WJLA‘s stint with TBD.com is now but a distant memory, or at least just a small link at the top of the ABC-affiliate’s new website.

Launching a brand-new website this week, WJLA has asserted its independence from TBD.com, the local news site that Allbritton launched in August to house its D.C area media outlets.

“We’re delighted to have you back,” reads a post on the new WJLA.com, announcing the relaunched website and alluding to the apparent erosion of WJLA’s online audience during its time under TBD’s roof. The post goes on to say… Read more

The name has turned out to be more accurate than perhaps originally intended as TBD.com, Allbritton’s local news site launched in partnership with D.C. ABC-affiliate WJLA last August, is about to take on a new identity following Allbritton’s decision to give command of the property to WJLA’s Bill Lord.

In a post on Monday, TBD and WJLA announced that they will be launching a “two-pronged online approach to covering news, traffic, weather, and much more” next week.

Previously TBD had served as the umbrella site for WJLA, as well as Allbritton’s regional cable news station News Channel 8, but now, as part of what Lord has called a “mid-course correction” for the online property, WJLA will launch a new, more autonomous website. Read more

As Bill Lord, WJLA’s general manager and news director, takes control of TBD, the Allbritton-owned web entity will undergo a “mid-course correction.”

Lord plans on scrapping TBD’s umbrella status over WJLA and bringing back the station’s independent website WJLA.com. He plans on also doing the same for Allbritton’s all-news cable channel–reestablishing its internet autonomy while also dumping its new moniker, TBD-TV, in favor of its original name NewsChannel 8.

“Our plan is to have two TV stations, broadcast and cable, and two websites,” Lord told Poynter contributor Scott Libin recently. “All four will have a certain level of commonality of staff. Everybody has to participate in the online effort, or it won’t work.”

Lord plans on maintaining and promoting the standalone TBD.com but will leave less of its business operations under “TBD” status.  “I don’t think there were specific goals,” Lord told Libin about TBD’s launch, “but there will be now.”

Allbritton Communications is handing control of local news site TBD.com to ABC-affiliate WJLA.

TBD.com was launched last August as part of Allbritton’s strategy to cohere its D.C. news outlets. WJLA has been a content partner of TBD.com along with its sister station TBD TV, the cable news channel formerly known as News Channel 8.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the change, WJLA’s news director and general manager Bill Lord will now oversee TBD.

There has been conflict atop TBD nearly since its launch.  Just three months after TBD.com went live, Jim Brady, who oversaw the site’s creation, left because he differed with Albritton executives “over broader strategy.”

While lobbying the FCC to approve its proposed merger with NBC Universal, Comcast was also trying to make nice with another skeptic.

In the weeks leading up to the government’s approval, Comcast was in talks with  Allbritton Communications, a vehement opponent of the proposed merger.

Now it appears that Comcast was able to satisfy the concerns of Allbritton Communications by negotiating a new retrans deal with the broadcasting company, which owns several local stations including D.C. ABC-affiliate WJLA.

According to Adweek, Comcast and Allbritton quietly agreed to a new retrans deal in December for Allbritton’s TBD TV, an all-news cable channel serving the greater D.C. area.  Adweek points out:

The agreement represented a rather dramatic shift in relations between the two companies. Allbritton … opposed the Comcast/NBCU transaction from the start, filing with the Federal Communications Commission and running an aggressive advertising campaign in the local print media. Read more