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He just hates practically everything else that deviates from his limited mindset of news... as it used to be.

The hilarious part is that KTLA, WJW and WGN will be totally crippled on a digital angle by more aggressive efforts from KCAL-KCBS, WOIO-WUAB and WBBM. And in this era, it’s terminally stupid to hand your competitors a massive advantage right off the gate. I was always curious when Nexstar would start sabotaging the only good assets in their portfolio they basically lucked into, and now we have our answer. The irony is that Uncle Perry and ol’ Scotty Jones have something in common… they both openly want to keep the industry forever stuck in 2003 and discourage innovation.

I've only watch News Nation once. It seemed like a decent product and it looked very professional, but there was no kind of a hook to get me to tune back in. At the end of the day, I need something a little over the top to keep my attention and there was nothing there to get me to tune back in again. My ideal news channel would be a Jerry Springer News Channel. That is, Jerry Springer with the fighting, not the new and improved Jerry Springer when they toned it down. I'm only half kidding here.

After sampling a few "KCAL Mornings" broadcasts over the past week or so, I feel that it's certainly the best morning product that KCBS/KCAL over many years. Whether or not they can ever overtake the solid and dominant "KTLA Morning News" remains to be seen. One glaring aspect that is missing that KCAL should incorporate in the mornings -- which is important to morning audiences who are preparing to head out for school and work, etc. for the day -- is an on-screen time bug. All things considered, a good start to the station's new morning program.

I'm sure that the transition to "KCAL News", even if temporary, was thoroughly researched and discussed by people with a lot more information regarding the possible outcomes than we do. Things in this industry generally don't just happen without some kind of research or thought being put into it. We knew when the "white box" logos started showing up on the websites, that they were likely there to help transition stations who are well known by their callsigns to the new branding. I don't know why it's surprising that KCBS/KCAL chose to transition using the brand that's better liked/known instead of just ripping off the band-aid on "CBS News Los Angeles". (Also, WITI used the transitional "FOX is SIX/SIX is NEWS" branding for less than 6 months)

Extenuating circumstances as they were going through an ownership change. It definitely sounds like indecision and a rebrand, not brand evolution.

To stream a newscast? Ha! No, it is not that costly at this point, especially considering how much stations are paying for affiliation and syndication fees. If you run it with ads, you can significantly offset the costs. I'd argue that this move by Nexstar is a shortsighted plan because they're effectively laying their own demise. As station groups ask for more money from retransmission fees, the cable subscription costs increase to compensate, decreasing the demand and driving up the retransmission fees, creating a no-win game for groups like this. In the attempt to drive dividends, they are not paying down debt (only the low interests rate) which will come due soon and force Nexstar into administration. Even once the Nexstars of the world are gone, the cable industry won't recover. It's a downward spiral and Nexstar is harming their viewership by not providing up to the minute information, especially as viewers have less access to local news.

KTLA is controlled by a cheap company run by a Luddite who sees no value in streaming platforms. They won't be solid and dominant for too much longer.

Sounds like a reheated version of The Soup, which was one of my favorite shows so it sounds interesting

"In order to fulfill our obligations to our cable and satellite partners..." Give me a break. This is a money grab, pure and simple, to punish anyone who is not paying to watch a Nexstar station. Not to mention out-of-town viewers who would benefit from being able to stream a live newscast from afar... ...and OTA customers who CAN'T pick up their local Nexstar station... If this is some kind of actual deal, Uncle Perry may be right up there with Kevin McCarthy. If he was the one running Nexstar last year, he would have lost a lot more than WJMN's CBS affiliation. I've noticed that ABC's deal with Nexstar has passed (it was only supposed to go through 2022). I wonder how that's going for them?

KCAL has a strong news brand and KCBS has been a market laggard since the early 1990s (and again, they were an embarrassment under Applegate before that). It’s a net positive to have the stronger brand used over both stations. KCBS has nothing to lose by ceding their brand over this. Yet again, this is not complicated. I’m an armchair quarterback and I’ll never work in the industry. If I operated a television station it would fail in a matter of days, and I know it.

