DETROIT—The Detroit Pistons have announced a new local media television rights agreement with Scripps Sports beginning with the 2026‑27 NBA season. The deal returns Pistons basketball to local free, over‑the‑air television for the first time since 2005

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The agreement is part of an ongoing push by Scripps to expand its sports programming. Notably, the deal is Scripps’ eighth with a major professional league franchise and its first with an NBA team.

In addition to the Pistons, this lineup includes: WNBA (Las Vegas Aces), NHL (Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, Utah Mammoth, Nashville Predators) and NWSL (Denver Summit).

Under the agreement with the Pistons, WMYD TV20 Detroit, owned and operated by The E.W. Scripps Company, will become the official local broadcast home of the Detroit Pistons. TV20 Detroit will produce and air all locally available pre-season and regular season games.

Fans will be able to watch games for free via over‑the‑air television as well as through participating cable and satellite providers in Detroit, the Detroit metro area and the state of Michigan.

Scripps, which operates both TV20 Detroit and WXYZ (Detroit’s ABC affiliate), said it will pair WXYZ’s award-winning local news leadership with TV20 Detroit’s broadcast platform to deliver comprehensive Pistons coverage for fans throughout the market.

“This partnership with Scripps Sports is an exciting moment for the Detroit Pistons,” said Arn Tellem, vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons. “Basketball has always been deeply woven into the fabric of our city, and we’re proud to expand access to our games. We look forward to partnering with Scripps to deliver outstanding broadcasts and programming that reflects the energy, pride and passion of Detroit.”

“Over-the-air broadcasting has proven to be one of the most powerful ways to connect sports teams with their fans,” said Brian Lawlor, president of Scripps Sports. “As we are seeing right now, the fandom around the Pistons is high and every fan deserves to have access to Detroit Pistons games. Scripps Sports is proud to partner with the Pistons to deliver their games to more fans than ever before – because the best team in the East deserves the best broadcast platform in the NBA.”

As part of the partnership, the Pistons and Scripps Sports will produce comprehensive game‑day coverage, including pregame, in‑game and postgame programming. The agreement also includes a weekly, half‑hour Pistons show, along with original team‑focused content integrated across broadcasts and digital programming across Scripps’ family of channels.

BURBANK, Calif.—The CW Network and The E.W. Scripps Company have inked an agreement that will make WMYD-TV (TV20) in Detroit a CW affiliate beginning Monday, Nov. 13. 

TV20 will carry all of The CW’s network’s primetime entertainment, live sports and special event programming, the companies said. 

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The agreement comes in the wake of WADL-TV’s decision to drop its CW affiliation in the market. 

“We are extremely pleased to be adding TV20 as a CW affiliate, especially as we get set to launch ACC men’s and women’s college basketball next month,” said Dennis Miller, president of The CW Network. “TV20 has a legacy of service to the community, and it will be a great home in the Detroit metro area for The CW.”

“The CW offers our audiences and advertisers a solid lineup of attractive programming, including popular entertainment and a growing amount of live sports programming,” added Mike Murri, general manager for Scripps stations WXYZ/WMYD in Detroit.

One of America’s major broadcast television networks, The CW reaches 100% of U.S. TV households and delivers 15 hours of primetime programming per week in addition to live sports such as ACC football and basketball, LIV Golf, and beginning in 2025, NASCAR Xfinity Series racing. The fully ad-supported CW App, with more than 96 million downloads to date, is available for free to consumers on all major digital platforms.

The ATSC has released the agenda for its annual meeting next month. Traditionally held in May in Washington D.C., the conference is moving this year to Detroit, June 8-9. 

This marks the association’s second in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic in 2020. The conference will take place at the historic Westin Book Cadillac hotel. Detroit is the home of the Motown 3.0 Test Track and Michigan itself boasts three DMA’s on-air with NEXTGEN TV including Detroit, East Lansing, and Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo.

Organizers expect a gathering of at least top 200 industry executives, media, engineers, and thought leaders. 

