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CBS & their excessively long brandings. "WCCO News & CBS Minnesota". Interestingly enough, the multiple ABC 7 Eyewitness News stations have worked for ABC though.

I think others have mentioned, but Joe and Sandra are (and have always been) a great team, almost too good to be regulated to weekends. I'm also not a huge fan of Bill Ritter's delivery, I much prefer a calmer Maurice DuBois type.

Update on Laura Coates, CNN reportedly told Laura they wouldn’t staff the 11PM hour from D.C. due to higher costs, as a result Laura would have to chose between moving to NYC or the hosting gig. I don’t blame her for not wanting to move, sounds like both parties could’ve been more transparent about what was going on/intentions. Instead “CNN is concentrating its efforts on setting permanent plans for the 9 and 10 p.m. hours”. Sounds to me like a great opportunity for CNN International broadcasts of Newsroom at 11PM, and if they were smart they’d extent that to 1AM to compete with Trace Gallagher’s midnight show on Fox. More here: https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/laura-coates-planned-11-pm-show-unlikely-to-go-forward-at-cnn/528547/

Ion will air a weekly Friday night WNBA game starting this upcoming season: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/wnba-scripps-ion-friday-night-basketball-1235589597/

Sandra and Joe are an exceptional duo (potentially the station’s strongest?) Their roles as the weekend PM pairing for 20 years is intentional, it’s made them staples. For me, Bill’s delivery is a bit of a train wreck at times. He diverts from the script nearly every story and he’s not great at ad-libbing which makes it even more obvious when he’s doing it. Finally, his editorial contributions on every story is borderline unprofessional for a top market anchor.

I'll repeat, since some of you are running with that screenshot... WBBM has not debuted the new look. That image is from a promotions department video from last fall. It is not necessarily a sign of their final branding.

CNN's 1-4pm ET version of CNN News Central debuted today. The open is updated to include DC landmarks and it seems Wolf has lost his studio? (The Situation Room used a flash cam again today. I was wondering if they'd go back to using the studio once rehearsals were done.) Interested to see what they do on election/primary days when they are setting up the studio and rehearsing for the evening election coverage.

Both of Griffin Media’s news helicopters sustained damage from a severe weather outbreak that affected Central Oklahoma on Wednesday. One is repairable, the other likely needs replacement. KWTV’s helicopter, SkyNews 9, lost its windshield after accidentally getting hit by large hail by a supercell that produced a tornado near Cole (which was preliminarily rated an EF3). Pilot Jim Gardner was not pleased, and was forced to make an emergency landing: KOTV’s helicopter, Osage SkyNews 6, OTOH, was destroyed for the second time in about 15 years. It was brought over by the station to help with KWTV’s coverage of the storm aftermath, but had the misfortune of parking for the night in a hangar at Shawnee Regional Airport, which was struck by another tornado (from the same supercell that spawned the Cole tornado) that struck the western part of the city just over two hours later (estimated to be at least an EF2): KOTV lost its previous helicopter in June 2007, after it crashed in Sand Springs after clipping the satellite dish of an ENG truck while filming a promo.

There’s too many CBS 2’s. 4 to be exact in the O&O station group. Hence why they want to give each market a unique and local feel with the call letters since channels don’t mean anything these days with streaming. This leaves WCBS the only one that kept the CBS 2 in its branding. Chicago is going the call letter route like KDKA, and KCBS focusing on KCAL instead.