Here's a fun.one, from Tim Burke: Multiple Sinclar stations apparently had no interest in doing even more work for no additional pay, so instead of tacking on another half-hour to their 11/10 o'clock newscasts, they just left the newscast's closing title card on screen with dead air for 30 minutes. So now Sinclair's not only going to war with its network, it's also fighting its own stations. And I encourage them to continue.
Sinclair is also fighting with a new browser-based playout system designed more for OTT and FAST than linear. When my station switched last year, we found that it's very hard to make quick changes to the playlist like it was with our old system (Harris, if you're in the know and curious). We got hubbed in May (and shitcanned because of it) and while we'd overcome a lot of our teething issues through trial and error, there was a lot that the hub had to learn on its own and situations they had to plan for. Even now, sources are misrouted, ABC slate airs before World News comes on, and commercials loop over and over again. They even had the previous day's newscast from our cable channel cutting in over General Hospital one afternoon.
That half hour of slate (and the 11th-hour decision not to run the Charlie Kirk special) sounds very much like one of the hub's many automation gremlins. And like you, I am all here for them.
