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What strikes me the most about all of this is how traditional it all looks. Solid royal blue everywhere, restrained design elements, and an orchestral theme that's refreshed but still light on contemporary touches. The newscast itself is pretty sober with an offering of all the meat and potatoes news of the day. This show feels more in line with what it was like during the later Rather or early Pelley eras. Funny how every time CBS tries to shake up the Evening News, they always eventually go back to a pretty traditional presentation and newscast format. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

It’s such a great theme and they’ve now brought the great 1988 theme back twice that the news buff in me wishes they’d resurrect the 91-06 theme at some point. It’s one of the best news pieces ever. Side point but man has Rather managed to rehabilitate his image from the time at the end of his CBS run.

I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here though. We will have to see if “What’s Now” has a different vibe than “What’s New.” The 6pm show and “Front Row” at 7 are different from one another. But having so many “What’s” names doesn’t really differentiate these newscasts. I’d almost rather have something like “Friends at Four (or Five)” - like sister station WLTX…

While there are potential problems, it may be worth the risk given that the more successful O&Os are exceptions, not the rule. Also, CBS has changed significantly since the Killian fiasco. CBS and Dan Rather have had nothing to do with each other for nearly 20 years. If CBS News gets into hot water again on the national level, there will always be people who harass their local CBS affiliate over something the national network did, regardless of station branding. Also as you alluded to, KCNC’s identity has been that of a standard CBS O&O since 2003, and they no longer have any real local identity to speak of anyway. This really isn’t much of a change on their end. IIRC, that had more to do with KRON’s habit of preempting shows than a branding issue. I mentioned this in the “WBZ Rebranding Newscasts” thread, but that’s a big component of this. Even if some of CBS’ more successful stations in medium-size markets (ex: Baltimore, Pittsburgh) lose their local identities, they will make the national network more relevant in those markets. You mentioned the difference in viewer trust between CBS News and the local affiliates, and CBS is well aware of this. Unifying national and local brands can be a small step in remedying that issue. The CBS O&Os can add value to the national news operation, and if the CBS News brand is more ubiquitous, more viewers might begin to trust the national network in the same way they trust their local station. It should be noted that WCCO appears to be launching the new look with their own local branding, although that’s more than likely a transitional thing.

You're referring to the 1991-2006 version composed by Patterson, Walz and Fox. That was a DAMN GOOD version. I hope they bring back that version with a twist.

You’re talking about a station that used to be a NBC O&O. The O&O glory days (before the TEGNAization) are on the backroads…

Yet...

At least there's not a newscast titled "What Sucks."

CBS owns the "Eyewitness News" name.

KCNC has been calling itself "CBS 4" since 2003 (and switched from "News 4" to "CBS 4 News" in 2005), so it's not that big a leap. It wouldn't be the first time they had to adapt to a longstanding part of their identity being dropped (they had to drop the KOA calls because GE let Belo keep them for the radio station). But I do think trying to force the major affiliate groups to drop, in some cases, decades' worth of brand recognition and give up at least the appearance of an autonomous newsroom potentially problematic. There are a lot of people who are still, almost 20 years later, distrustful towards CBS News (rightly or not) over their handling of the Killian documents. Plus if CBS News gets into hot water again, why make it harder to distance yourself from the network? The O&Os have every reason to align themselves with the network, being owned by them and aggressively branded with the Eyemark and "CBS" visually or verbally. But if your newsroom is independent from the network, why act like it's not? Wasn't the longstanding "A CBS AFFILIATE" marker meant to indicate exactly that? Also, it sounds eerily similar to NBC's failed gambit to make Young sell KRON to them at a loss. "Call yourself 'NBC 4' and pay us $10 million a year or we're pulling our affiliation." The alignment of the O&Os with the network also serves another purpose I haven't seen theorized: It helps CBS News look like it's "in touch" with large swathes of the country. Over the last decade or so, the national news media seems to have retrenched into a handful of large metropolitan strongholds: New York, LA, San Francisco, Washington, maybe Chicago. Touting a presence in places like Detroit or Pittsburgh or Baltimore or Denver is huge, especially considering the national media's disinvestment in the Rust Belt and general ignorance of the Intermountain West.

