[Edcanada]

What is Sinclair doing wrong that other local station groups are able to do better with regards to sponsorship of segments in their bulletins?

You have Gray pumping money into stations for news since their acquisition of Meredith, ensuring that the actual newscast is a worthy product that sponsors want to pay for segments on the bulletin while maintaining a decent level of news provision, while Sinclair have gone for a national/regional bulletin to fill what were local news bulletins in their less viable markets.

And that's before the fact Sinclair for some reason like to use awful pushbacks on their morning shows where it's easier to see what the weather is than the anchors or the reporters who are providing the actual news product.

Other groups are trying other ways to ensure their local news product is worth more, Nexstar have removed live simulcasts of the majority of their newscasts in smaller markets except for a select few that pay their way including WFLA, WPIX, KFLA and WGN.

I think this is just the longer-term trend for small market TV in the United States, where smaller cities won't be able to support 3-4 news-producing TV stations anymore. Sinclair's financial situation is just making the problem worse and speeding up the process.

I won't be surprised if we see the likes of Scripps News, NewsNation (Nexstar), or even CBS's local news lab replacing weaker performing newscasts (or entire news operations) in their respective station groups - nationally-oriented station group newscasts with opt-outs for local news (that may or may not be live). In CBS's case, they could even offer it as a service for their smaller non-owned affiliate stations if those owners decide doing local news on their own is too cost prohibitive.