Wednesday’s agenda will cover trends and the latest developments in developing and monetizing ATSC 3.0, while the Thursday morning schedule will focus on where NextGenTV fits within the automotive industry. Wednesday's meeting is members-only.

Attendees will also gather for an evening event on Wednesday night at the famed Henry Ford Museum.

Details are available here. 

DETROIT, Mich.—WWJ-TV (CBS 62), the ViacomCBS-owned station in Detroit, has announced ambitious plans to build from scratch a full-scale, hyper-local news department in 2022. 

CBS News Detroit is currently expected to launch in the late summer or early fall of 2022. It will feature a 24/7 streaming service with live local news coverage from 4:00 AM to 11:35 PM, Monday-Sunday, for a total of 137 hours per week. In addition, CBS 62 will broadcast live CBS News Detroit newscasts 40 hours per week in early morning, midday, early evening and late news time periods, the company said. 

“We view this as an unprecedented opportunity to start from scratch at a large-market, network-owned station and build the newsroom of the future – where we focus first on streaming and then have our content flow like water across our linear broadcast, digital and social media platforms,” said  Wendy McMahon, president and co-head, CBS News and Stations. “When Brian [Watson, vice president and general manager of WWJ-TV and sister station WKBD-TV] and his team presented their vision for CBS News Detroit earlier this year, I thought to myself ‘This never happens. Until now.’”

This marks the first time CBS 62 will have its own full-scale local news department. WWJ (formerly known as WGPR-TV) became a CBS Television Network-owned station in 1995. From 2001-2002, WWJ aired an 11:00 PM newscast produced by WKBD until that station’s news department was shuttered in December 2002. From 2009-2012, WWJ produced a weekday 5:00-7:00 AM newscast that offered weather, traffic and headlines from the Detroit Free Press and also WWJ Radio. In recent years, the station has aired local weather reports several times a day, the company said. 

CBS News Detroit will be recruiting and hiring a full staff as soon as they hire a news director. The reporting staff will consist of a diverse team of journalists who will be embedded full-time in communities across the Detroit area, as well as at the State Capital in Lansing, Mich.

Adrienne Roark, president, CBS Stations, who has worked closely with CBS 62 on developing the plan for creating CBS News Detroit, added: “The time has come for our Detroit employees and the communities served by CBS 62 to have a full-fledged news department that utilizes the latest advances in newsgathering and streaming technology and a team of multi-skilled journalists who will be embedded in neighborhoods across the market.”

“This is a landmark moment in the history of our station and, for that matter, local news,” Watson said. “I don’t believe there is another station in a large market like ours that has done anything like this, so we are excited to help write a bold new chapter in the history of local news.”

Watson added: “CBS News Detroit will stand out as the market’s only grassroots, community-focused newsgathering organization. We will super-serve our audiences on every media platform with more hours of live, local news than any other source in Detroit. Our journalists will be committed to giving a voice to people who might otherwise be unheard, and shining a light on the issues that are impacting communities throughout Metro Detroit.”

DETROIT—NextGen TV is coming to Detroit in more ways than one. Five stations are set to collaborate on the transmission of the ATSC 3.0 next-generation standard. In addition, the Motown 3.0 Open Test Track is set to get underway for testing NextGen TV automotive applications.

E.W. Scripps stations WXYZ-TV (ABC) and WMYD-TV, Graham Media Group’s WDIV-TV (NBC), CBS owned-and-operated WWJ-TV and Fox Television owned-and-operated WJBK-TV are working together to provide the NextGen TV service to their Detroit viewers, while also ensuring that current over-the-air broadcasts remain available. WMYD-TV is serving as the NextGen TV host station.

All of the broadcasters involved in bringing NextGen TV to the Motor City are also carving out some of their over-the-air IP broadcast capacity to create the Motown 3.0 Open Test Track.

