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Oh, I agree. But they’ll probably do a show on an OTT like Judge Judy (“Judy Justice”) now does for Freevee.

I see WXIA Atlanta just swapped Dr Phil and Jennifer Hudson's timeslots, making her the lead in to the 5:00 News.

Judge Mathis will live on in canned lawyer commercials. He used to do ones for Morris Bart. Even Judge Joe Brown is part of an agency's rotation of celebrity endorsement of local law firms alongside William Shatner, Eric Pierpoint, and the late Robert Vaughn. The same agency often uses "you mean business" and has a dramatization of a legal situation that ends in "Who are the lawyers on this case" (insert law firm here) (surprised reaction) "Let's settle this one"

Expanding my thoughts on this entire CBS News Local rebrand. Even though this entire thing of rebranding all newscasts from random names, like CBS (Number) News, Eyewitness News, (Call letters) News, to a simple CBS News Local is a good thing to me, I now think it may not be good enough. To me, I now think that if you are doing this entire rebrand with the goal of having a local to national approach, I think the local newscast should be able to match the national newscast. For example, the local news organization brand should remain CBS News Local. But for example in New York in the mornings, the newscast should be called "CBS New York Mornings," just like the national "CBS Mornings," and in the evening, like at 6:00pm, it should be called "CBS New York Evening News," like the CBS Evening News, or to be short "CBS New York Evenings." And not only have it renamed, the local newscasts should also have the same quality production as the national. I'm not saying change the set, or change the way reports are done. But rather try to make it feel more like I'm watching a national newscast in the local segway, instead of being the cheap quality that people have been used to for so many long years. It feels smart to do that as not only you'll help unify your local to national approach even more, but it can also be like a smooth transition and segway to the national newscast as well. I'm sure as alot of people can tell, they're not doing that. I'm probably sure that some are gonna say, so you want it to be the way that BBC News or Global News does it. Well, why not? Give me a bit of international flare into my newscast. Give me something fresh and new to watch in my newscast, and not just the same boring, out of order, un-unified approach. The way that the current roll-out of the new brand is working may be good. But I feel like there could be so much more than just calling the local newscast based on your news organization all the time, and having the same graphics system, the same music, etc.

Why doesn't Telepictures just sell their remaining syndicated shows to Fox period? Fox always had a close relationship with Telepictures in recent years.

It's possible as Ralph Edwards/Stu Billett Productions is still independent of any studio, so it could be done and easily be rescued by Fox First Run (and they'd be happy to move it to Georgia for tax purposes like DC is). But all I keep thinking with all these syndication departures is the inevitably of K-LOVE moving into television the same way they did with commercial radio, or TCT/3ABN getting even more stations.

Judges Milian and Mathis will probably have new court shows in the near future... maybe in 2024.

This surprises me. Both shows are cheap to produce and have loyal audiences. I like Mathis's calmness and humor, and Judge Milian has always been great. Maybe Freevee can pick them up for new court shows. What's interesting is Judge Mathis and the People's Court have other production companies involved, which makes me wonder if they could find another partner to continue the shows. I feel like my childhood is slowly dying TV wise with all the cancellations of syndicated shows these past few years.

KCAL might honestly be the only one where the "transitional" branding can function long-term. I do think it's just a matter of time until the "CBS News" portion gets put back into the OTA broadcasts. The rest of them, though? There's no way something like the WCBS and WJZ lockups, with the current logo in the box next to "CBS News New York/Baltimore," are viable long-term. The "channel number logo" gets shoved into a small box in the corner, dominated by "CBS News (location)". Two distinct logos advertising the same product. Same goes for the call signs. They accomplish very little, simply existing to reinforce the fact that this is the local news and not the visually identical network news. They're not even following the way the stations currently use their call signs, if the KDKA image is any indication... They want you to "Expect More from KDKA-TV News" for a reason. KDKA will keep that call sign box until the day someone on KDKA radio decides to say something controversial again. Some of these call signs aren't viable long-term because CBS management made a huge mistake not requiring call sign changes on the majority of the former radio cluster. As for stations buying stuff with the logo, KPIX is still using mic flags with the CBS 5/CBSN Bay Area branding on them. Just think of how good that square "KPIX" box would look on a mic flag... But maybe there's a reason they haven't bothered to order new ones yet? Waiting until they can get away with simply putting "CBS News Bay Area" on them? Perhaps. Why do I think the "call sign box" is a transitional brand? It looks and plays the part. It's one size fits most, grafted onto a different logo in an uninspired manner. It's also not universal, and only seems to be rolling out at stations that have some kind of long-term branding history using their call sign. @ChesapeakeTVrecently shared a news article in the Discord that had some interesting numbers in it. CBS knows that people by and large (over half of all people, at this point!) are moving away from over-the-air television being how they primarily consume local news. This is why Detroit was launched as a "streaming first" operation. If this company truly felt that call signs and channel numbers were still relevant to today's consumers, we'd be seeing them on WWJ CBS 62 News Detroit. Those boxes are transitional. This is a fact. The question is, how long will this transition last? At this rate, what relevance will channel numbers or call signs have in three years? Five years? Ten? The digital renascence is here, folks.