Big improvement! Love the return to it's roots theme, taking a great page from ABC! Hopefully the late era Rather theme makes a comeback one day. The L3's are horrendus but the dark theme for the video walls is great, especially considering how bright and washed out newscasts and daytime tv looks with HD these days.

Likely WCCO. They’re debuting a new 4pm newscast on Monday and it looks like it’s using the prospective new graphics.

Happy to see Alexis Christoforous reporting on the local newscast for ABC News, but they really need to teach their anchors how to pronounce her name. More than one has gotten it wrong.

Okay the Atlanta News First talk is in this thread.

That's wild, they must loan it out to other stations. WWL (which is a Tegna CBS affiliate) has used eyewitness news for decades.

The only time in the last decade+ ratings went up.

Wale Aliyu from Boston 25 is moving to San Diego and joining 10News as a main anchor: https://twitter.com/WaleAliyu/status/1559753769516154881?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1559753769516154881|twgr^7a1c9827975882976378593b2955aadee4e15eff|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2FWaleAliyu2Fstatus2F1559753769516154881widget%3DTweet

Sara Shookman is on maternity leave. The station even covered the birth of her second child. I don’t think anyone’s getting pushed out here. Also, I don’t like WKYC’s format either, but it’s not like Dave Lougee and Tegna issued an edict that WKYC must change their newscasts. While Tegna management certainly encouraged this stuff, these moves were made entirely by local management.

Tell that to the networks/cable.... I think having different names, so long as the content and presentation is different, is a good thing. It shows differentiation and gives viewers a chance to latch on to a show that they like. If everything is just "x news"....then most people will think, seen it once, seen them all.

I have seen Betsy and Laura each co-anchor at 11pm, but not Sara in recent years.

Good point. They've done that a lot since KCBS debuted its new set in 2016 (which took three months to build), but I wonder if there is sufficient turnaround time between the 4 and 5 pm newscasts or 10-11, even allowing for the fifteen minutes of "Sports Central." I think but for maybe giving the anchors new chairs and some different monitors, the set is absolutely identical since April 2007. For an idea of how long ago that was, Harold Greene and Ann Martin were still anchoring KCAL's 4 pm newscast then.

I like the virtual newsroom looks in the corner. The dark tones give it some versatility. The wooden tones make me think there in a wooden set so did the loop of the newsroom.

It's tegna over tegna-ing. Giving every show a brand eventually disconnects the station from it. You can't expect viewers to remember unique names for multiple different times.

A complete 10 p.m. WBBM newscast from 1983: By the way, was that USA Today commercial produced by Collier Concepts?