I apologize for sounding repetitive, but people who are only watching KCAL might not even know that the brand is now also on KCBS. If they are only making minimal (if any) references to CBS, how do they expect their viewership to grow on KCBS or their streaming channel? That’s where they need to grow. The use of the KCAL brand to stimulate that growth isn’t surprising; the lack of any CBS promotion outside of CBS itself (in a market as big as LA) is. Hopefully their researchers are proven right though (they sure as hell know more than I do). The product itself looks good so far IMO.

How is it “an invitation for disaster” though? They wouldn’t be scuttling the KCAL name at all. KCBS is the station that needs the most help ratings-wise, and I don’t know how the current rebrand invites KCAL viewers to watch newscasts on CBS if they aren’t even promoting CBS. Hell, it barely invites them to go to the streaming channel. Again though, if KCBS sees a ratings increase and CBS News LA sees more web traffic, I’d be happy to be wrong.

With all due respect, how is this “alienating KCAL’s current audience” when it had always been a news-heavy indie? If anything, it’s finally showing people that KCAL’s news and KCBS’s news are one and the same. It’s literally doing the same thing KPIX is doing, just in a different path but the same end result.

If they wanted brand evolution, what KPIX is doing is a much better execution of it. Keep the call letters on air to let people know it’s the same newscast, while introducing a new name. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference on either station ratings-wise, but co-branding would be a better way for people to immediately associate KCAL with CBS on both stations (without alienating KCAL’s current audience). Not to get too off topic, but when Charter purchased Time Warner Cable, there was a period of time when TWC’s brand was phased out and Spectrum’s brand was phased in. Both names were used concurrently in TV ads, and both companies’ logos were on the TWC website. To me, at least, that seems like a better example of brand evolution. That said, if KCBS ends up getting sustained ratings growth because of the association w/ KCAL, that will be a good example of why I don’t work in advertising.

For this debate about how long a brand should last, WJW used the “ei8ht IS NEWS” name for 10 months, then hastily renamed themselves “Fox 8” after the network bought New World. (The newscasts went from “ei8ht IS NEWS” to “Fox 8 Is News” to “Fox 8 News” in less than a month.”) No one ever accused WJW of indecision. ei8ht IS NEWS lasted through three sweeps periods and a ton of promos incessantly intoning the brand.

What you’re describing is a rebrand, not brand evolution.

It’s brand evolution. Businesses in practically every other industry do it.

This is also an atonement for the infamous “NewsCentral” setup 15 years ago in which **both** KCAL and KCBS were de-emphasized right out of the gate. It was a marketing nightmare and confused viewers. Take the KCAL name, use it for both stations as a long-term transitional brand, then creep in “CBS Los Angeles” and retire the KCAL name in a year. Boom. Done.

I’m not sure if people referred to it as “KCBS” in recent years though; I feel like it was just “CBS2” for most people. That’s what it is in NY; WCBS is associated w/ the radio station, not the TV station. I don’t always explain myself well, so I should probably clarify that on its own, I actually like the “KCAL News” brand, given that KCAL is the stronger station; it just doesn’t sound like a good idea when CBS is restructuring their O&Os around CBS News. They could’ve incorporated the KCAL brand alongside CBS News LA (a la KPIX) on both stations; that way viewers build a stronger link b/w KCAL and CBS. In hindsight, having mulled this over for a few minutes, it may not make much of a difference anyway. Regardless of what name they call it, KCAL’s ratings probably won’t change much, and KCBS will have an uphill battle. It would’ve been nice to see linear and streaming integrated right away, but I guess that’ll have to wait. One thing I’ll agree on: at least they’re not pretending they’re two different news organizations anymore.

The big problem overall is that "KCBS" has just become a jumbled mess ever since whichever guy at KNX-TV decided 'KCBS should be on our flagship station and we don't care that they've been on that San Fran station for decades'. It was the beginning of the end for channel 2's branding because for whatever reason, KCBS in SFO kept their call letters and come 2002, you had a brand manager's nightmare in LA where KCBS-TV, KCAL-TV, KNX, KFWB, and KCBS-FM all had different brands that never were united very well at all. KFWB eventually got shafted and KNX and KCBS-FM became Audacy properties (along with KCBS-FM), but it still left open that it's only in 2023 that CBSNS is getting around to finally one-branding their local news operation, a thing that should have been done either in 1984 when KNXT-TV became KCBS-TV, or in 2002 when KCAL because CBS-owned. At this point, stick with KCAL. CBS in LA=entertainment, sports or national news (the only thing that cares about KCBS-FM's calls is the FCC and PPM as it's 'Jack FM' to a normal person). KCBS may have been there longer, but KCAL has established themselves as a news brand.