“The goal of the Motown 3.0 Test Track is to provide another research and development environment for the automotive industry to road test proof-of-concepts and connected car solutions using Internet Protocol (IP) capabilities of  the new broadcast TV standard,” said Brian Lawlor, president, Local Media, Scripps.

Lawlor says that NextGen TV gives terrestrial broadcasters the ability to deliver infotainment and IP data services to vehicles simultaneously, as well as to the displays and devices in them.

The test track will test the delivery of live local news, weather and other programming, as well as advanced emergency alerting, navigation maps and non-real time audio and video segments. The first test, however, will be the delivery over ATSC 3.0 of a PDF file of an 1886 patent of one of the first automobiles.

LG Electronics, Amazon Web Services and LTN Global are among the initial participants at the Motown 3.0 Test Track. Triveni Digital is providing the ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Chain, including the Non-Real Time content delivery infrastructure and receiver software. Additional collaborators include Pearl TV, the Phoenix Model Market Partners, E.W. Scripps, ViacomCBS, Fox Television and Graham Media.

NextGen TV is in the process of being deployed out across the country, having so far launched in markets that include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City. 

DETROIT—Local broadcast TV streaming service Locast has planted its flag in Detroit, announcing that it is now delivering more than 65 channels for free over the internet to the Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich., TV markets.

Locast is a nonprofit organization that provides free access to local channels so viewers can get news, emergency information, election coverage, sports and entertainment programming. It says it is able to provide these channels for free because of the Copyright Act of 1976 allowing for the rebroadcast of local stations without a copyright license. This is a point of contention among broadcasters, who are currently suing Locast.

The new Detroit setup includes 66 TV channels and is available to viewers in nine counties in the Detroit DMA, including Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Sanilac, St. Clair, Washtenaw and Wayne.

These channels are available in HD via the Locast app or website on internet-connected devices. In addition, Locast is available on Dish Hopper/Wally receivers, select DirecTV receivers, TiVo and with streaming service providers Google Play, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon and Roku.

Detroit is the 23 U.S. TV market that Locast is serving, representing more than 145 million viewers, or 43% of the U.S. population, according to the nonprofit. To date, Locast reports it has more than 1.5 million users.

For more information, visit www.locast.org.  

DETROIT—WMYD, The E.W. Scripps Company-owned MYNetworkTV affiliate in Detroit, will launch ATSC 3.0 service by the end of 2020 in collaboration with Graham Media Group and other local broadcasters, the station announced today.

“Scripps is a strong supporter of the development of ATSC 3.0 technology as a way to continue to improve the broadcast industry’s offerings for both consumers and advertisers,” said Brian Lawlor, president of Local Media for Scripps.

The Detroit launch of Next-Gen TV service offers the automotive industry an in-market test bed for IP-based broadcasting to deliver data to millions of receivers at the same time without concerns of wireless internet bottlenecks, according to the announcement.

“After our positive experience with KNXV as part of the test and learn initiatives in Phoenix, we are eager to launch this technology with WMYD in Detroit and help move the industry forward,” said Lawlor.

Graham Media Group is also participating in the 3.0 Detroit launch with its WDIV-TV NBC affiliate.

“The collaborative effort needed to launch this new technology requires that broadcasters work together for the benefit of our viewers,” said Emily Barr, president and CEO of Graham Media Group.

“Graham and WDIV look forward to launching the new Next Gen TV station and the eventual launch of our own advanced signals on this platform. The future of television insures a more expansive experience, with high dynamic range video and advanced audio features that will immerse viewers as never before,” she said.

The rollout of Next Gen TV service in Detroit is subject to final engineering and regulatory approvals as well as FCC license modifications. However, participating broadcasters have already identified WMYD as being among the first stations to convert to 3.0 as part of this rollout, the announcement said.

At the 2019 NAB Show in April, a group of broadcasters, including network O&Os and affiliates and public broadcasters, announced their plans to deploy Next Gen TV in the 40 largest TV markets in the United States by the end of next year.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.