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This constant debate is getting nowhere. The gaslighting and ad hominem attacks aren't constructive. Both "sides" here are making compelling points, but some are less rooted in the reality of the situation than others. Folks, we can sit here and scream about "market research" and "freedom to brand as they want" until we're all blue in the face, but that doesn't change the material facts being offered up at this point in time. Every station (with the exception of KCBS/KCAL, using a modified variant) has adopted the "CBS News [location]" co-brand, which is, in essence, the dominant brand in the graphics. Most, but not all of the stations, have also begun verbally using only the "CBS News [location]" brand, with the co-brand being regulated to nothing more than an image on the screen. If there was truly as much freedom being offered to the stations as some claim, I cannot imagine a world where every single station has adopted the same exact branding strategy with minimal to no variation. The rumored KYW co-brand is the first one that seems to have been designed for the branding scheme developed here, however even it is confined to the co-brand box. Either every station is on-board with the strategy CBS has developed (likely!) or there's now a real "CBS Mandate" that they stick to the one size fits all "cram your co-brand in this square" strategy. Otherwise, I'd suspect we'd be seeing stuff like this or this. "Brand equity" and "market research" is just a snapshot of consumer sentiment at one point in time. Many of these stations, with a few exceptions, are only visually co-branding. KTVT may still show the old CBS11 logo in their bug and certain graphics, but every single on-air mention, every promo, every reference to what the station is, calls it "CBS Texas". What's that mean for "brand equity"? It means that, over time, more and more people will connect "CBS Texas" to the station than the "CBS11" brand. This could happen six months from now, or maybe six years from now. Who knows! In the case of KTVT, the SVP of Brand Strategy and Development for the CBS O&O group is on record as saying "I think it was a no-brainer that while you’re trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas, that [the CBS11 logo] remained.” A very interesting choice of words, as "while you're trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas" seems to imply that the CBS11 logo will stick around as they build up the CBS News Texas brand, but not forever. Yes, older generations are going to refer to these stations however they damn well please until they ultimately depart this mortal plane. I still have family members that call WITI "TV6" despite the fact they haven't branded as such for almost thirty years. WITI smartly used the long-dormant "brand equity" for the TV6 brand on their Antenna TV channel, which appeals to those same people. This same demographic has also long aged out of the demographic these stations are largely trying to appeal to on their primary channel. All of this, all of it, is at the whim of a few managers at each station and a few people at corporate. The understanding is that the News Director at KCBS/KCAL fought for the "KCAL News" brand. What happens if he leaves? What if viewership and impressions decline? Whoever comes in next could easily blow up the whole branding strategy and decide to brand as "CBS News Los Angeles" in an attempt to change things up. To claim any of this is "permanent" is disregarding how this industry has worked for the past 40+ years. Nothing is permanent in this industry. There's been graphics packages that have lasted less than a year (some that have never even launched!), sets that get re-worked within months of debuting (look at what became of the very expensive WBBM Streetside Studio set...), brands like "Ei8ht is News" that lasted all of a handful of months. NewsNation launched with a bright "WGN America" plexiglass panel on the front of the desk. Surely, someone at Nexstar knew that the channel would be renamed "NewsNation" in the future, yet they paid for that WGN America panel anyways. @Myron Falwellis free to have his own opinion as to when this will happen, so is everyone else. I'm a bit more conservative with my guesses, I think it could take some stations years to move away from their co-brand, and I think a handful (KCAL, maybe WBZ) could keep their co-brands indefinitely (though the co-brand box is super awkward for a long-term brand.) Fighting about it isn't constructive. It doesn't have any effect on anybody's day-to-day life, unless you're in one of the aforementioned positions making these decisions. My opinion? Folks, we're not in 1995 anymore. The local broadcast TV industry has long resisted necessary changes, and we're now on the precipice of needing to do some once "unthinkable" things for it to remain viable. People who actually work in it were telling me 6 years ago that they expect it to utterly collapse by 2030, and that was before we had a global pandemic that showed these companies that you can have your reporters file packages out of their home and pipe in newscasts from the other side of the continent. Nothing lasts forever, and that includes retrans fees (which, I should add, largely became a "thing" when stations started seeing ad revenue fall off a cliff) and political ad dollars. At some point, the proverbial gravy train is going to come off the tracks. These station owners, large and small, are going to have to cut costs more than they already have, and that could come in the form of working with the networks to have more national news programming with local opt-outs (Similar to how the BBC handles regions, which the US morning shows kind of already do, and NBC News Daily does precisely) or the companies will just opt to do it themselves (Nexstar is in a position to do this with NewsNation, Scripps with Scripps News, etc. Why pay for a network news service when you already have your own?) The "CBS News [location]" strategy accounts for this while also giving each station a unique brand, which is more important in the digital age than ever before. There are a lot of "CBS 2"s out there, but only one "CBS New York"/"CBS Chicago"/"CBS Los Angeles". If the local media landscape looks the same in 2033 as it does now, some terrible mistakes were made.

