A Journalist sent FTVLive an email, and instead of breaking down the info into a story, we thought we’d just publish the email in full.

Over 20 years ago, poor decisions with longtime market leader WKBW (Buffalo) saw that station plummet to the dog station that, over time, competed with a Tegna station, two Nexstar stations, and two Sinclair stations, and still couldn't compete. Even with Scripps backing, it still has been a long road to recovery.

Right now we are seeing the same thing in Columbus. For decades, WBNS-TV was locally owned by the Wolfe family, owners of the Columbus Dispatch and, from the 1980s on the only station owned by Ohio interests. WCMH-TV was owned by NBC itself for a period of time while WSYX had long been an also-ran, but neither could compete with "10TV".

By the time the Wolfe family sold the station to Tegna in 2019, WCMH was owned by Nexstar while WSYX was part of a de-facto triopoly with Sinclair and, while having been owned by Sinclair since 1996 clearly has Sinclair "stench" on them.

Oh boy, how things have changed. Never mind Tegna's own problems as a whole. 10TV is clearly the dog station in a market it once dominated. To Nexstar's credit, they've picked up from where WBNS left off in community involvement--something that Tegna has abandoned. And until recently, Sinclair has benefitted from Ohio State football games being on ABC (WSYX's primary affiliation) and Fox (first WTTE, then WSYX-DT3 after Fox programming was moved onto a subchannel of WSYX).

Just by looking at the ratings, it's clear that WCMH and WSYX have benefitted--the two are neck-and-neck for first with WSYX having the slight edge, while WBNS is far in the distance.

Tegna had a good thing going for them in a fast-growing market, yet couldn't leave well alone.

Then again, this is Tegna.