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[Station ditches talent opens] "Booooooo, they suck! No sense of tradition!" [Station updates talent opens] "Booooooo, not good enough! These are crap!" This new open is absolutely fine. The fact that they're using existing shots makes keeping talent opens a more viable option, in the future.

I mean, these particular talent opens aren’t going to be around for very long anyway, so this is much ado about nothing imo.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Chj8v2VuCqi/ Just new lights. Temporary set is the old "Everyday Health" set (a sponsored segment that used to air at the end of the midday news iirc) in Studio D. The lighting in Studio A was already mostly LED and fluorescent, but the fixtures date to the installation of that set back in 2012, so they're probably about due for replacement.

Anyways... let's get back on topic...

It’s just a matter of time before Brittany is named a Permanent Weekday Meteorologist.

With all due respect, if they wanted a smaller cast and a tighter script they might as well go once a week. The appeal for me has always been multiple plots at once with characters rotating between front and back burner status. Twice or thrice a week is fine, but then that slippery slope will lead to season breaks. If you have Long breaks then it's a telenovella not a traditional soap.

Notice that the new weekend open has the talent against studio backdrops and not the plain white background of the other opens… also they skipped the “team shot” at the end of the open. If I had to guess, they threw this together based off recently filmed promo material or recently filmed material for the upcoming graphics update. If the latter is the case, no clue why they wanted to get this to air quickly unless they’re not expecting the full O&O graphics rollout to them for a few more months.

Here's a link to a WKYC story. He served as the prior sports director to Jim Donovan, after his time at WJKW. https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cleveland/wkyc-sports-anchor-cleveland-browns-broadcaster-jim-mueller-dies/95-c10bc1a0-4d5d-47d5-a636-26ccf0e11289

TBH, the first caller is my spirit animal. But seriously, if someone tease a story as "next" it better be the first story after the break. It's slightly forgivable if it's second or even third (if the preceding stories are maybe short VOs), but if a story is teased as "next" but is multiple stories later or even several blocks later, it's super annoying. At least some viewers notice if not a lot, and I'd argue it adds to distrust of "the media".

Major ones in major markets aren't going anywhere. The smaller ones in smaller markets may move.

I wanna puke just hearing that... Good Day Miami. Thank god its morning news is Today in Florida (which dates back to their NBC days). This article says otherwise saying it will return later this year. Also, WILX has Funny You Should Ask. That'll probably air since Wheel doesn't do second-runs. https://www.wilx.com/2022/07/29/wilx-studio-10-takes-hiatus-launches-studio-10-presents/

It’s hard to have a talent open when you don’t have any stability. Things have stabilized at WCBS, but for time people were coming and going or being reshuffled every other book.

It’s about time. I wish they would do that for the 5 & 11pm newscasts

They finally added a talent open to the weekend morning newscast

Oh nice! Jim (S31MA) featured her in a recent newscast for WRSP. What a jump in markets she has made.

Completely spitballing here, but I could see another relaunch of "American Gladiators" being a good fit for the new CW... as long as they do it much like the original, as if it were a straight-up sports competition, and not like the 2008 relaunch, that was packed full of reality show tropes.

If it wasn’t for WFMJ wanting to counterprogram WKBN at 5pm with Maury, then Oprah, then Ellen, WFMJ would’ve done it YEARS ago.

Congratulations to WFMJ for finally realizing 1988 happened 34 years ago and it's time to have a 5pm newscast.

Just looking at this thread and honestly, Perry must be high on Sudafed drugs if he thinks he's going to get live sports on the CW. Many of the major sports contracts are locked up until the late 20s and heading into the 2030s (even local/regional rights deals are locked into that same timeframe) so how's he going to get them? NEWSFLASH: He can't