KCAL is a temporary situation; Wendy explained outright it was a much stronger brand than “CBS 2” ever was and they had to reconcile both brands (which prior regimes never did) before starting the process of streamlining everything. Odds are impressively high that “CBS Los Angeles” will ultimately subsume the KCAL brand in less than a year, and KCAL itself becomes “CBS Los Angeles+”. That’s to confusing for viewers you’re factoring CBS, KCAL, and the streaming app, and network news. KCAL News or KCAL News on CBS Los Angeles would sound better.

They could challenge in a battle for #2. It’s possible, because of the audiences they want. The LIV Golf situation could make that happen faster.

I'm sure moving The People's Court would be great for Marilyn as it's slightly closer to Miami. As stated before, both Mathis and People's Court had other studios coproducing with Telepictures/WBTV. It's no different than one network or streaming service cancelling a show and another one picking it up. While syndication has had so many shakeups over the past few years, I don't think it's done yet as talk shows have been renewed, the most popular game shows will be on for a few more years, and sitcoms and dramas are still airing in reruns. I expected those to go first as they're available for on-demand viewing on streaming.

The thing forgotten is that there's still a regular news division, it's just that the radio newscasts and the 24/7 headlines channel on SiriusXM are carrying that 'news' water, along with the short news briefs that now remind me how MTV used to have their 3-minute newscasts at 50 past the hour. So they still have a news operation, but it's been de emphasized so much (along with Fox Business, which just now seems to be FNC2), that only the most knowledgeable about the operation would be able to cite it at all these days. And even the radio news division is now built basically to tee up whatever is about to be talked about on conservative talk radio.

I could not disagree more. Fox certainly tries to disguise itself as a news channel. But there is a huge difference between talking about the news and making up the news. And making up the news is called lying, and these texts prove once again that Fox knows they're lying. And it's bad for the country. (See: January 6th and other attacks since then.)

I bet Mathis and Millian will both return as TV judges somewhere OTT., and possibly also appear as legal analysts on TV somewhere. They're too popular and too young to retire from broadcasting for too long. Another thought I had is since Harvey Levin is part of the People's Court, could Harvey find a way to have FOX take over rights for the show from WB just like he did for everything related to TMZ?

I love to play the game of 'which law firm's line is so obviously dubbed in three years later' with those ads. It's always so awkward.

I’m willing to wager both of them end up as legal analysts for one of the networks.

Doesn't change what I'm saying. None of them are actual "news" channels in the common sense (heck, NewsNation spends more time airing Blue Bloods reruns than they do running actual newscasts). MSNBC is a talk channel with decent amounts of news in the daytime, but they are largely opinion in primetime. CNN is still trying to clean up from the Zucker Era of Disaster and may very well not please anyone in the end. Fox merely is just flat-out blatant about not being a news channel, they don't care. They don't need any advertisers because of lucrative retransmission fees they reap the rewards from on a continuous basis. Contrary to what others have suggested elsewhere in the thread, there's really no redeeming part of that channel whatsoever. It attracts no one but old people for a reason. Cable talk as a whole needs to be thrown into obsolescence where it belongs.

False equivalence. This isn't simply about bias. It's about knowingly spreading baseless and dangerous lies. Fox doesn't believe the disinformation they are peddling. That means they are lying.

They show Rangers, Stars, and Mavericks games on the main feed. The sub feeds are named appropriately for the territories of the teams they show.