Let's please dial back the desire to make everything feel like a personal attack and to become angry at someone's opinions or guesses that do not align with yours. Stay on track and have fun. Thank you.

WBZ has debuted. They went the KCAL route.

IMO, WBZ's implementation is done right. It maintains the heritage of the local call sign and news brand while also embracing the streaming news platform and unified brand, without making it ambiguous (so many people still don't understand "CBS News <city>" or where to find it - look at the KDKA 2.0 comments on social media). I like it.

My how the times have changed. Four years ago, the return of news on WWJ was an April fools joke....on this very site!

My 2 cents: - There is a heritage in the primary local stations, often tied to channel number, call signs city and network(s). It’s up to the marketing and ownership to decide how they want to brand. - You can’t compare local NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox stations with MeTV or Bounce (or other diginets). The local stations often air local content (news/public affairs/infotainment), to help distiguish themselves from each other; the diginets are basically pre-programmed filler for the spectrum with ad opportunities (and yes, I’m aware some stations may opt out of a program or 2 for local content, but in general, they have no say on the programming). - The US market is different, in that it is still mostly affiliate-based. European countries started with a government-owned or managed model on a nation-wide basis, with private broadcasters starting relatively late. Canada was similar to the US, until consolidation resulted in basically each station is effectively owned by a network. (and I do wish that CTV would make an attempt to differentiate between CTV National News and CTV Local News… CBC and Global do it…) - As for local news titles, stations have changed newscast titles frequently and people seem to find them (such as changing from Channel 37 News to Eyewitness News to Newsactive 37 to WZZZ News to UPN 37 News to WB 37 News to 37 On Your Side News and back to Channel 37 News). - Some stations want to be linked to networks (NBC 4 News) and some don’t (e.g., Boston 25). It’s management’s call, not ours, and if CBS wants their O&O stations to use “CBS News New York” rather than CBS 2 or Eyewitness News, so be it.

Tell CBS - their actions in this rollout are leveraging legacy brand identification elements to help viewers in several markets. Reverting to WBZ.com for the on air to digital cue, going full on KCAL, plusing up the 4 in Miami, using the star 11 in Houston, whatever is going on with that vintage 3 in Philadelphia. Fact is within streaming it’s in many ways identical to the broadcast via cable experience with a live channel guide available. That familiar feature helped accelerate adoption.

Read the statement again, “local brand elements that could be enhanced to make identification with the new product easier. “ Local brand elements to help direct them to the new product. The new product is the CBS product. Some markets aren’t ready and CBS is using legacy elements help them be ready. Whenever that is one year or ten from now. Or maybe some never none of us or them knows. This is not about being special entitled Americans. It’s about the unique complex patchwork used to identified things here for decades in local news. That’s a function of legacy local level ownership and regulations that limited blanket ownership. And a dash of our spread out geography. Plus a sprinkle of retrans that delayed digital cash flow loss.

I genuinely don't buy that excuse for a second because there’s always people who confuse the affiliate as being the network. How many times have you seen an average viewer link a local Fox affiliate with the Fox News Channel? Or people get confused when a station changes network affiliations? Or the EPGs that don’t show the local logo for an affiliate but the network logo? Does the local branding really help and not become an impediment? WFXT de-branded to “Boston 25” because they explicitly wanted to remove any connection to Fox News as per what their audience believed and now we’re assuming that CBS, which wants to link CBS News to the O&Os, is giving up on doing that to WBZ? Come on. This whole “us ‘mericans are too good or not ready” for television branding conventions literally used in every other country on the planet comes off as a mere excuse not to even try. Who cares that diginets and the CW and Ion effectively rendered that excuse moot? People know MeTV is a thing and don’t need a “channel 69.13” brand slapped onto it.

