Bee-otch of the Day: Nexstar Media Group

Name: Nexstar Media Group
Age: 27
Occupation: broadcast giant
Last Seen: Irving, Texas
Bee-otched For: airing a football game the hard way

Sadly, climate change is a reality, but at least hell is freezing over.

After decades of being the laughingstock of the NFL, the Detroit Lions had a good season. But on January 21, people in Grand Rapids learned the hard way on how bad things really are at their beloved NBC affiliate, WOOD-TV 8.

During the NFC Divisional, with a little over five minutes on the clock before halftime, the screen stuttered until it went pitch black. 

I, like many watching the game, thought, "Probably just a burp in the satellite. It'll be back in a few seconds."

Well, a few seconds became a few minutes. Thankfully, I have LazerTV, which had several channels devoted to the game. Periodically, I checked with TV 8 and it was either a blank screen or a pixelated NBC feed with both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking announcers. 

Halftime came and my dog and I rushed out to Hungry Howie's for pizza. We got back and 8 was improving, but far from perfect. I was told that 8 was picking their feed straight from WNBC New York while they were fixing their snafu.

Later on, they were airing the straight feed from NBC. I could tell because, during the time they were supposed to be airing local spots, the feed was showing peacocks changing color with the NBC chimes playing over and over. Basically, it's designed to tell viewers that their local affiliate is asleep at the switch.

By the end of the game, the bugs were worked out and WOOD-TV was back to normal. During the game, angry viewers - me included - took to the socials to bitch about WOOD-TV's lackluster performance during the game. I even joked that the Lions are All Grit while WOOD-TV was All Shit.

So, what caused the meltdown at WOOD-TV? It all boils down to the heart of any TV station: the master control. 

Traditionally, stations have a master control room or MCR. It's where someone sits in front of a machine called the switcher and they switch from a network feed to commercials and back. Back in the olden days, commercials were either on film, live, or on videotape. Also, there were no computers. Everything was manual. 

Usually, the FCC-mandated top-of-the-hour ID was on a slide with a live announcer saying the station's call sign and community of license, like "Television Three, WXXX Buttfuckville. It's eight o'clock." At exactly 7:59:59, the man at the switcher would hit the button to go back to the network on time for either the CBS bong or NBC buzzer that symbolized that it was the top of the hour (I don't think ABC had a TOH noise, but prove me wrong).

Well, times have changed and most MCRs are now automated. The days of film and tape are long gone and so is having a live body in the MCR. Years ago in the 00s, I was watching a hockey game on WOOD-TV when the NBC feed went out. The switcher quickly re-established the feed with a little something extra: a weather bug on the corner of the screen from Detroit's WDIV.

Bumming another station's feed is nothing new in the world of television. As a matter of fact, it's been going on since the early days of the medium. Up until the mid-80s, most stations received network programming from AT&T's Long Line system. However, there were notable exceptions because of territorial reasons, namely stations in Alaska and Hawaii. Until satellite became the normal for network programming, those stations had to rely on the US Mail. Usually, those in the non-continental US had to wait a week after they originally aired on the mainland.

My childhood TV stations in northern Michigan had to rely on microwave signals until satellite became commonplace. NBC affiliate WPBN-TV 7&4 relayed WOOD-TV or Bay City's WNEM-TV 5 (now with CBS). CBS-er WWTV 9&10 was linked to Kalamazoo's WKZO-TV 3 (now WWMT and ironically WPBN's sister station today) since both stations were owned by John Fetzer. Lastly, WGTU ABC 29&8 hooked with Flint's WJRT 12 or Grand Rapids' WZZM 13, depending on their schedule. 

Being a master control operator in the Traverse City area wasn't totally easy, especially when it came to network programming. If one of their sources down in Southern Michigan had weather problems and they had to put a W on the lower left corner of the screen, the TC station would have to put a graphic on the screen that the warning was for the Grand Rapids region. Sometimes, northern Michiganders were subject to seeing logo bugs of downstate stations be immediately covered by the logos of 7&4, 9&10, or 29&8. And if, let's say WOOD-TV had to break into programming for a special report, master control at 7&4 would have to dial a telephone number to switch over to WNEM. 

And yes, atmospheric conditions weren't always a friend to those manning the stations up north, either. I even read an old newspaper article about the fuzziness of the ABC shows on 29&8 in the late 70s. It turned out that one of the stations that relayed WJRT was not working correctly.

