KUSI Being Bought by Mega-corporation and Owner of ‘The CW’

Local San Diego TV media politics might soften up a bit.

The most right-wing news station in San Diego, KUSI, will be bought by media conglomerate Nexstar Media Group, the owner of “The CW.” And KUSI may turn into the CW channel for the area. Or may be merged with Fox5, another TV station here owned by Nexstar. Or maybe both. The purchase of KUSI was for $35 million.

Phillip Molnar and Natallie Rocha at the U-T reported:

Texas-based Nexstar already owns Fox 5 San Diego and is a majority owner of The CW, which operates in several California markets. It’s unclear at this time what a merger of operations could look like.

Nexstar said in a news release Monday that the purchase is expected to take place around the same time it pursues a new CW affiliation for the area. If that occurs, it may turn KUSI into a CW affiliate, although a spokesperson said it was too soon to comment on programming for KUSI.

The Rag once called KUSI the Fox News channel of San Diego. Although we’ve also acknowledged the station has some of  the best local news available.

But whatever the politics of the McKinnon family are – they put the station on the air in 1982 – the politics the station expressed and reflected were much more than “center-right,” and more like just this side of MAGA and quasi-anti-Vaxxer. They always had the most reactionary politicians on and constantly dissed the County around vaccines and continually harangued liberal and progressive politicians and causes.

Yet, the U-T is giving them a passing wave and had this to admiringly say about the climate-change denier weather guy at KUSI.

The station also featured chief meteorologist John Coleman, who was a co-founder of The Weather Channel. San Diego viewers knew Coleman for his signature exaggerated pronunciation of the station name, KUUUUUU-SI, during his colorful weather reports.

We also learned from the U-T report that in terms of overall viewership, KUSI was at the bottom, lower than KPBS. Here’s the stats:

• 798,529 for ABC 10 (KGTV);
• 792,253 for CBS 8 (KFMB);
• 770,723 for NBC 7 (KNSD);
• 714,840 for Fox 5 (KSWB) ;
• 450,900 for KPBS;
• 259,172 for KUSI.

So, who is Nexstar?

Molnar and Rocha:

Nexstar is the nation’s largest local broadcasting group, with 200 owned or partner stations in 116 U.S. markets. It is a publicly traded company (NXST), and its share price was up 1.3 percent Monday morning to $166.41.

Nexstar had $5.21 billion net revenue in 2022, said recent financial statements. Nexstar’s other assets include a 31.3 percent stake in Food Network and majority ownership of The CW and NewsNation.