SYRACUSE -- The money CBS affiliate WTVH-TV saved by shutting down its newsroom and moving in with channel 3 has apparently been piling up -- enough for Channel 5 to take over the market's affiliation contract for Live! With Regis and Kelly away from longtime affiliate NewsChannel 9 (WSYR-TV).
That change took effect Monday, when viewers seeking R&K on channel 9 may have been surprised to find Oprah Winfrey airing much earlier than her usual 4pm timeslot. The ABC station explained via the following announcement on its Facebook page Tuesday morning:
Programming Note: we've been getting alot of emails/calls about this... our contract for the Regis & Kelly show ended on Friday. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach a new agreement with the show. Rachael Ray will debut on NewsChannel 9 this Monday at 9am. Regis & Kelly is now airing on Channel 5. Oprah is airing in the 9am slot for this week only.
We noticed today that CNYTVNews.com appears to be on the outs -- a visit there took us to a "parked domain" page which says the domain expired earlier this month and is pending renewal or registration.
CNYTVNews.com owner Mike Szweil tells us he's had other commitments come up which have prevented him from keeping his TV site current. In order to ensure that address doesn't get taken over by a spam or trashy website, CNYRadio.com will be taking over the domain, at least for now. The domain transfer should be complete, we're told, within the next 10 days.
CNYRadio.com has no immediate plans for the TV site's domain; for the time being, we'll probably just redirect it to the CNYRadio.com homepage so it doesn't get thrown to the wolves (no pun intended for fans of 105.1 FM).