Back to WOOD-TV, I fondly remember a few days after that hockey game, they were still having issues with their satellite and WDIV was their wingman. But sometimes, a wingman can't be there all the time. During their late-night lineup of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Late Night With Conan O'Brien, the satellite took a dump again. At the same time, WDIV was airing a special report of a massive fire at an old automobile plant. Poor 'ol WOOD-TV had to re-air their 11 pm news, telling viewers that they were experiencing technical difficulties. They briefly aired Conan, only to go back to the news because WDIV returned to their special report.

Now, on a day like that Sunday, if the NBC feed bailed on WOOD-TV, the switcher would immediately flip over to WDIV, and all of West Michigan would be joyous. But it wasn't meant to be.

During the olden days, WOOD-TV was owned by LIN Media, which owned a few dozen TV stations. In 2003, LIN did some cost-cutting and moved WOOD-TV's master control to then-sister station WISH-TV in Indianapolis. WOOD-TV and WISH-TV were sold to Media General in 2014 and WOOD-TV was sold to Nexstar two years later. However, WISH-TV had to be spun off since Nexstar purchased stronger CBS affiliate WTTV beforehand (WISH lost CBS in 2014 in a contract dispute and is now the market's CW affiliate; bear in mind that CW is majority-owned by Nexstar).  Because of this, the hub was moved to WTTV, and WISH-TV was sold to local black businessman DuJuan McCoy. 

Allegedly, Nexstar had 16 hubs at one point, but it's now down to five. At times, watching WOOD-TV is like watching an amateur hour rife with mistakes galore. Many times when it's time for the station to air local spots, they wait a little too long. Maybe it's because the poor person who's running the station in Indy is also watching many other of Nexstar's stations. 

Shortly after the Lions clobbered the Bucs 31-23, WOOD-TV aired their Sunday evening newscast. They had reporters all over the area attending watch parties and interviewing excited Lions fans happy that for the first time since 1957, they'll be playing for the NFC title. Very briefly during the newscast did anchor Amanda Porter - a young black woman whose delivery resembles Paul Shaffer's impersonation of rock music impresario Don Kirschner on 1970s SNL - apologize for the technical embarrassment. 

This only adds to WOOD-TV's embarrassments in recent years. Last year, the station made headlines when news director Stanton Tang and his assistant, Amy Fox were fired for a leaked memo telling producers and reporters to lay off talking about LGBTQ+ issues during Pride Month out of concern for their conservative viewers. The two producers who leaked the memo, Luke Stier and Madeline Odle were also fired. The station went through a roller coaster of staff changes, especially in the weather department when long-time morning weather girl Terri DeBoer left the station after some 30 years to become the director of communications for Jacobs Financial (which makes perfect sense since Jacobs uses Allianz, who financed the Holocaust; Terri made headlines when she hosted an expensive fundraiser for Dick DeVos' aborted gubernatorial run in 2006). WOOD-TV kinda had to fake their forecasts by outsourcing them from Texas-based Brian James, an intern at the station in the 1990s.

Of course, times have changed over the years regarding how a TV or radio station can be run. Once upon a time, a station HAD to have their master control in their community of license. Not anymore. As a matter of fact, WCHY 97.7 in Cheboygan's studio is by Torch Lake, about 77 miles away and way out of the station's broadcast range. It also doesn't help that the station's owner, "Trucker" Randy Bishop is a convicted felon and uses his wife as the de facto owner of the station. Thankfully, at last check, a convicted felon cannot own a broadcast outlet in America.

Thanks to the FCC, the world of broadcasting is supposed to be a good one for the assholes who run radio and TV stations and the shareholders who own them. The viewers and listeners? Not so much. Because of this, we no longer have truly fair and balanced reporting. Too many important stories get broomed under the rug and it's up to independents - like me whenever possible - to tell the truth. 

Nexstar is just another evil media company loaded with shell companies to take over more TV stations. Recently, they purchased 75% of CW while the other 25% is still owned by its founders, Warner Bros. and CBS. As a matter of fact, CBS dumped CW from all of their stations, including Detroit's WKBD-TV 50, which is now an independent. 

Not only did CW programming move to WADL-TV 38 in the Motor City, but they also announced that they were buying the station through their shell company, Mission Broadcasting. However, WADL's owner, Kevin Adell personally pulled CW from the schedule after he claimed that the network missed payments to him. Not only that, he claimed that the sale between him and Nexstar was going "very slowly".

It's also noted that there's nepotism at Nexstar. It happens so that company founder and president Perry Sook's son - who has the same name - works as a reporter at the company's WPIX channel 11 in New York City.