The CBS News Los Angeles brand already exists right now. Yes, not as the primary brand for KCAL, but through streaming and its digital coverage on the website. As for on-air, as I stated before, the call letters and the channel numbers are gonna vary based on location through CBS Brand research. “We have research in each and every one of our markets,” said McMahon. “We’ve tested this to a place where we feel we make a decision that’s most aligned with our audiences and our viewers.” “In some markets, viewers may see channel numbers remain while in others – such as at KPIX in San Francisco – stations will lean into call letters as the primary moniker alongside the location name.” That's according to the specific source of unknown name. So, if they did the research, why would they reverse it now, or in a year's time for one station? Now, I'm not the manager at KCAL News, so you never know, but based on what they want to do now....maybe this is it. Agreed.

News branding aside, it'd be incredibly shocking if they were to completely dissolve KCAL's identity. Look at all the FOX duopolies- the sister stations each took the name of (all together now...) the more dominant brand. However, we each know about as much as the next person regarding the situation, which is to say- we know nothing, aside from what we're independently inferring from articles. None of us know, for sure, which O&O is relaunching next. KCBS/KCAL could absolutely swap out logos and VO's in a year's time (though the concept of "transitional mic flags" seems a bit far fetched). What I know since moving here nearly two years ago is I developed a preference for KCBS, I love that they finally combined newscasts instead of having separate branding, and Pat Harvey is an absolute legend.

CBS and Paramount+ NBC and Peacock Fox and Tubi

It says something about the state of broadcast syndication when first-run shows go away, they're replaced by their repeats.

I suspect WBTV will still offer Mathis and People’s Court in reruns, like CBSMV is doing with Judge Judy and later this year, Dr. Phil.

Judge Mathis has more than enough episodes for a 24/7 channel on Pluto TV

The remaining daytime offerings are slim for the picking. Realistically how much news can stations use to fill gaps before turning into KTLA. Fox 10 may have no choice but to air both shows in reruns.

This isn’t the first time DFW stations used just “Texas”: WBAP: The Texas News (Pre KXAS) WFAA was “The Spirit of Texas” (not North Texas) - though not in the title of their newscasts KXAS: The Texas News Channel KDFW: News 4 Texas KXAS: Texas News 5 Now is’s 11’s turn to use Texas. But IMHO, streaming on the FAST systems (Pluto, Xumo, Roku, etc.) is probably why - pick up a few eyeballs outside of DFW for additional ad $$…

Honestly I like everything here except the actual intro part, cutting to the beat of the music? Cool. Doing it with a song that fast where every scene only gets like 1 second? Not so cool. It would work better if they just slowed down the music just slightly, like an in-between of how long the intro took before the Headlines was added and now's way too fast version. The graphics look great and I've always loved the whole idea of the EyeOpener and always thought it made sense on Evening, especially considering Evening is 30 minutes while Mornings is 2 hours, you need as much extra time as possible so it makes loads of sense to try and cram as much headlines in as you can in as short of a time instead of being like ABC taking a whole 2 minutes on teases That's a whole 1-2 more stories you could've fit in the main show and the montage format allows stories to be shown that don't need a full segment, just a few seconds. Same reason why I also don't get the complaints about "it's too rushed", of course it is, how else can they properly inform people of everything they need to know when they only got like ~22 minutes of total time after removing ads to cover the news. If it was longform reports, you might only hear 4 stories a night and be missing a lot of what actually happened. We have plenty of outlets today for longer stories that people can check out 24/7, the evening newscast should be a quick summary of everything for people that don't have time and then refer people to watch them on streaming if they need a more full story. I said this before in the Discord a long while back but tbh, I think one of the Evening News programs really needs to completely blow up their format and CBS would be in the best position to do that since they are always last. As someone on the younger side (25), basically none of the news shows on TV currently really are something my demographic would watch. Even a lot of the streaming ones are basically "just take the existing format and shove it on online". The ideal format imho would be essentially: Younger host that would be a bit more relatable (ABC and CBS both have anchors that are almost 50, Lester is 60, PBS's co-anchors are early 40s) For CBS specifically, this would also help shed the common conception that CBS is the network for the elderly, not something young people want to watch. Less teases, we don't need 2 minutes straight of just saying what's going to be in the show a minute later. Stop calling everything Breaking News, stuff you talked about 6 hours ago on your streaming network isn't breaking. If it didn't happen during the show or like at most an hour before, it's not breaking. Fit in more stories that might not need more than just a passing mention, not everything needs a 1-3 minute package with reporters on the ground. Maybe have a 2-4 minute segment during the show that's basically just Newspaper headlines, each topic limited to just 20-30 seconds, just enough to get the point across, or spread it throughout the whole show. A better balance of positive to negative news stories. Currently outside of the final story usually, there's almost no positive news nowadays (obviously if something major like a mass shooting happens, it's understandable if they pare it down but there's many times nowadays where you have slow news days that could easily fit in some more uplifting news stories and they still only talk about the nonstop doom and gloom) Incorporate more stuff to help the viewer feel connected to the newscast. Something as simple as asking people to think about a story and share thoughts online with a Hashtag to maybe like voting for a big feature story to air at the end of a week or maybe even pulling a note from TODAY's MyPlazaCam and featuring photography at the end of the show to show off all of America (since all the current shows are too New York/Washington centric) Legit at times I feel the reason this country is so polarized and all the constant hatred and shootings and stuff is cause that's all people see in the news, maybe if they saw that the world wasn't always that bad more often, maybe people would hate less than they do seeing everything fall apart 24/7.