Or “CBS (name of city/region)”. The way CBS is pushing this across the chain, I expect them to push the non-owned affiliates to go in the same direction, either as “CBS” or “CBS (city/region)”. It’s something that I’ve debated @channel2 on in the discord as she values the brand integrity of the affiliates and the legacy brands of the O&Os, which I totally get. At the same time, harmonization is not new, from the time ABC had their O&Os all adopt the same Circle 7 in 1962, to when NBC pushed the same news sets throughout their chain in the 1970s to when CBS had their affiliates use Rockwell as their CG typeface in the 1980s. The only difference here is the presumed excising of the channel number and retiring of call letters as brands in favor of a unified approach. It’s revolutionary in US broadcasting but is so commonplace elsewhere. Moreover, CBS has a clear and obvious brand issue with KDKA, WBZ, KPIX, WCCO and to a lesser extent KYW as stations that have to share a branding with their onetime radio sisters. It’s in theory not bad unless the radio station gets bad publicity a la Wendy Bell flaming out at KDKA 1020 and KDKA-TV has to issue statements that they had nothing to do with Wendy’s employment. It’s an awkward licensing agreement between Audacy, iHeart and Beasley Les Moonves made that never should have happened (but at the same time everyone would be grousing at KDKA 1020, the fabled “first radio station”, being forced to change their call sign. Look at the awkwardness of KOMO 1000 being forced to rename itself KNWN). Moreover, CBS going with a unified “CBS” branding solves issues with brand awareness that have dogged the network since 1994, especially in Detroit. It’s also why I see them pushing the renaming before “CBS News Detroit” launches, to help get the marketing campaign underway and help to better promote the news service. It also helps the O&O chain’s laggards—WFOR, KTVT, WBBM and WCBS—a chance to start anew, they literally have nothing to lose. The chain’s successful stations—WCCO, KCNC, WJZ, KDKA and to an extent WBZ—will handle it in a transitional way, but the viewers will adapt. I highly doubt anyone in Pittsburgh proper is going to be no longer watching KDKA simply because they no longer call themselves “KDKA-TV 2”. Thus, I expect the network to pressure the major chains—Gray, Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair, Tegna** and Scripps—to adopt these branding conventions on their CBS affiliates wholesale, which will set up an interesting confrontation between the groups and the network that @Weetershas been predicting on the discord for awhile. (“Why should we have to brand our stations as ‘CBS’ and act like the network owns us when we can fall back on NewsNation, the CW and Antenna?”) ** Fate of said company still TBD.

WKYC is launching a 4pm newscast on September 12. It will have the "What's New" title, while the 5pm news will become "What's Now."

I’m not a fan of the black and gold graphics but when it comes to ratings—compared to WCBS, KCBS, and WBBM—KDKA is special.

I wish I snapped a picture, but I’m in Philly right now and I saw a KYW talent promo w/ Ukee Washington after tonight’s Evening News. It ends with the “CBS3” and “CBS News Philadelphia” logos, with no mention of Eyewitness News. They’re going full send on brand standardization. I didn’t think they’d actually do this at first either, and I’m very much in favor of local identities being kept. That said, on many levels, this makes sense. As many others here have pointed out better than I ever could, most CBS-owned stations in large markets do not stand out. WCBS and KPIX already look bland, KYW and WBBM have been mismanaged into instability, and KCBS… need I say more? I don’t think a unified branding will make those stations ratings powerhouses or anything, but it would at least tie them to the network’s news division. Also, to answer your question, there is no longer any need to differentiate between the network and streaming. That’s the whole point. If CBS wants to really prioritize streaming, a great way to do that is to unify both linear and streaming brands.

No need to be snarky, but yes, CBS or CBS New York will suffice. (If you weren’t being snarky, my apologies for interpreting it that way.)

False. WRAZ simulcasts with WRAL at 4pm. Once again, simulcasting exists in the year 2022. The concept of 2 stations running the same newscast has been in place for at least 20 years. There is no written or unwritten rule that forbids something from happening just because some people don’t like it. There will be no mass affiliation changes if both NBC and Fox stations run 10pm news. There will be no volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or tsunamis as a result of NBC and Fox stations running 10pm news. The state of Hawaii has not sunk into the Pacific Ocean just because KGMB/KHNL already simulcast their late news. Stations are not going to blow up their affiliation agreements just because some of us don’t like the idea of a 10pm simulcast.

I guess I’ll ask this question: Has NBC considered moving Nightly News to 10 instead? From my understanding, the US is really the only country where a major broadcaster doesn’t carry a nightly evening newscast in prime time.

Well, it's true she was forced out to make room for "next year's model." Luckilly NBC was able to give her some projects before Dateline NBC really took off.

As the Just For Men commercial said... No play for Mr. Gray! Gray is OUT of the bidding for Tegna, leaving it to Allen Media and Apollo.... https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2020/3/18/gray-pulls-offer-for-tegna

St. Louis TV legend Dick Ford Has passed away. R.I.P. you'll be missed.