Nexstar also owns the cable network Newsnation, formerly the cable version of Chicago's WGN-TV. In 2019, Nexstar purchased Tribune Media, which owned WGN, along with the aforementioned WPIX and KTLA channel 5 Los Angeles. Tribune also owned WXMI Fox 17 here in Grand Rapids. But, since Nexstar already owns two full-power TV stations in the West Michigan broadcasting market - the other being WOTV 41 out of Battle Creek - it had to be spun off. WXMI was sold to Scripps.

One more terrible story about WOOD-TV and its reputation is one that I've wanted to tell for years. I have a friend who worked at a place that boarded dogs. During the pandemic at work, this person received a phone call from an angry customer who was on vacation in Petoskey with their significant other. This person SCREAMED at my friend, demanding that their two dogs - who were being boarded at the time - get a free grooming and a wash. My friend even told this person that it was against company policy because if they got free services, then other customers would be given the same treatment. 

The person on the other line screamed harder. "DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM?!?" I don't remember the outcome of the conversation, but it changed how I looked at this angry customer for the rest of my life. 

Now, the reason why I can tell you the story is because my friend no longer works in the pet hospitality business. But, back then, my friend was only making $15-16 per hour and living in a tiny apartment while this angry customer lived in a home on a lake and made way more than my friend. 

And that angry customer was none other than WOOD-TV news anchor Susan Shaw. 

To stir the pot even more, allegedly, other local news people used that same facility to board their pets. According to my friend, only one of those people was friendly, and it was former reporter and weekend anchor Leon Hendrix.

The truth is that if I owned a TV station, I would outsource as extremely little as possible. And that means master control. If the network feed is broken, I don't want 40-odd stations in the dark. I would hire people with experience and train the inexperienced to be experienced. I would also pay these people a good, livable wage and set a good example for the broadcast industry. I understand that social media can make or break anything and Nexstar fucked up royally. The only people I applaud are those who re-established the NBC feed for WOOD-TV in a fair amount of time. They were the true rock stars that day.

Aside from the Lions, of course.

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Hero of the Day: Mark Staycer

A SPECIAL HERO OF THE DAY!

Name: Mark Staycer
Age: was 68
Occupation: former broadcaster and John Lennon impersonator
Last Seen: somewhere out there
Awarded For: just being a wonderful human being

January 6th is definitely a day that will live in infamy.

It was the day a vicious group of losers stormed the Capitol in 2021, crying over a big lie. 

Three years later, it was another day of infamy for me.

I just got home from an afternoon at Costco, shopping with my mother. I put the groceries away and sat down to check on my phone's notifications. Then, I checked my Facebook and my jaw dropped.

I saw a post from former northern Michigan DJ Mike Galloway (now in Chicago working for the Cubs) that Mark Staycer had passed away. The two worked together at WTCM. I clicked on Mark's name and other posts verified his passing. 

Mark died suddenly while asleep on December 30, 2023. Staycer - birth name Stytzer - would have been 69 on January 16. 

A single child born in Detroit to a Catholic family, Staycer developed a love of rock 'n roll at an early age, especially towards four particular lads from Liverpool. As a matter of fact, he was in attendance when The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York City in 1965. Mark told me about the acoustics being so bad that the sounds of screaming girls dwarfed the Fab Four. Even more, the stadium reeked of urine because the young girls were peeing themselves. For them, seeing John, Paul, George, and Ringo in the flesh was more important than a quick trip to the ladies' room.

Mark told me that he deeply loved his father, a postal delivery man. However, the Catholicism in him showed. Mark had a vast collection of rare and foreign records as a teenager. After he discovered that his son had some dirty R. Crumb comics under his bed, he personally smashed his records.

But, it didn't stop Mark from growing his collection. 

Of course, The Beatles broke up in 1970 and all four had their own success as solo artists. However, according to Mark, what was cool in the 60s wasn't as cool in the 70s. He would buy up Beatles memorabilia from garage sales and thrift shops. Relics of the past that might be worth a lot more now.

Professionally, Mark would enter the world of broadcasting as an artist. He worked for a company that made graphics for Detroit's TV stations in the 70s back in the days when everything was on slides. However, he loved radio and had humble beginnings at such stations as WGHN 92.1 Grand Haven and the now-defunct WBRB 1430 Mount Clemens over by Detroit. WBRB was co-owned by Gilda Radner. Mark told me personally years ago that her cousin, Leigh, who managed WBRB was not a very nice person. No wonder why they've long fallen silent.