Angry online comments ≠ accurate representation of anything, ever The viewers who don't give a damn about the changes make up the majority opinion, and they're not leaving comments to say that.

We’re not in 1993 anymore, nor 2003 or even 2013. This is 2023 and local OTA isn’t even 25% of a typical American’s viewing consumption. See here: What’s the value of “legacy” and “unique complex patchworks” and “decades of local branding” when streaming is now outdrawing OTA and outdrawing cable? Not much at all, to be brutally honest. Trapping oneself with easy answers rooted solely in the past is not how any of this works.

Speak for yourself. Most people I know up here in NH would call it 95. But, then, I also live near a completely different Route 128... The brand confusion with WJAR hasn't help there. I still think they should have gone with "NBC 15" instead...

They’re literally the same (only) people that would be up in arms if KDKA gave up the calls. And guess what, all those same people are still watching TV-2 after complaining on Facebook.

It’s strange, if the plan is to eventually rebrand all stations as CBS (city name) then I wonder why WBZ is now promoting their website as wbz.com. The bottom of the screen reads “The news is always on WBZ.com. It’s the first time their website has been promoted as anything but cbsboston.com in probably a decade.

Thanks to the M&A rolling thunder of the 2010s, local ownership no longer exists outside of a handful of people (Sunbeam, Griffin, Capitol, Bakahal, Forum). It’s limited to Nexstar, Gray, Sinclair, Tegna (which doesn’t want to exist), Scripps, Hearst and Graham. That’s it. And if Nexstar wants to turn their stations into nothing but CW O&Os and brand their news departments as “NewsNation (City)” then there’s nothing management at those stations will be able to do to stop the future from coming to pass. To be brutally honest, I don’t see how the U.S. network-affiliate model even survives within the next three years, if that. We are bound for major and massive brand consolidation like ITV did in the late 90s and 2000s, ultimately erasing all of the local franchise brands within their network and becoming “ITV”. All the heritage in the world couldn’t save Granada or LWT or Yorkshire. This includes CBS ultimately exerting soft power over the affiliates and inducing them to adopt the new branding conventions… the power ultimately being taken away on the local level.

Aside from KCAL they are all temporary idents and not reflective of anything long-term. KTVT and WFOR have entirely dumped their prior brands in favor of “CBS Texas” “CBS Miami” and those number logos are being flung into the sunset. Even WCBS has renamed themselves “CBS New York” despite their temporary retaining “CBS 2 News” and their newscasts visually blaring “CBS News New York” to anyone who can read. Those old logos are headed for the trash can. They are all temporary identifiers and will 100% be phased out in year or less outside of KCAL. And even then, KCAL dropped the 9 from their branding and KCBS dropped “CBS 2” altogether!! So much for channel numbers meaning anything in market #2… As for KYW, who the hell knows what is going on there. It might even change 20 times from the point that leaked Vimeo post began circulating. There is a good chance that that “3” — which is a total non sequiter and has nothing to do with any heritage or past logos or has any connection to the new “CBS Philadelphia” branding — is there as a visual crutch in promos and nothing else. It doesn’t fit anywhere else and never will.

wbz.com is a redirect and a cosmetic move and will remain that way for the long term; CBS has perpetual ownership of the domain name per the SEC brand licensing guidelines (iHeart has to use "wbznewsradio.iheart.com"). The servers still point to cbsnews.com/boston. Except the rebranding is ongoing anyway. They're already beginning the process of renaming it "CBS News Boston" and, contrary to a lot of people wishing to think otherwise, "opt-in mandate", "flexible standardization" and "unlimited freedom" do not exist.

The channel number has been gone in effective branding since 2007 (when they picked the 'BZ name back up). The CBS logo is literally less prominent in their graphics than it's been in a long time, and the website is back to wbz.com. I fail to see how this is indicative of any kind of transitional brand (at least in any kind of short term). It indicates how the market will react. The same thing applies for other things in Boston too--Route 128 hasn't been signed properly for ~20 years by federal requirement, and yet people are no closer to calling it I-95 than they were in 2000 (even on places that are officially not Rte. 128). I have to assume CBS/Paramount are aware enough of this to not want to really push it again.

