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Personally, I like the branding concept. But if the station is to leave the cellar, it will be because viewers like the on-air talent, not the graphics or the slogan.

And WWJ-TV has gone all-in as "CBS Detroit" (h/t @DetroitTVNews)

Big News. Gray's largest TV station could be changing its callsign this fall. Its CBS station in Atlanta, WGCL-TV has filed an app to change its callsign to WANF. If approved, the change would go in effect on October 3.

Note how this was done before football season; I will be very happy to have that white whale (ALWAYS been bad since they launched their digi signal) in my channel lineup, and this makes Green Bay an all-UHF market (including whatever Weigel's Wittenberg station will be).

The 4pm has been running since last Thursday from the State Fair (big deal up here!). Tuesday should originate from the studio. To make the case for CCO possibly not being the first, the stations are so preoccupied with their State Fair studios I wonder how much time they have to work on anything else over the 12 day run?

That’s the point. One company is controlled by private equity. The other is not. They still have the offices but Cox ceased being a “local company” with the Apollo buyout, it merely became the equivalent of a subsidiary.

Well, It's About Time. (Oops, wrong station!) But a long overdue move. Kill the old call letters with fire after what Meredith did to the place.... As long as CBS Atlanta doesn't resurface on an O&O in the market, although I doubt Gra wants to "fire" CBS any time soon or vice versa...

I wonder how much of CW's reportedly extravagant programming spend went towards licensing the syndicated content that runs on there. I suppose there's nothing stopping Nexstar from blowing up those deals and simulcasting Antenna TV or Rewind TV in place of that content.

I'd say it depends on the station. "PIX 11" and "KTLA 5" work better than "The CW 11" and "The CW 5" because those stations were much more established independent of the network. The same would be true of WGN should it regain the affiliation. But it mid-tier or low-tier markets where the affiliate never had an identity outside of their affiliation? Probably not. Of course, it's entirely possible that Nexstar could up and change the network's name...

An update from above: From Its website, WCYB turned off RF 5 back last Monday (8/22) and are now operating on its STA facility on RF 35. Good Riddance! EDIT: Sister station in Green Bay, WLUK is about to switch to the UHF dial (RF 18) this Wednesday at 11am. __________________________________________________ Two R&Os today. The PBS stations in Maine. WCBB (10 > 20) WMEB (9 > 22)

With NBC now having a regular Saturday night football package, I wonder how they'll pacify Lorne if we get a nine-overtime game like we got last year...along with the stations who may just have to do a speed-run five minute newscast. And for next year, will CBSSN get some Big Ten overflow action if CBS has to move onto the SEC at 3:30...or even someplace else like MTV based on ubiquitous carriage/other conflicts.

If anything, the slogan 'Atlanta News First' will put behind much of its past, including the sleazy gossip tabloid period of CBS Atlanta (where they attempted to make Atlanta gossip on the level of New York's a thing) and when they had Ben Swann. The same slogan and direction has done wonders for WVUE's perception in New Orleans., along with their hires.

It's market 204 I believe, so we can't hold them to the same standard. Any old Gray set could find its way up there to be reused.

The station has a college football game airing tonight. They did it at the right time.

As of today, WWJ-TV has rebranded from CBS 62 to CBS Detroit, and First Forecast is now NEXT Weather.

They've made clear that the temporary 4pm show they have now is not a newscast. It's an hour-long show devoted to the State Fair and nothing else. The actual newscast launches Monday, Sept. 5. You can see in this full promo the use of TT Norms and glimpses of the prospective new graphics on their set's video walls that look nothing like the outgoing package. Also, notice how there is a lack of channel number in the title of the show. Also, if you look here, you’ll see that WCCO has no newscasts scheduled at their State Fair studios for it’s last day on Sept. 5.