I’m not assuming that at all. My point was that going all in on the KCAL brand only to drop it after less than a year is not the smartest way to go about a rebrand. KPIX has already demonstrated that you can leverage a station’s brand legacy while incorporating the station into CBS News. KCBS/KCAL could’ve done this with the KCAL brand, which would also solve the problem of people not knowing that KCAL had anything to do with CBS. They’re deemphasizing CBS in the name of viewer attachment to a brand, but they’ll eventually dump the legacy brand in the name of corporate synergy… thereby losing the brand viewers were attached to. IMHO, that’s not a plan; that’s indecisiveness.

People are assuming this is a permanent situation and it is most clearly not one at all. In less than a year, “KCAL” will be gone, the name “CBS Los Angeles” will be on both stations, and no one will call either station to complain about being confused over “where did KCAL 9 News go?”

The problem is, this isn’t a reconciliation of strategies at all. They’re basically disregarding the CBS brand entirely. The new rebrand across the CBS stations is supposed to unite the linear and digital products. That’s why the KPIX rebrand works; what you see online is virtually identical to what you see on TV. In LA, the linear and digital products are actually more distant after the rebrand. The website is linked to CBS News, but outside of KCBS newscasts, there are zero on-screen references to CBS. This is even the case for the CBS News Los Angeles streaming channel, which is where the screenshot is from. Granted, this is probably a non-issue in Baltimore, but not in the second most populous market in the country. To be fair, one could argue that KCAL does have that problem. For many people who aren’t TV junkies like us, the abbreviation “kcal” refers to a kilocalorie, not a TV station. If they want to reconcile their brand legacy, why not do what KPIX did and co-brand everything? That way, people associate KCAL with CBS, which is the whole reason this rebrand was supposed to happen in the first place. Going all in on “KCAL News” only to later drop the brand like a hot potato isn’t a good way to leverage brand legacy IMHO. In fact, it may even alienate people in the long run.

In a minute, Imma need a satellite or sister station to back me up lol.

KCAL is a brand. WJZ, WBZ, WCCO and KDKA are also brands, but the latter three are brands now confused openly with radio stations which also still use those brands for their own purposes. (KCAL doesn’t have that problem because virtually no one confuses them with KCAL-FM in Redlands.) Call letters are not “meaningless” but they are increasingly unreliable in order to make your station stand out in a digital world. Same with “CBS 2” or “Fox 5” or “ABC 7” or “NBC 4”. KCAL AGAIN doesn’t have that problem BUT they have to reconcile their brand legacy with what has become a streamlined branding convention among CBS as a whole. That’s all there is to it. We aren’t talking about rocket surgery.

So call letters are meaningless, except in this instance where they are the stronger brand, but then maybe they’ll eventually drop the stronger brand anyway because that makes sense.

Barbara Walters fills in on GMA alongside Joan Lunden (1992). Always interesting to see big names fill in on other broadcasts. .

what about copying their station in Atlanta do CNF Cleveland News First

That’s exactly what I said. They’d be foolish to drop the KCAL name right away and risk confusing viewers that still view 2 and 9 as separate news departments.

So their strategy is let’s go all in on the KCAL branding only to change it a short time later? Sorry, doesn’t make sense.

Because it’d be solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Rebranding KCBS as “CBS Los Angeles” makes the station easy to identify and distinguish. KCAL has been a news-heavy indie since Disney signed it on in 1989 and the brand was never de-emphasized under CBS ownership. KCAL’s news department (despite being one and the same as KCBS) has a better reputation and standing as Bill Applegate, quite frankly, dragged KCBS into the mud with a tabloid format that would put WSVN to shame, and they’ve never recovered from it. My hunch is that you’ll see the KCAL brand get slowly phased out over the next few months, if not a full year. It’s capitalizing on their existing brand equity while associating it with the “CBS Los Angeles” branding.

