channel 25) through a shared services agreement. WYZZ is operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (owner of WMBD, channel 31) under a local marketing agreement with Sinclair. How the changes in ownership will affect these agreements is unknown at this time since the story is just breaking.
WHOI is an ABC network affiliate; WYZZ is a FOX network affiliate.
By “shared services” do you mean reading from the same shared script for every newscast? It’ll be interesting to see the changes.
By the by, I just wanted to stop by and say thanks for providing another view on the riverfront developments over the past half decade. I was sorting through various outlets and links when writing about that dang ol’ block (you know the one I’m referring too) and you were the only one to provide any substance to the issue. Feel free to insert this comment into one of your 2007 posts.
Just like pork bellies.