PAX/i is now "ion" televis'ion'

In yet another rebranding of the national network that's been forgotten all about, PAX is now "ion" television. I guess 'i' wasn't gaining any recognition. I'd mention it and people would wonder what I meant, I still had to call it "PAX"

http://www.ionmedia.tv/press/press.cfm?id=26

Almost buried is an admission that the 'nationwide public access' experiment was a dismal failure. Who thought that was going to actually work?

Memo to Bud. Wanna start being taken seriously? Stop being wall-to-wall infomercials from 10PM to 5PM. The rest of the schedule isn't much better with mostly ancient off-network reruns that weren't even good enough to make Nick at Nite or TV Land.

Bud should thank his lucky stars every single night for the existence of the must-carry rules. Without them, he would have been out of business years ago.

Good points all around, CA. The station is about one step above KTMW ? 20. According to Wikipedia, Bud is out of the company and NBC is calling a lot of the shots.

Generally I believe Wikipedia about as far as I can throw their server farm.

Bud got really upset at NBC when he felt he was betrayed 5+ years ago. NBC has been trying to get this albatross off of its neck for almost as long. I can't see how NBC could take control of the company, unless it's through a puppet CEO or something of that sort. The reason for the rift was because after NBC bought Telemundo and its stations there isn't enough room to add the Pax/i/Ion/whatever stations and stay under the cap. That deal was iced. Besides, if Ion was going to be in cahoots with NBC, NBC *should* use it to give additional exposure to some of their prime time lineup. It just doesn't add up. Then again, maybe the NBC people took a stupid pill this morning.

More on the NBC getting out of "ION" here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0701200016jan20,0,1639247.story?coll=chi-business-hed

Now that sounds more like the Pax I know and......er, know at least.

The possibility of linking up the ABC radio stations that Citadel is acquiring with the Ion stations in the top markets is intriguing to say the least. One thing I'm wondering about though is how much money all this acquiring is going to take. With that huge a debt load, how will that affect programming? As the analyst in that piece says, Ion needs good programming and they don't have it because of money issues.