If there's a reason to suggest that NBC may be prone to cutting back on primetime, maybe one ought to take a look at how the Big Four networks stack up in terms of when they can fill their local newscast time, which admittedly has become quite more valuable than before in recent years. While politics obviously play a hand in this (especially with a 2022 midterm cycle that is good for Politics, Inc.), it provides stations with a reliable revenue generator as well for local advertisers, especially given that I have started seeing on the Big 3 plenty of direct response ads (e.g. Medicare Coverage Helpline, Bulbhead, etc.) airing where the latest Procter & Gamble product or cheesy insurance company ad would in the past. With regards to Texas, take the Fox stations for instance. In Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston, the secondary Fox affiliates are simply used to provide second runs of most of the Fox O&O's syndicated shows, either utilizing an extension of the Fox O&O branding (as KDFI does in Dallas with "Fox 4 Plus") or a legacy branding most in a market remember (as KTXH does in Houston with "My 20 Vision", since many Houstonians still refer to it as "20 Vision" from the days of Star Trek: TNG, Arsenio Hall and most road games for the Astros and Rockets during the 80s and 90s). Likewise, you have the CBS O&Os having their own duopolies with the secondary CBS affiliate (either the local CW O&O or an indie) airing primetime and morning extensions of their CBS O&O newscasts that go up against the 10 ET/9 CT hour of primetime or CBS Mornings, respectively, as KTVT does with independent KTXA in Fort Worth. And while ABC O&Os don't have their own duopolies, it has begun airing primetime extensions of its newscasts on Nexstar's stations in markets where the local Nexstar station does not have its own in-house news department, with KIAH in Houston airing a primetime newscast from KTRK in the 9PM hour - a relationship that could in the future extend to 7 to 9 AM (unlikely given KIAH has its own traffic and weather-focused newscasts and their own meteorologists) while KTRK airs Good Morning America, a noon newscast against GMA3, or perhaps even KTRK's legacy 6PM newscast should CMV force ABC to carry Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! on all ABC O&Os in prime access or risk losing them to the CBS or Fox O&Os in the future. Ditto with Univision and its Unimas stations, which in Houston carry each other's SD feed on their spectrums. NBC, by contrast does not have much leeway to extend its local news franchises into alternative timeslots beyond the traditional pre-Today, pre-primetime and early evening slots, and whatever opportunity it has to create English-language duopolies is taken by its Telemundo O&Os, as is the case with KXAS and KXTX in Fort Worth, and will likely be the case when Graham finally cashes out of the broadcast biz and inevitably sells KPRC to NBC, making it a duopoly to KTMD which already partners with KPRC on some community relations, news franchise and other matters. If anything, giving back one of the primetime hours to their affiliates in order to free up the last hour of primetime to allow the local affiliates to carry newscasts to generate revenue might seem "sustainable". But with many non-O&O NBC affiliates already airing primetime newscasts on duopoly stations, it may actually do harm than good, and NBC would be better off to beef up its LX sub channels to potentially serve as "backup NBC affiliates" as opposed to radically altering its primetime format to make up for either a lack of creativity or whatever constraints the FCC places on broadcast content as opposed to cable or streaming. (I mean, come on, it can't be the network's fault if Little Timmy gets scarred by some of the more explicit content (e.g. blood and guts on Law & Order, nurses cutting off clothes on ER) that was expected of NBC shows during their "Must See TV" golden age in the 90s!) Lastly, why not utilize a promotion and relegation system with regards to scripted and even some reality programming? Like using Peacock and USA as "farm teams" with the stronger shows being promoted to NBC should something else fail on the (old school) Peacock but could have better value on USA. Maybe use NBC to air the legacy Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU and utilize USA to carry any other extensions of the franchise...

WANF will be in the 3RD place maybe I don't see the name change getting them out in last place in my opinion.

This is a duplicate of what was posted the previous day.

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

WSB has already seemed to falter with Apollo, only standing on their laurels as a legacy station with pseudo-local ownership. WAGA is catching up in ratings? I agree WXIA is the big loser.

CMG headquarters is on Peachtree Dunwoody Road. Even after the Apollo deal, they are still based in Atlanta.

Okay the Atlanta News First talk is in this thread.

KYW in Cleveland (now WKYC) was the first station to use the EWN name in 1959, so Westinghouse had the first-use service mark. To keep it active, they might bury it in KYW station promos not unlike what WAGA has done for decades under Fox ownership. (“Be an Eyewitness to News on CBS News Philadelphia!”)