I think it's smart to move Kelly to NYC for the tax breaks as LA/Cal has too much taxes for the space that Kelly is using.

I don't know why people liked Diane Sawyer more than Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News in it's later years shifted to serious news and I thought she did a good job but others were like... eh. plus CBS was trying too hard to look for the next Walker Cronkite when they should of been working on delivering a fine news product. those are my thoughts anyways.

Jeff Tanchak is celebrating 20 years at WOIO/WUAB. He has survived a lot of staffing, management, and even branding changes during his two decades.

Some have called this "KCAL News" branding awkward and odd because the indepdendent's calls were chosen instead of the heritage CBS station's. But when you consider the eyemark is seen not only in all KCAL newscasts but graces the floor under the anchor desk, the station is for all practical purposes no longer an indie but a second CBS O&O. From 2003 until last week, the CBS eye was purposely absent from all KCAL 9 News graphic design. The set is pretty darned nice (so is KTLA's). It looks much more vast than the old KCAL set it replaced. It almost looks too big in a way; the weather and traffic anchors seem kind of small sitting at those desks. The audio seemed flat the other day, almost like the sound of people talking in a big empty hall. Somebody said it, and I agree: re the glitches and imperfections, this is the kind of thing KTLA would pull off perfectly. "The Desk" feature I like a little better than some others here do; it isn't the first time in L.A. that kind of thing has been done; KCOP's brief "Real News" in the mid-1990s or so had Ross Becker and others strolling around the newsroom and stopping at the assignment desk. Boy did that idea go south fast... O&O graphic design, music, etc, has been standardized by parent networks for a long time, but this CBS reworking finishes off most all local identity, making newscasts replicas of the network version. I'd like to see stations retain SOME unique qualities, like channel numbers... but I guess modern TV viewing and streaming makes clicking a number on the remote less relevant. (It's odd that WCBS hasn't changed a thing yet) It was a jolt to go through the Web site and see every reference to CBS 2, CBS 2 News, KCBS, etc absolutely gone. The station that revolutionized local news in 1960, the station of Dunphy, Bill Stout, Clete Roberts, Joseph Benti, Connie Chung, and others deserves something a little better than that -- even if its news ratings have been at the bottom of the heap for a long time.

Would Nexstar be able to accommodate her with an Atlanta facility? tbh I wouldn’t be surprised Gray hired her for WANF-WPCH once her noncompete ends. She’d be ideal for an old-school lifestyle talk show that can be syndicated throughout the chain and they’d have the facilities for it.

Simple takeaway from this week: - KPIX showed us how to rebrand their newscasts the right way - KCAL showed us how to rebrand it in the most throwback, independent, weirdest way possible I mean, for those who worked with KCAL before moving to KCBS, this is a nostalgic moment for them. For the viewers and some here, it's either bad, or could've been better. For me: Well....good thing I don't live in California.

Curious to see what Gray's plans for the station are.... Could Telemundo Cincinnati be in the future? Maybe even something related to 3.0. it's basically been a subchannel repository for the last decade or so after losing out on the CW to WKRC 12.2. Speaking of WKRP, when's the last time that show's been shown on TV? At least the DVD release restored a lot of the original music that was stripped from later TV airings.... And one last thing, my fellow babies....

You're right! Sorry about that, guess KTLA is exempt from that delay

Literally right now, on the standard web stream...

https://pagesix.com/2023/01/11/rachael-rays-talkshow-may-be-coming-to-an-end/amp/ Looks like this might be the last year of Rachael Ray. Could see the east cost ABC O&Os starting a newscast at 3pm, and moving GH to 2pm.

The facts are these: tv stations want more retransmission fees and cable is losing subscribers. Cable needs some help in ririberjustifying paying higher rate and stop the subscriber bleeding. In any case cable will be screwed in the couple of years with the advancements of ATSC3.0 - OTA broadcaster will be easier to receive and Tv will be able offer internet service, cell phone and other data products, even on demand, localized advertisements .so the cable sees the future and it is not good. Cable will go away like landline telephones