Mark worked at WKCQ in Saginaw in the early 80s. He told me about his hatred towards the MacDonald family, especially in the early 80s when the family patriarch, Ken, Sr. busted the union that represented their air talent. According to Mark, Ken's words were, "I started without a union, and I'll go out without one!" Needless to say, Mark, who was struggling as-is, got tired of Sagnasty and the MacDonalds. It happened so that one of his childhood friends was Ryan Dobry, WTCM's midday jock. One of WTCM's DJs was quitting to become a golf pro (this being current WCCW 107.5 midday jock Dave Gauthier). Staycer applied and soon, he was kissing Saginaw and the MacDonald family goodbye. Mark told me personally that he always had a good relationship with WTCM owner Ross Biederman; he admitted that he would go fishing with him and his stepson, current station runner Chris Warren. 

Mark left WTCM in the early 90s to go to WKLT where his "Stayce the Ace" morning show helped the station achieve #1 status in the ratings. I fondly remember attending a monster truck rally at the Fairgrounds where he sang the National Anthem... poorly. He would move to Dallas where he worked at ABC's satellite radio services.

Eventually, Stayce would return to Traverse City and WTCM. He held the afternoon shift at WTCM-FM, plus one of the worst jobs he ever held: operating the board at WTCM 580 during the first hour of The Rush Limbaugh Show.

Mark told me that WTCM-AM was a very outdated operation in the late 90s. It had an old, circular knob control board and no automation. The station had to be manned 24/7. Usually, Merlin Dumbrille ran the station during Rush, but it was his lunch hour and Mark got the shortest straw. Thankfully, Rush had music cues to let board-ops like him know to go to commercial. Usually, he had the speakers on low so Rush's moronic rants wouldn't infect his mind.

Eventually, Mark left radio once and for all to tour the world as a John Lennon impersonator. He appropriately named his act ImagineLennon after John's signature song. He could do it all: the 1964 moptop who sang covers of old R&B tunes to the psychedelic, long-haired Lennon who was inseparable from his beloved bride, Yoko Ono. According to Mark, his first gig as John was a child's birthday party. Thanks to his gig as a faux Beatle, he played on many cruise ships and got to see the world. 

Staycer's resemblance to Lennon even made him a minor movie star. He appeared in a 2009 Canadian film called "Let Him Be", a film about a college girl who suspects that her professor is John Lennon.

My experience with Stayce began years ago when I was a regular poster on a popular internet message board devoted to Michigan broadcasting. I decided to post as my avatar a picture of legendary Northern Michigan radio station owner Trish MacDonald-Garber to get a rise out of people. He shot me an email telling me that he loved my posts, he loved Bee-otch of the Day, but please, please, PLEASE get that pic of Trish off of there. From there, we became good pen pals, often talking about BOTD. 

No topic was off limits between me and Stayce. Often, he'd talk about the happy days of his childhood, such as lighting up old, flammable nitrate film as firecrackers with his friends. He'd often go up to northern Michigan with his parents and was childhood friends with Dale Dumbrille, the son of legendary Northern Michigan broadcasting great Marlin Dumbrille. Mark often visited WTCM as a child, which piqued his interest in broadcasting. He'd also tell me stories of meeting WTCM founder Les Biederman as a kid; he fondly remembered that he smelled like an ashtray everywhere he walked (Biederman, a heavy cigar smoker, died in 1986 at the age of 75 from lung cancer; ironically, he sold the TV stations he founded, NBC affiliate WPBN-TV 7&4 to U.S. Tobacco in 1980, but kept his radio properties in Traverse City and Alpena).

Despite being a Beatle fan and a rocker at heart, Mark and I did have one discrepancy regarding music, and it was his love of country. Mark did somewhat scowl over the fact that if I linked a music video for a country song, it would go to one of the offerings by Johnny Rebel instead. Mark met a lot of country legends over the years and admitted that most of them were actually quite friendly. He even met The Dixie Chicks early in their careers when they played a gig in Traverse City some 25 years ago and back then, they were very nice people. He also made friends with producers, managers, and other industry people.

Mark was quite a civil person. He told me that he and his longtime friend and coworker Ron Jolly NEVER saw eye-to-eye on politics. Mark was a lefty while Ron - like most of the hosts on WTCM 580 - is to the right of Attila the Hun. Like me, Mark often emailed Ron a lot to check up on how things were at his old stomping grounds. And yes, the two often chatted about music. 

For many, many years, we'd email each other. But then came that day three years ago when my life personally changed. After nineteen years of apartment hell, my father wanted to buy a house with me. We did and my days of hovering over a laptop to update BOTD daily were over. My fear of my MAGA father knowing that I'm a Drumpf hater would lead to some unwanted arguments. So, my policy became that I now did BOTD from my phone. If I completed an article, then I published it.