Channel 46 doesn’t need to have “46” in their branding, either, and why would they? They could easily brand outside of news as “WANF CBS”, “ANF CBS” or … hear me out … “WANF”. It’s intentional and I love it. Cox ceased being a local company when Apollo bought them out (blame the Cox family losing hundreds of millions on Theranos).

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

It's nice to see them make some drastic changes. WGCL and WXIA have been slowly limping along with drastically lower ratings than market leaders WSB & WAGS making only minor changes that lack traction. It'll be interesting to see if WSB loses ground as Apollo is more bottom line focused while Gray is throwing money at WGCL. Sounds like the biggest loser here will be WXIA.

They also bought a station in Summerville/Triton, WKSY-LD, which was a subchannel dead zone for the extreme western part of the market (though it did offer local public access like coverage of local meetings and events); Gray certainly isn't planning for it to forever carry Real America's Voice (that's what's on the schedule; gotta assume the ownership before and not Gray made that deal) and Circle has no affiliate in Atlanta to speak of. It's definitely a move-in and tower move-up target, because it's doing bupkis in Rome and Ft. Payne. As for this station call change, good on them for finally killing calls that should've died when "Georgia's Clear News" did; if only WATL wasn't being wasted on Tegna/MyNet.

Because WGCL’s ratings have been in the toilet since time immemorial. The only constant at CBS 46 has been an absurd level of instability. Also, I’m not sure how branding by “channel 46” makes you relevant in today’s world. Gray doesn’t want its largest station to be a perennial basement dweller. They needed to end the instability plaguing the station, enhance the newsroom with new hires, and blow up the branding. They’ve done a decent job with the first two so far, and now they’re about to do the third.

There is mounting evidence that this has been in the works for the better part of a year. On November 1, 2021, Gray parked the WANF call sign by changing an LPTV in Tennessee to WANF-LD. On April 25, 2022, Rick Folbaum welcomed a new employee with this tweet: "Welcome to the team! Let's get to work. @cbs46 @GrayTelevision #Atlanta #News #First"

Here's the reason for the change. Spotted on VUit.

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."

It looks like, unlike Ellen, Jennifer will offer a second run, leaving Wheel as the only first-run daily syndie that still does not do a second run at all, all because of its former daytime version that's been off the air waves since 1991.

Next could be "What's The Deal With That?!"

I miss Tim Russert and the days when Meet the Press was worth watching

I figured they would do that but they should’ve kept Inside Edition and moved BBT to Peachtree.

cbs 46 news has really turned around but this is a lot.

This is a large rearchitecture. The reason it has taken this long is simply because of how comprehensive it is. Of the four O&O chains, CBS has the most problems ailing its. Most of the stations are ratings fixer-uppers and have spent two decades or more in such a condition. There was no news in Detroit. Post-Dunn and Friend, something radical needed to be done. And the investment in News and the fact that there is actual innovation and renewal in News are all to be hailed. If you watched the first night of the new Evening News look, you might have noticed the text elements listing places where CBS News has bureaus. There's London...Rome...Johannesburg...Atlanta...oh yeah, and Sacramento and Baltimore. News and Stations in a nutshell. There is a lot going on. A visual overhaul, the first top-to-bottom one at Stations in nearly a decade; a restructuring internally; the continued effects of the Paramount Global merger, etc.; the launch of news in Detroit; and the shift to a streaming-first or -co-first mentality at every outpost in Stations. This does not happen overnight. Why are we so excited? Because there is a sense of renewal at CBS that is long-deserved and needed. Because they are fixing, finally on a comprehensive level, a historic inequity in Detroit, and they are making the right moves in doing it. Because there is a pathbreaking branding approach. ABC has too many successful news franchises in its markets to do this. NBC has too many, and it also has Telemundo; it's hard to have that sort of fusion of national and local news when there are two separate networks (with separate teams) to feed and all of the NBC newsrooms it runs are bilingual. Fox fundamentally cannot do this without compromising and tainting its local news product to a significant portion of the audience.

