Daniel M. Kimmel, Boston area TV and film critic, said that the move makes sense. "There's probably not room for both of them," he noted when asked by this reporter. "Together they will be a lot stronger than they were separately, as they were going for the same audience."
Kimmel, the author of the award-winning book "The Fourth Network: How FOX Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television" (Ivan R. Dee, 2004), is considered by many to be the leading expert on the history of recent network television.
Kimmel noted that the news was so sudden, it's hard to predict how it will affect the Boston television scene. He confirmed that in the Boston area, the new network would be carried by WLVI, channel 56, leaving WSBK, channel 38, in a quandary. "I don't think channel 38 knows what they'll do yet," he said. He speculated that they may go with movies or repeats of CBS shows, since CBS owns the station.