Which is telling considering I just noticed (as a NON-soap opera and NON-viewer of The Talk) that Eric Braeden was on The Talk either yesterday or today. For those who may be wondering, he's the actor behind Victor Newman on Y&R, the mustache in his previous years (given my mother and her mother have been longtime viewers) being a dead giveaway. The Bell heirs sure take care of their actors quite well. Not surprised that WYFF carried Donahue considering they were the Multimedia flagship early on until that swap with KSDK in St. Louis earlier in the decade (which Multimedia took advantage of to launch Sally Jessy Raphael). Being 35 years old, you are not alone in being shocked about what your market (or other users' markets) used to air. I was shocked to find that Channel 2 (KPRC) originally had Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! at first until '86 - I thought they had been on KHOU the whole time before Jeopardy! jumped to its rightful place at KTRK in 2015. Going back to what I have discovered about Houston, one KPRC promo even showed clips from both game shows as well as The People's Court, Family Feud, plus some show with Richard Simmons in it circa '85...Seemed as if (Donahue on KTRK notwithstanding) KPRC was the go-to for first-run syndication before Belo used its drug money from The Dallas Morning News + WFAA to prop up KHOU with both of Merv Griffin's game shows + Oprah when KTRK turned them down, due to the 6pm Eyewitness News being a big cash cow (especially with Marvin Zindler), as well as their unwillingness to cancel Million Dollar Movie and let go of its film editors during a time when the oil bust hit Houston's economy so bad one fine dining restaurant had a three-course "Oil Barrel Special" for the price of crude. In any case, the Million Dollar Movie went away, which could have given KTRK carte blanche to pick up all three of the shows that they turned down, but even as the rest of the ABC O&Os picked them up, Belo most likely spent bigly to keep all three from moving across the street - wouldn't shock me if they conditioned WFAA's continued broadcast of those three shows on KHOU also picking them up in 1992, along with Entertainment Tonight right after the 10pm news, followed by talk shows hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh and Jane Whitney. (ET went to KPRC the following season right after the 6pm news as David Letterman crossed over to CBS (and KHOU, albeit at 11:05 p.m.).)

Hour-long superhero shows + CGI × COVID compliance + all those writers trying to keep Riverdale from becoming an ouroboros = This is why you're going to be seeing A LOT more of Eric Estrada and Laura McKenzie on The CW (I'm shocked Associated Television International isn't getting their own 25% piece). Also...Hearst does have leverage with the Litton E/I block, so don't expect them to go gently into that good night either.

I read that the current entertainment president is staying with The CW under new ownership. I don't know how long he would last after all of the programming changes. He is the same guy who kept renewing shows that had horrible ratings, yet had more streaming views and were shows he liked.

There's one thing that glares significantly over this sale, beyond this totally cringe-inducing passage from COO Tom Carter: @sanewsguyasked this on Discord this morning... where's Perry? Arguably the biggest day in the history of the company—and less than two weeks after his tenure as CEO was extended by four years—and he was nowhere to be seen. I can't imagine the CEO of one of the country's largest pure-play television chains going AWOL the day of their highest-profile transaction, let alone a CEO so totally tied in with the company that he's almost universally known as Uncle Perry.

I also don't see them pushing it on their own stations with active newsrooms. Nexstar O&O, oops Mission's WPIX has several newscasts a day including at 6:30 pm and 10-11 pm.. NewsNation provides no value.

They won't push NewsNation on the affiliates. Why? Because that's not the best use of NewsNation. As I've said a few times on the Discord, the best use for NewsNation to Nexstar is to dump existing affiliations on their owned stations in favor of reformatting NewsNation programming to run OTA. With NBC and ABC moving entertainment programming to their streaming services, it's just a matter of time until companies like Nexstar question why they're paying Comcast, Paramount, and Disney big $$$ for basically a bunch of national news programming and a big nightly ad for Disney+/Peacock/Paramount+, when Nexstar already produces national news programming. "Ohhhhh! But..." you say. Tell me, would anyone actually notice if Nexstar replaced the latest flop that CBS has on in the morning with Mornings in America? The CW fits into that plan by providing general entertainment on their duopoly stations, .2s, or by selling the affiliation off and collecting money from other stations in the market.

I'd be shocked if anything NewsNation ended up on the CW. Maybe a NN-branded magazine show for the weekend, at most.

Forcing any NewsNation product onto the CW is a non-starter and would implode the affiliate base.

Honestly, why? The CW for those operators is likely on a secondary channel or HD subchannel and probably runs on automatic. Why blow that up over 14 hours of programming a week?