You did! The more I think about it, there’s no way WB won’t offer a rerun package of both for at least next season, right?

Unexected but not surpsing given how busy Seacrest is. Mark is a solid choice. I suppose Kelly didn't want to go through months of guest hosts and the audience is already used Consuelos. Hopefully the saying about working with your spouce doesn't happen here -- but they all ready worked together on All My Children. I expected Kelly to leave before Ryan, in that case Maria Menunos would have been a solid replacement. As for the future of the show, (this was tried already) but Michael Strahan, Sarah Haines and Keke Palmer were good together. I believe their show didn't work out because GMA 3 was an unkown show duplicating a saturated format. LIVE on the other hand has an established brand and maybe the trio --or Michael and one of the two ladies-- would work. But please keep LIVE going rather than replacing it with GMA 3.

Talked to one of the main anchors yesterday and he said 6 am would start today. However, there wouldn’t be a full morning newscast for a few weeks. More than likely, weekends will debut first, then the 4:30 am and 5 am newscasts.

It’s being built out incrementally; likely that you’ll see the start time pushed further in the coming weeks to 5am and 4:30am.

Dang! AM news not until 5:30? I know they are the new shop in town, but 5:30am start time is very 1999.

@ABC 7 Denverbeat me to it, but half of the PBS NewsHour is made up of talking heads, and, no offense to fans of the show, but most people don’t want to watch that crap. It’s a big reason why PBS never moves beyond its very niche audience. Not to mention, it has always been a very slow newscast, and was considered as such even when the big networks were doing slower-paced newscasts. Many European networks seem to find a way to do stories with depth and context without boring their viewers to death; I don’t see a reason why we have to pick between a sleep aid and the desperately frenetic product that the big networks are putting out now.

Most of the stations seem to be of the 'it's better than Byron' mindset where most of the coverage is overlaying weekend content or infomercials and treated like filler, but it's telling that WCCT (which is de facto an over-the-air CW+ affiliate with its site hosted there) and Tegna turned it down. If its ratings get above, say, what Raycom historically had with ACC sports outside its territory, I'd be very surprised. The PR doesn't mention what time-buy affiliates there are, by the way.

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

So I haven't lost my marbles yet. Looks like the new GFX package for Gray is coming in March and goes with hardware upgrades mentioned in earlier posts ..so a bit of a wait

So Weigel apparently had the option to refuse carriage of LIV and Nexstar let them decline? If that's the case then Nexstar has no standing in their threat against CBS and they're free to.put the time-buy on stations they own.

There’s one nugget in Scotty’s post which makes me believe this “source” is in fact a CBS executive intentionally leaking this to make Perry look bad: You notice something’s missing here? Nowhere does it say that CBS wants to disaffiliate their CW stations over LIV, they just don’t want to air it because of an obvious conflict of interest with their PGA deal. Pretty clear-cut issue, doncha think? This is making me wonder if Perry, or a Perry surrogate, started a “could CBS dump the CW over LIV?” rumor… fed it to Scotty, and Scotty ran the story because he doesn’t engage in critical thinking. I do think that Nexstar legitimately made a threat to disaffiliate his stations from CBS, but that’s more him holding a grudge over the network yanking their affiliation from WJMN and putting it on the .2 of a heretofore diginet tree.