Unfortunately, it also marked the end of my writing to Mark often. For the past few years, I've dealt with a massive amount of overtime at work and Dad wanted me to take care of him and the house. When it came to this blog, if it was done, it was done. It was not as often as I wanted to, but it was what it was.

He would check in from time to time to see how I was doing and often wondered why I aborted BOTD. Of course, this past year, I worked on one that turned into a fucking travesty. So, I threw it aside. I felt like I needed to write articles that were shorter and not just one general category. 

I started pumping out some good BOTDs late last year and Mark was happy. The last time we wrote to each other was regarding the bad weather here in Grand Rapids last fall. Plus we chatted about one of his favorite movies, "Joe Dirt". I started getting more articles out, but I noticed that he had stopped writing. 

For some reason, I thought that he was busy with family during the holidays and simply didn't have the time to write. But as it turned out, something was wrong. And when he died two days before the New Year, I, like many of those who knew him, was indeed in shock.

Tributes came flowing into Mark's Facebook page, which he never posted on. He wasn't a big technology guy except for emailing me and friends. That was him and other boomers who weren't into that newfangled technology. But, it was still nice to see people share their memories regarding one of the nicest and funniest men in northern Michigan broadcasting history. 

Obviously, because Mark had friends worldwide, Reynolds-Jonkoff, his funeral parlor, live-streamed his funeral. Since Grand Rapids was smack dab in the middle of a blizzard, I was grateful that I could watch the service at home.

The family decided to keep the memorial short and sweet at just 45 minutes. There were no hymns, nor was there a preacher blabbing about his life. All it involved was his family and closest friends touching on his best moments and a short video about his life set to John Lennon's "Imagine".

Two of the speakers were two of Mark's best friends: Ron Jolly and Ryan Dobry. Ron talked about their time working together at WTCM in the afternoon and the hijinks the two had. One time, he talked about Ron manning the Tigers baseball broadcast on 580 AM. Occasionally, there would be a pause from the announcers and you could hear a vendor screaming "HOT DOGS!" or "ICE COLD BEER!" One time, while the announcers paused for a few seconds, Mark turned on his microphone and walked away from the board. During that moot point, he yelled "PRUNE JUICE!" 

Mark had a love of fart and poop jokes and he was not in short supply of them. At the podium, Ryan Dobry talked about the time Mark recorded a bumper for Merlin Dumbrille's marine forecasts that featured a loud fog horn. It was a sound Mark created by recording one of his farts and then slowing down the tape. 

Bar none, the saddest part of the funeral was when Mark's son, Christian took the stand. Jan and Mark waited years to have a child, whom Mark nicknamed "#1 Son". Christian, in his 20s had a hard time keeping it together paying tribute to his fallen father. It was clear that the two had a wonderful bond that many fathers and sons wished they had.

When I heard of Mark's passing, I shot Jan a message on her Facebook messenger. After the funeral, she responded, thanking me for the condolences. She told me that Mark always spoke highly of me. 

Over the years, I've talked to many people who admired my writings. And many of them have been involved - past and present - in the media. Many have been very gracious people, but others have been flaming assholes whose shit smells so bad that there's not enough Poo-Pourri to mask their stench. I'm happy to say that Mark was my #1 fan. He loved my writings so much that he wanted me to syndicate them. However, I told him that I was no sellout. Bee-otch of the Day is not for sale. Would I ever make a book of my best BOTDs? Maybe someday. I fear that if I syndicate my writings to a newspaper or magazine, then I would be told what to write about, or have deadlines to meet. Granted, the money would be nice. But let's face it: traditional media has been dying for years. Hell, Jan was an ad rep for Traverse City's Northern Express but quit because the paper was sold to a right-winged asshat who decided to post Glenn McCoy's racist and pro-Drumpf bullshit comics. I'm sure that if Luke Haase ever read my blog, he wouldn't want to hire me.

Ditto with Grand Rapids. Independent media in this area doesn't even exist, save for Darren Gibson's Southpaws radio show and 88.1 WYCE. I was a fan of the monthly paper Recoil, but that folded years ago.

The point is that my blogs are a hobby and not one for profit. True, I've had a few folks cry that my blogs hurt their feelings and they pulled a Will Smith on me, telling me to keep their motherfucking names out of my motherfucking blogs. Well, guess what? There's a little something called "The First Amendment" and they all need to read it sometime. 

I'll admit that with Mark's death, my life will not be the same. But, thankfully, I've kept all of his emails and the memories. He might be gone, but his memory shall remain. 

Thank you, Mark. //O-O\\

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Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!

CHUCK69.COM IS ALWAYS ON!