No need to apologize, that’s my bad. I agree with your point though. Making things less complicated is likely the whole motivation behind why they’re doing all of this in the first place.

I imagine NBC will try to angle for as many 7/7:30e starts as they’re able when SNL is new (as they do for the ND deal)

I still remember the late 80s until BTN launched that trying to actually find a Big Ten game that wasn't the big ABC game of the week or on ESPN (and it took awhile for the Badgers to get there)...that meant you had to deal with syndication and ESPN+/Creative Sports and so many different presentations of the team from just game to game, or station to station (or just gave up and waited for the public television student broadcast replay in late night); there was pain when WMLW was still low-power in Milwaukee and you prayed your cable system picked it up because they had some games on that station and you couldn't get it at all. At least now you get to see the game on a streaming service nationwide (and every game period; anyone born in 1980 like me doesn't know how much it used to suck to watch anyone but the big programs when the Badgers were literal football roadkill) with quality announcers and conference-minimum presentation requirements, not just whoever responded on the sports announcer/cameraman equivalent of Fivrr in 1995.

I do like the corporate, polished look of the WCBS news. I like Maurice Dubois and Kristine Johnson together. I find it very professional. I like WABC Eyewitness News too, but I find the blue lower third a little too big. I prefer the Chicago ABC 7 look. Thinner and sleeker. One thing that bugs me from the WNBC News is the see through table. A desk would be nicer. I am not a fan of seeing the anchors' knees when they are sitting.

That’s true…until you realize that you’ll have to pay for both Paramount+ and Peacock, in addition to the existing streaming services you pay for to watch non-sports programming (Amazon, Disney+, Netflix, etc.) In many cases, it will add up to $60 a month anyway. Price is becoming less of a factor when it comes to streaming services; saying that these streaming services are “affordable” is somewhat true compared to most cable services, but that’s a bit of a stretch for a lot of people. The real advantage with streaming services is that you aren’t tied down to a contract like cable/satellite, so you can cancel when the season’s over without extra fees.

Spot on especially the points on WABC and WCBS. WABC is so tabloid, it’s bad in so many ways but they manage to still have the most authentic and solid product. There’s not a single weak personality on WABC, every single one of them is solid. Even Michelle Charlesworth whose presenting style is odd but still uniquely strong. WCBS to me feels like something you could pick up and drop in any market around the country without even noticing a difference. Their newscasts are the definition of “corporate.”

which games get banished to Peacock and Paramount+?

There’s a bit of personality at WCBS to be fair - Marcia Kramer certainly adds a local flavor but overall I tend to agree with you. - WABC’s vibe is an unusual combo of familial and tabloid. As much as I dislike the increased opinion segments, visual mess, and Disney corporate synergy, it still feels like the default for me. Coverage all across the Tri-State - they go all out, highest use of copters too. -WNBC is straight to the point but has the appeal of local-born talent and 30 Rock gravitas. Coverage is a little more focused on the boroughs, with a strong Jersey presence. Collaboration with WNJU reporters has been great, providing coverage into communities overlooked by everyone else. -WPIX targets straphangers and the NY1 demo. Used to have the Daily News connection which though diminished still feels present. -WNYW is a bit dull but I think has been targeting a tone similar to WABC’s tabloid/human interest take. At least they’re coming up with interesting branding like “The Noon” -WCBS is just…there. It’s visually polished but the tone is wooden and really feels cookie-cutter. Editorially there’s an overemphasis on Westchester and Long Island. I feel like they were stronger when they could lean on the Always-On WCBS 880 / 1010 WINS synergy, but that’s faded. The reporters and anchors are all…fine? But the overall vibe is just generic and not targeted to the market.

Yeah, I know. I know I'm not an average viewer. But then again, who else is? Pretty much everybody else here. Haha. I know average viewers don't care.

All I have to say is that you are definitely in the minority. You're talking about viewers who will call these stations by old, no-longer used brands (I used to have a co-worker that still called KSAT 12's newscasts "NewsWatch" in the 2010s), their network, or their cable channels. The average viewer does not admire station branding to the extent you or this community in general does.