Atlanta News First is taking, note-for-note, what Gray did with WOIO-WUAB and fusing a bit of the CBS News playbook to it. WOIO was one of the first stations to embrace over-the-top streaming and rolling coverage online prior to 2020, championed by the same Eric Schrader heading up WANF. Schrader not only wowed Gray brass in demonstrating the simplicity of WOIO's OTT setup--it really doesn't use much resources--it played a role in their embrace of digital streaming and likely got him the Atlanta gig. Conventional ratings at this point don't matter for WOIO. What matters is targeting an audience that will easily access their newscasts, and by and large, they've been very successful. That's exactly what they've implemented at WANF and is exactly what CBS is doing with WWJ (you could argue that CBS News Detroit is more a Xerox of WOIO's digital strategy than WANF is). But it also underscores the democratization of television journalism. You don't have to be beholden to Neilsen's television ratings--a rather ancient and increasingly inaccurate method for audience membership--if you can make money and find viewers with a product that can be done with both efficiency and care. To that point, I think a market like Atlanta can support more than one digitally-based news services. If CBS wanted to make use of WUPA for an in-house news operation, it can 100% co-exist with Atlanta News First and both can thrive.

Honestly, I think it's totally reasonable to think that CBS might take affiliations in-house, if/when they dump the CW from any or all of the stations in this discussion. However, some here are relying way too much on certain factors to support or reject the idea, to the point where the same points just keep circling around. So, until we know for sure what CBS plans to do with their CW stations (beyond the initial FTVLive posting that I first brought to everyone's attention), how about we put this topic on the back burner? Agreed? Good. (Besides, there's a speculation thread already dedicated to this, so THIS thread wouldn't be clogged up with hypotheticals.)

There was a point in time in 2018 or 2019 that I thought to myself and realized....there's hardly any scripted TV shows on television that people want to see, mainly because, as someone alluded to earlier, these companies put their money where their mouths are, and that's with the streaming services. I mean...is it safe to say all these big 4 networks have outside of reality, news, and sports are their legacy shows? NBC with their Law & Order trifecta...ABC and Grey's Anatomy...CBS continuing on with NCIS after all this time....Fox with two Sunday night animated comedies in Family Guy and The Simpsons, I guess? One thing's for sure, nobody I know is flocking to the TV for the newest ABC drama or CBS' next big comedy led by a well-known actor. This leads me into my next point. Appointment television. I miss the hell out of it, or at least what comes with it. When I used to watch Chuck on NBC, I had quite a number of days where I'd hop on Twitter and follow along with everyone watching the show at the same time. I did this with a few other shows and a quite often once I found subreddits in Reddit for my favorite shows. That level of camaraderie is something you can't replicate with a Netflix or Disney+ show that rolls out new episodes at 3am on a Wednesday or Friday. While this isn't going to take away from whether or not people enjoy a series, appointment TV is something that'll rarely be seen, or at least not in the droves that it would lead to if you had to tune into a show at 8 or try and watch a DVR recording a week before the next episode.

None of the news departments at the Chris-Craft stations were going to survive because Fox’s intent was to eliminate competitors in their existing O&O markets, the lone exception being KMSP, and they flipped that station from UPN to Fox. Those stations became little more than shells and wastes of spectrum.

“Cable news” is a oxymoron. They all peddle talk and opinion programming to some degree or other. (I count the pointless and vapid talking head interviews and mini-debate segments, but yes, Fox is extremely explicit in showing bias on-air.) They also attract audiences way out of the money demo. The median age range for a Fox and MSNBC viewer is 69. CNN’s median age range is 66. I would put into question the actual relevance of the entire genre. Sure, Fox may be #1, but if their demos are that embarrassing, does it even matter?

FWIW, I just punched in www.cbsnewstexas.com and it redirects to CBSDFW.com.

I noticed Gray is starting to hire for its "daily magazine show," which I presume will begin airing in September at the latest. They say it is not a newscast, but it sure looks like a newscast from the description.