Leaderboard

I'll also add this, since it was brought up. How much of a big deal is the Wendy Bell fiasco in 2023? It's been 2 and a half years since she was taken off the air at KDKA Radio. I don't follow her, I don't know if she's still on broadcast radio/TV or just on the internet. She's never going to be back on KDKA anything, ever. I would think by now many people have largely forgotten about her time on KD. I could be wrong, though, as I don't actively follow her. This is an aside, of course. Back to the main topic.

It’s a brand that is shared with a now-unrelated AM station that created a PR nightmare for channel 2 when Wendy Bell was flapping her gums. “KDKA” became a liability then and it will when one of the other talkers on the AM station says something incredibly stupid and inflammatory. KPIX didn’t have a radio station sharing the callsign. That’s really why they kept the KPIX name for now. (WJZ will assuredly be doing the same as WJZ-FM doesn’t use the calls in their branding, but just have the equally boring black box logo.)

ESPN's version of the pitch clock; a little more naturally integrated into the box and it slides in and out (though since it's the first game they've done it's taken the producer a bit to remember 'oh yeah, pitch clock graphic, shoot!' and slide it in).

I believe KCAL is the only station that brands themselves as 'KCAL News' at all times, even outside of newscasts. Also, this is a 'must read' for anyone interested in understanding the mindset behind this graphics rollout and the grand scheme, if you will, that dates back to Fall 2020. Exclusive: Inside the rebranding of CBS-owned local stations I hope reading this will put an end to all the what ifs and whatnot that has plagued this thread recently. A couple of highlights.... 'KPIX, serving the San Francisco Bay Area, launched the new branding and design in late December, formally becoming CBS News Bay Area. Los Angeles duopoly KCBS/KCAL and WWJ in Detroit will follow, ahead of a wider rollout this spring for remaining stations in the group.' 'Viewers will notice the removal of station numbers from logos and bugs with an emphasis on location. McMahon notes, however, that the overall rebranding is very much a market-by-market approach heavily guided by market-level research and data... 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.' '[Wendy] McMahon [president and co-head of CBS News and Stations] notes that each market is different and the knowledge, brand and history for each owned station will influence its final brand positioning and on-air design.

I don't think its as big of a deal now. You don't hear much about KDKA radio these days (the controversies died down the moment they canned Wendy), so the brand isn't as "toxic" as it was a few years back. Not to mention the KDKA-TV branding is a lot stronger than the radio branding these days so they were able to overcome any controversy from the radio side. I don't even know where Wendy is these days. She keeps bouncing around different radio stations in Pittsburgh that have a much weaker signal compared to AM 1020. She's basically an obscure nobody these days.

New show: The Hill, based on the Nexstar-owned website of the same name. Debuts in April.

The (WOC) KQWC Collection.

Relax, it was a typo. KDKA did fight to keep the Westinghouse era 2. They fought for several years but eventually lost that battle in 2003. This was when they officially used the CBS 2 logo, yet still branding itself as KDKA/TV

WJZ, not WJW, and KDKA hasn't used the Westinghouse 2 in 20 years.

I think stations like KDKA and WJZ will try to fight being rebranded as CBS Pittsburgh/CBS Baltimore but both will lose that battle. If KDKA was unable to keep the Westinghouse era ‘2’, than you know they will be called CBS Pittsburgh/CBS News Pittsburgh.

Savannah has Covid they announced it later in the show

Are you new to local news management in 2022? Amateurish is the standard quo now.

Very interesting. They took Studio A, which was an enormous studio, and divided it up into three smaller studios. WRC is in one. WZDC (Telemundo) is in another. And the use for the third studio, which looks like it might be smaller than the other two, has yet to be announced. Jummy Olabanji called it a "secret studio that we can't show you yet." WRC now has a rare luxury of space. In addition to the large column-free space that used to be the network newsroom, there's the studio WRC just vacated and there is the old MSNBC studio upstairs. I don't know that I would count the old Telemundo 44 studio as extra space because that was shoehorned into the building. At first look, I was a bit underwhelmed. But I realized there's a lot of grayish white "blocks" that make up the walls. Obviously, this is a nod to classic DC architecture. Once I realized that detail, I kind of liked it. Even though the effect does leave it looking a bit cold and sparce. There's a really cool DC map but its location in a corner by the door makes it seem like it might not make it on camera all that much. They are still in construction mode - they haven't fully loaded in the weather center yet. So, it will be another couple of weeks before the space is fully utilized. I do wonder if this is a preview of how WNBC will utilize the split Studio 3B. WRC's layout really does a great job of maximizing space and that will be essential in 3B.

This is textbook Wendy McMahon if you recall the branding shifts at WCCO and WBZ in the mid to late 2000s, both of which were places where she was the head of creative services. The WBZ brand of that time is a great example — she brought the call letters back, but the CBS eye became more prominent in a lot of branding elements.

I really don’t think that in-house look (which is incredibly chintzy) is apropos of anything.

On KDKA's "KDKA 2.0" special last night, Wendy McMahon emphasized the brand equity of the call letters, so hopefully that means they're not going anywhere. https://youtu.be/C9hjNRXSfLc?list=PL-g6w-CsfQ1K_rDpCypnPJjtAG7UKe65C&t=408

CW Acquisition Has Already Paid For Itself, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook Says Sports beyond LIV are also in the crosshairs of Nexstar, Sook said. Without offering specifics, he said the company is evaluating “sports opportunities that could bleed into primetime.”

Yeah the tight 2 shot looks like a college newscast, the metal accents behind the monitor make it look like a rolling monitor stand in a conference room and the graphic on the screen lacks depth - it all looks too close to the anchors like they're pressed against a wall. Maybe a better landscape shot will help that aspect, and they can rework the monitor accents. The DC stone is a nice nod, though white is tough for TV, and to be honest the layout of the studio and materials feel more like the lobby of a class A office building or museum than a The Other Site. Weather nooks look visually interesting with nice depth, we'll see how that plays out. Surprised they didn't keep this studio larger and put Telemundo in the former News 4 studio, but guess they have other uses in mind.

Not only is WWJ adding specials on the app, their morning newscasts expands to 5 am beginning next Monday. IMG_3984.MOV

It’s a little underwhelming.

Watched a bit this morning… sounds like the set isn’t really finished yet as they kept teasing showing it off “over the next few weeks” and didn’t show anything beyond that very flat 2-shot. In the 6a hour they went back to using a live tower cam in the background and it looked pretty bad.

I expected low numbers, but not to the extent that an Ole Miss/Mississippi State Raycom game in Montana would get. There are Gravitas/Pureflix weekend movie packages that have better ratings, yeesh! I tuned in for a few moments out of curiosity, and the presentation remains confusing (golf teams, but someone wins? And a crowded NASCAR-esque scoreboard) and it felt like something that was created to fill time on Golf Channel.