Young B'Casting's latest financials-Sets conf. call for Tues. May 6, Noon PDT

[Stephen_TheMCO]

After reading this thread, I think Young Broadcasting is going to be as stobborn as possible, and keep the station until they can no longer keep it.  Even if the station went to bankruptcy, I think NBC could still buy it if they wanted it.  There's been markets, where after a buyout one station had it's whole staff transferred to a new station that was aquired by the company they worked for.  So I predict sometime in the future, that Young will lose the station in bankruptcy, possibly to NBC.  After that I think basically NBC 11 itself will migrate to KRON 4 (same studios and staff, different transmitter and channel. maybe renaming the station to NBC-4), and then NBC could either sell off 11 or turn it into a duopoly, perhaps moving Telemundo to 11.

[1069_KIFR]

What would KNTV do with their current staff? Fire all and retain the KRON people? Or fire certain ones from each station that duplicate jobs? Like fire Raj in sports and Keep Gary Radnich? Fire Heather McDonald and keep Lisa Kim? Whadda ya mean 'bout keeping the staff?

[Lkeller]

"What would KNTV do with their current staff? Fire all and retain the KRON people? Or fire certain ones from each station that duplicate jobs? Like fire Raj in sports and Keep Gary Radnich? Fire Heather McDonald and keep Lisa Kim? Whadda ya mean 'bout keeping the staff?"

I don't particularly buy Stephen's scenario because I can't see what's in it for NBC - unless they can buy KRON for truly fire-sale prices.  But his conjecture about staffing is reasonable.  In fact, there's one major local example I can think of...and it's coincidentally connected to KRON.  At the same time the Chronicle Corporation sold KRON to Young, they sold the SF Chronicle to Hearst.  Hearst sold the dying afternoon Examiner, and transferred all of their Examiner staff to the Chronicle, cherry picking the best (and most popular) columnists, writers, and publishers, and sending the rest down the road.  The combined staff was bloated at first, but they laid-off other people on the combined staff within a year or two.

So how it would work in this scenario is simple - lay-off some of the NBC paid (KNTV) staff, transfer the rest to KRON.  NBC has no obligation to the Young employees, so they'd send most of them packing, keeping the best reporters and anchors.  So, for example,  maybe they would keep Radnich (he's an institution around here, after all) and Raj, and lay off a couple of KNTV's secondary sports reporters. Radnich would probably have to swallow his pride and be second banana, but it's a job, isn't it?

[Newschannel4SF]

We are already seeing some changes at KNTV.  Daryl Hicks is going to NBC5 WMAQ in Chicago and there have been some other layoffs which is a common thing now at most ofthe NBC O&O stations.  Alan Denton left right afther the first of the year followed by the weather day Shannon O'Donnel who went to KING-TV 5 in Seattle - so they knew something would be happenning.

What could materialize is a deal could be made to sell off KSTS Telemundo 48 to either Univision/Hispanic Broadcasting or the other Spanish group in Puerto Rico WAAP.  KRON becomes NBC4 and Telemundo moves to 11.

[Lkeller]

We are already seeing some changes at KNTV.  Daryl Hicks is going to NBC5 WMAQ in Chicago and there have been some other layoffs which is a common thing now at most ofthe NBC O&O stations.  Alan Denton left right afther the first of the year followed by the weather day Shannon O'Donnel who went to KING-TV 5 in Seattle - so they knew something would be happenning.

What could materialize is a deal could be made to sell off KSTS Telemundo 48 to either Univision/Hispanic Broadcasting or the other Spanish group in Puerto Rico WAAP.  KRON becomes NBC4 and Telemundo moves to 11.

Just because reporters and anchors are moving around, I don't think you can extrapolate that anything is about to happen.  This is TV you're talking about, and people move around all the time.  Other than KGO-TV (ABC 7) which has had a few reporters and anchors for decades (Don Sanchez, Cheryl Jennings, etc.) there's not a whole lot of stability in that profession.

[1069_KIFR]

When Young B'castng said they would sell KRON by the end of the first qtr. Did they mean 2008?!?

[Lkeller]

When Young B'castng said they would sell KRON by the end of the first qtr. Did they mean 2008?!?

When they said first quarter, Young was engaging in wishful thinking.  They were probably also hoping to create a sense of urgency with any potential buyers - kind of like the car salesman who says he can only give you that great deal if you buy the car "TODAY!"

Unfortunately, it seems like there are no buyers, because KRON is now the AMC Pacer of television stations.

[Newschannel4SF]

Silverpoint has now come into the picture.  As they did with Granite this company buys up debt and takes over the group with its stations.  As to how this affects the KRON sale is still unknown.