I really don't think iHeart cares. Matt Shearer from WBZ Newsradio went on WBZ-TV's morning show to talk about his shortform content. I think both stations are fine with each other (and even being mistaken for each others news departments). And as long as the Sports Hub doesn't start calling itself WBZ Sportsradio I think they're happy.

Since I used to live near Pittsburgh yeses ago, I know they are a traditional market. Again, to each it’s own!!! I grew up watching stations like KDKA, WTAE, and WPXI. Used to watch stations like WTRF and WTOV as a kid too. Again, used to live near Pittsburgh and wasn’t too far from Wheeling, WVa and Steubenville, Ohio.

I can only speak for Pittsburgh, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment. There would be no mass freak out or loss of viewers. It would blow over in a day.

Wendy McMahon basically said that the approach to the rebrand would be conducted on a market by market basis. There were some assertions made that WBZ and KDKA would drop their brands entirely because of the radio stations that share those call letters; as we know now, those assertions were inaccurate. Edit: I probably asserted something here or there too, so my apologies.

Absolutely, I’m not arguing with the rationale. It’s a much easier url to remember and type. The point I was trying to make is that it sort of contradicts some of the comments I’ve read here over the past month or two that local identities like WBZ News were going to be sidelined in favor of CBS (city name) either now or in the very near future. If they plan on rebranding to just CBS News Boston, they may as well have left it as cbsboston.com rather than reverting to WBZ.com.

I can see it coming down to which URL requires the fewest taps on a mobile browser. "cbsboston.com": 13 characters "cbsnews.com/boston": 18 characters "wbz.com": 7 characters "cbslosangeles.com": 17 characters "cbsnews.com/losangeles": 22 characters "kcal.com": 8 characters

Interesting! I guess the streaming broadcast has an automated bug overlay and they don't have the ability or interest to change it red.

Pitch clock rundown thread:

That 3 is hideous. I thought the channel numbers were only staying as some sort of transitional phase. They're creating a totally different logo and making it much larger than the CBS News Philadelphia logo? And it looks like it is a few decades old. What a mess.

That 3 is god awful and has no belonging there... please please please let's hope it's not used

You heard it here from Falwell...April 1, 2024 - the only call letter or channel number used to ID CBS 0&Os will be KCAL. I'll take the over on that - more than one will be using legacy calls and/or channels on-air...based on some available objective facts, vs speculation and spin... In the most digital savvy market....google entity level searches for KPIX are even with total CBS News in the SF market and no material difference the last 5 years https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US-CA-807&q=%2Fm%2F0658f9,%2Fm%2F01_8w2&hl=en Youtube searches with a similar trend https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US-CA-807&gprop=youtube&q=%2Fm%2F0658f9,%2Fm%2F01_8w2&hl=en 2 of the top 5 queries related to KPIX use the '5' modifier If you do the search without using the 'entity' level view, just the local phrases KPIX and 'CBS Bay Area,' it's even more pronounced using the call letters https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US-CA-807&gprop=youtube&q=cbs bay area,kpix&hl=en Transitions and habit changes take time And here is the LA look which reenforces the KCAL story https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US-CA-803&q=%2Fm%2F03k51f,%2Fm%2F04wv9v,%2Fm%2F01_8w2&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US-CA-803&gprop=youtube&q=%2Fm%2F03k51f,%2Fm%2F04wv9v,%2Fm%2F01_8w2&hl=en And 4 of the top 10 KCAL related queries use the '9' modifier in them I'm sure we'll uncover other interesting observations in other markets that tell their own stories of varying adoption / use of legacy local vs digital or national branding - and it's the variance CBS is studying and using to inform its transition.

After reading comments from Pittsburgh viewers, I beg to differ. To each it’s own.

Angels radio is calling games remotely for the third straight season.

Welllllllll...you're kind of correct. This logo has been plastered over on the station's creative services channel. While it hasn't launched, and could theoretically still change, it appears that the '3' isn't going away, entirely.

Opening is way too generic imo, they need to show shots of Metro Detroit. Also, Kris Laudien is new to the station. He came from KARE tv.