Thing is, it was a success…a financial one. A post in the NewsNation thread explained that they’ve saved lots of money by cutting syndicated programming and replacing it with its own, cheaper to produce programming. From Nexstar’s last Annual Report: Don’t get me wrong, nobody’s watching NewsNation, but that’s secondary to the fact that they’re making more money on the network by virtue of 1) paying less for the programming and 2) owning the ad inventory. I don’t like it one bit from a programming standpoint, but I’d expect the same thing for The CW under Nexstar. You mean that you wouldn’t want to see a Guy Fieri special replace the Arrowverse on your station? Blasphemy! /s Seriously though, you can add Hearst to that mix too.

If I’m at Scripps, Sinclair and Gray, I’m taking a good look at exercising whatever sale-related clauses exist in my CW affiliate contracts.

If the Nexstar station is affiliated with a Big 4, I see the status quo remaining in place. But if Nexstar has a MNTV affiliate, I could see a swap happening.

WGCL also stole another investigator from WXIA a few weeks back: Andy Pierrotti. Looks like Gray isn’t messing around when it comes to making CBS 46 a contender.

The CW’s saving grace these past few years was their Netflix deals and global syndication

The other difference is that UPN and WB existed in an era where smartphones and OTT streaming services didn't exist.

Paramount and Warners still hold minority stakes and will continue to supply programming, and unless something drastic happens, the existing streaming deal with Netflix will be unchanged. The biggest change has already happened with the mass cancellation of shows (but that may have more to do with Zaslav at WBD than anything else). If Nexstar was smart they'd keep the network as-is with other production companies producing content for them. If they can stave off the losses and turn something close to a profit, it could work. But the CW has never made money and has always operated as a loss leader and that was even when the younger demo-strategy still WORKED.

KRON becomes an O&O filling that last hole in San Francisco. Same thing in NY, LA, Chicago, Houston, Dallas. I’m having a heart attack over this quiet honestly. I think they’ll keep there affiliations by moving CW to a sub-channel or buying a LPTV. They will be fine. We’re not gonna have a 1995 that would cripple Nexstar and ruin all the affiliate relations they have. Especially if the audience CW is targeting gets boomers.

It depends on the market. They aren’t going to yank it off a station like WISH, for example, when they have both the CBS/Fox affiliates in Indianapolis. Same goes for WCCB. I don’t think anyone was suggesting that Nexstar would/should replace every established network affiliation with a network like the CW. Any suggestion of such a thing would be asinine. In the case of stations like WGN and KRON, however, it would make some sense. First, it’s not like they’ll be alienating CBS when CBS/Warner are selling the majority of the network over to Nexstar anyway. The CW is a non-core asset for them. Second, it’s true that WGN gave up the CW “for their own self-interests,” but those interests had to do with local sports broadcasting rights that had to be moved to other stations to accommodate CW programming. As I previously mentioned, WGN no longer has local sports rights, and the CW would give WGN two hours of programming that their company (Nexstar) owns. Finally, in KRON’s case, why would Nexstar spend on a MyNet affiliation when they’ll now have their own network to program? It’s the same reason why NewsNation is dumping reruns for their own talk shows. Of course, there’s no guarantee Nexstar will want to switch all of its independent/MyNet stations over to the CW, and it’s highly unlikely they would do it right away. This is pure speculation. That said, it’s not a far-fetched possibility.

Looks like the CW affiliates owned by Nexstar will be owned by the network itself: KWGN, KTLA, WPIX, and so on.

What is there to be gained from yanking the affiliations off of WCIU, WPSG, KBCW, WCCB or WISH? What is the return on investment for alienating the massive groups that own those stations right off the bat? What benefits stations like KRON, WGN, WPHL, WJZY and WTTV that already have established brands (and in the case of WGN and WTTV, willingly gave up the CW for their own self-interests) to disrupt their programming with CW fare? Just because Nexstar is buying majority control of what is still for all intents and purposes a three-way partnership does not mean they are going to be doing things to it or to the affiliate base "just because they can" The CW targets a demographic that is least likely to watch OTA TV. It might have still worked in 2006 but that's 16 years and 12 models of iPhones ago.

On what planet is WGN America a better brand name than The CW? (I'm not saying The CW is a particularly strong brand in and of itself, but it's certainly worlds better than WGN America.) The only people I've ever spoken to that have any kind of affinity for WGN America are here on this board.

Here's a behind the scenes photo they showed today, in tribute to the director who is leaving. Really sad what the quality of this show has become.