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He knew it was the end.

Considering WLBT's Civil Rights Era history of being unapologetically racist to the point of FCC license revocation threats and an entire housecleaning of management...no sympathy for Barbie here. If this is some other station and an outlier incident, a warning would be fine, but she should know both her station's turbulent history and her own HR issues of the past.

Or just breakfast mode. Someone there must really like morning news.

With all due respect, I doubt their ownership situation had anything to do with their ratings. Most viewers don’t know or care which station group is being sold to whom. I’d attribute it to WANF gaining traction in the market with their new product.

I’m sorry, but that pee-stained Spirit Airlines vibe looks awful. They should have been forced to use the same colors like everyone else.

Hello. First time poster, long time reader. I work for an AMB station and was told we are getting a standardized graphics package. Don't know when it is happening. I am excited to see what the company develops.

1) Why would they change their calls just because the studios aren't physically in Fort Smith? They are licensed to Fort Smith because the FCC assigned them that city of license, and they cover that city. That is all that matters. 2) San Jose is has a bigger population than San Francisco, yet SF is listed first. Virginia Beach has a bigger population than Norfolk, yet Norfolk is listed first. Scranton has a bigger population than Wilkes-Barre, yet Wilkes-Barre is listed first. It's not a big deal.

1980 behind the scenes special of action news at WSB

They changed one of the graphics in the weather center to the "dots with the moving circle." The CBS Sports New York animation used on the monitors for the tease still has "CBS Sports Los Angeles" on the right side. I expected that one to be fixed immediately. The font in the tickerless ticker has been fixed as well.

For I believe the first time in my many (26+?) years of being a CBS 2 fan/TV news nerd, the new graphics were not being seen for the first time as they debuted on CBS 2. Just feels weird having new graphics and it not feeling that big of a deal because we've watched them debut over the last few months. Overall, I think the look is fine. I wasn't a big fan of the previous look as it felt sloppily executed from the start and got worse over time as they used the "CBSN New York look" in many areas. I don't want to repeat myself too much but I'm just jotting down some of my thoughts. I was surprised that Brian Lee's VO in the opens still refers to "CBS 2 News." I'm also surprised that the CBS 2 logo is on at least one side (probably opposite sides) of the mic flag. It's one thing to have transitional on-screen graphics but transitional mic flags are odd to me. I am glad that the "2" remains, for now at least, but using two logos as your logo seems very sloppy to me. The CBS 2 logo is used on its own in at least one transition (breaking news) as well as a topical promo (the blue one below). Curious how long this apparent transition will last (months? a year?). Aside from the two-logos-in-one thing, I continue to dislike the bug. It's... large. I know the size is supposed to match the rest of the network (CBS News streaming, CBS Evening News, etc. -- and this centers around the super small CBS eye during network programming), but it's just big. It kills any sense of sleekness this package would otherwise have. The dots on the bottom bumping the logo up makes everything feel misaligned. And the length of it all means the "live" bug is incredibly long for such small text. Lots of screen real estate is being wasted. And with the bug being on the left side and attached to the rest of the lower-third, the tabs for things like "Breaking News" just feel awkwardly located. I'm very much opposed to using the ticker if it's not going to tick. At noon and at 5 and 6, it was just "THE NEWS IS ALWAYS STREAMING ON CBS NEWS NEW YORK AND CBSNEWYORK.COM"... No animation or anything. Just a waste of space. Essentially an extended bug that serves zero purpose. I do like how the studio looks with the new graphics being used on screens. Interesting how live chopper feeds only have the "live" bug, never yet accompanied by a "Chopper 2" graphic. But for when they play back taped chopper footage, a plain "Chopper 2" graphic was used on the top left. (I guess the whole Sky 2 thing has been abandoned.) While the CBS 2/CBS News New York logo is used on newscasts, localized promos for shows like Judge Judy and Inside Edition use just a CBS New York logo. But the CBS 2 logo is still used to cover the CBS eye for a few seconds when network programming returns from a break. What exactly is the name of this station right now? This is the first time in over 20 years (since late January 2003) that a theme with the Enforcer signature isn't being used on this station. I like the new "This is CBS" signature but the rest of the theme seems bland and forgettable. Overall CBS 2 executed the change fairly well. There were a few instances where the orange "First Alert Weather" tab, presumably intended for mornings, was used on the lower-thirds. Promos seemed to be updated with the new logo, including the Weather Watchers one, which otherwise used the same graphics. I wish the weather graphics had been changed at the same time. I believe the old theme was used after weather for the sports tease at 6:21 but I'm not sure there's an Enforcer signature there so maybe it'll stay. However the animated "CBS Sports New York" graphic on the monitors very clearly repeated "CBS Sports Los Angeles" on the right side. Anyway, it's here.

Omg the black and yellow is SO ugly. It’s funny how protective people are over their special little colors too.

They've come a long way from stretched Helvetica. This look so nice. -- Matt

With the KDKA version of the graphics, I could do without the immense amounts of black and gold. The version everyone else is starting to use is fine enough.

I'd be interested to see what WJXT and WTOL were using in 1980.

And it appears you were right. Correct me if I’m wrong, butI don’t think KFSM has any bureau in Ft. Smith anymore, as they have appeared to have completely moved out of the old Carnegie library building. Although Wikipedia says there’s still a newsroom there, Wikipedia isn’t always reliable. They say there’s also bureaus in Ft. Smith for KNWA/KFTA as well but they clearly left the old studios on Kelly Hwy a long time ago as it’s now some other business. There’s no address for KNWA/KFTA listed for the River Valley area other than a possible newsroom for KFTA in Van Buren. Quite frankly I don’t know why they keep the call letters KFSM or why the station is still licensed to Fort Smith? I don’t understand why KHOG is still a satellite station of KHBS, or why the name of the TV market says Ft. Smith first when Fayetteville outgrew Ft. Smith to become the state’s second largest city awhile back. The population of the NWA metro (population 560,709 as of 2021) has also long outgrown Ft. Smith’s metro (which is still below 300k). Fayetteville is on the verge of becoming the second city in the state to have a 100k population. The NWA metro now comes in second to Little Rock in practically everything but media. NWA has the only other minor league baseball team in the state, the only other children’s hospital campus, a national airport, etc.. It has the U of A Main campus, the Razorbacks, its the home to three Fortune 500 companies. I’m not bashing Ft. Smith. It’s a nice city, but it’s not NWA by a long shot. When I first moved to NWA in 1995, Ft. Smith was larger in both city and metro, and I understood why Ft. Smith had the upper hand in the media market, but times have greatly changed in nearly 30 years. Ft. Smith either needs to become its own market, or Ft. Smith should be made second.