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I don't think you can draw much from URL purchases. Remember years ago when NBC purchased nbcdenver.com and everyone thought that meant KUSA was going O&O? Those were the days.

The 75 years review was well done, and included visits with past personnel like Doug Johnson, John Johnson and Roseanne Scamardella, as well as greetings from Lori Stokes, Kaity Tong, Ernie Anastos,, Rosanna Scotto and Diana Williams: https://abc7ny.com/13629943/#

Pretty cool seeing all the anniversary messages from former anchors and reporters. It was interesting to see Lori Stokes do one, Kaity Tong did one from the PIX11 set abd Rosanna did one from the GDNY couch

Craig Allen is returning to WCBS for weekend mornings, as per his Instagram post. That’s a great get for the channel as he’s one of the best in the business. Welcome back!

Glad to see the promo dept basement box find. Is it me or did Gari have kind of a dry spell of new hit news packages in the late 80s? After Great News Package and until they went full on cheap synth for Advantage / WFSB, updates to One and Only, etc that created a sound for 10-20 years I have a hard time pinpointing new Gari packages that really took off in that shoulder period. The packages kind of lost their hook and energy - "We'll Take You There" is the kind of thing I'm talking about, "Making a Difference" (listen to the early orchestral cuts). Just doesn't feel distinctively Gari like the full sounding early 80s stuff and then the for better or worse synth horn treatment of the 90s stuff that's unmistakably their sound. And BTW, kind of Wild that KQWC took until the early 90s to start using Hello and did it with vintage 70s cuts that lasted well into the 2000s.

Or maybe they’ll just pull news from the 10pm hour entirely and pump in some rerun.

KBCW will be branded as KPIX+ and will launch an 8 and 9pm show. No word if they are adding a 10pm newscast.

The KTVI piece is fascinating. Let me shed some light on what KTVI was like at the time, and you might understand how this one never saw the light of day. KTVI had adopted Hello in 1984 alongside the other "major" Times-Mirror stations (KDFW and KTBC). They all had similar open animations. All three of those stations (KDFW, KTBC, KTVI) plus WVTM Birmingham then adopted the same look in mid-late 1987: JAM's Yours Truly and the diagonal stripe bar graphics. I believe this comes from that time period. The ND of KTVI from 1986 to 1989 was Sue Kawalerski. Times-Mirror tended to make a lot of decisions at the level of corporate. (A corporate graphics package of the kind the Times-Mirror stations rolled out in late 1987 was not common then!) And they made some disastrous ones at KTVI, the market's third-rated news station (with KMOV and KSDK, two goliaths, in front of them). In November 1986, Lloyd Immel was hired to be one of the lead anchors. Then, just months after the Yours Truly look debuted at KTVI, it was gone. And so too were all the news presenters. In February 1988, KTVI debuted a new anchor team (see the very laughable promo above), which gained the nickname "Gang of Four" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They all came from elsewhere: Kevin Cokely was working for Storer in Washington, Iola Johnson was in radio in Dallas (previously of WFAA), Stu Klitenic came from WXYZ, and Miles Muzio had been a journeyman weatherman already by this point (I believe his last posting was KOIN prior to this). The existing look was blown up (this is when they switched to the Great Prospect track from Bruton, then to Palmer, then to News Central, all in about two years). Apparently their installation had been in the works since August 1987 when a new promotions director came to KTVI. (There's a sign of something.) St. Louis viewers—famous for their resistance to change, as KDNL would later learn—never took to the Gang of Four, all of whom left the market within two years. Kawalerski was evidently forced out, not long after Times-Mirror broadcasting president John McCrory was replaced. In the KTVI newsroom, the news she was out was met with "jubilation" and "euphoria". (She landed at WCIX.) But the hiring of the Gang of Four was a corporate decision, beyond Kawalerski. McCrory was known for his intense involvement in KTVI's affairs. It took Bud Carey, the new T-M broadcasting head; Wayne Thomas, the new GM; and a salvage operation to return them to respectability. Losing ABC for Fox helped; ABC was never much watched in St. Louis, something else for KDNL to learn. Clearly In Touch was far along. It was finished work from Gari, the same company that had already done resings of Hello for them. But the change in promotions director and possibly other factors (the Times Mirror stations graphics package of 1987), and likely the forthcoming revamp of news anchors, likely left this to sit on a shelf. Forgot to post this originally, but some words from Kim Hindrew, who left for WMC in August 1988 when they took away her anchor duties: "They're still wondering what they did wrong. The fact that they would think the people of St. Louis had to accept what they were giving them ... it's an arrogance I don't understand. Then viewers did the only thing they could do: They stopped watching."

Bianca came off much more objective in that interview. I remember years ago the outer boroughs complained about poor snow plowing which got neutral coverage. When the Upper East Side, the location of Fox 5's studio wasn't plowed adequately however, Greg --and especially Rosanna -- were going in on the sanitation comisioner. Wish I could find the clip. Again I like Rosanna. I respect that a morning news host has to tow the line between objective journalist and tv personality, but she has to watch when her biases slip out.

CBS 2 CBS News New York has added the ticker/flipper, but only on the online stream so far. The TV broadcast continues to show the tickerless ticker. I don't understand why it took them so many months to edit the one that they used with the previous look, because it's largely the same, just designed to align with the new bug. And I still think it's pretty useless. I wish they'd focus on making the ticker local. Also, tighten up the animations so there aren't so many times where nothing is displayed. The hyper local 7-day forecasts for various towns across the region lack details. I'd rather something more like now/tonight/tomorrow (or now/today/tonight, depending on the time of day) so that they could fit some text descriptions and not ignore low temperatures. Sports scores should be limited to local teams so that viewers don't have to watch every game's score slowly flash by. Lottery results are also weird to me, and take up too much time. But it seems the tickers are pretty automatic. Just pulling data from feeds and headlines off the website (headlines that are sometimes extremely vague).

Good to see that they didn't get sucked into the Byron Allen void of daytime TV.

New court show: Cutlers Court, with husband-and-wife duo Dana and Keith Cutler of Couples Court fame. Sold in 80% of the country.

Anyone know what WABC will put on at 10am when they move Tamron Hall to 2pm in September?

Very much so. The next management was able to put the station back on sound news footing (they also hired Dave Murray at about the time Stu Klitenic left for WSB).

That must’ve been a hell of a lot of research on your part to track this stuff down. I get the feeling that promoting your anchor team as a bunch of people from out of town probably got a very different reaction from the one the geniuses (/s) in management had in mind. It sounds like the station was a mess before Fox entered the picture.

Effectively succeeding KRON’s 8 and 9pm newscasts, when they sign on with The CW. Interesting there’s no 10pm. I guess CBS is going to continue with Now News after all?

And.....seattle11.com, boston38.com, florida33.com and sacramento31.com. I strongly doubt every station will go with these brandings. "KCAL" (& even "KCAL 9" ftm) is a stronger brand than a generic "Los Angeles 9" or "LA 9". Sad that "california9.com" was already taken.....

Yeah, Rosanna is especially vocal anytime a story about restaurant regulation comes up. It’s particularly egregious because her family owns Fresco by Scotto in midtown east. No idea why Fox 5 seemingly doesn’t have an issue with blatant bias.

I want to compliment CBS 2 on a great tribute to a great woman. They really did a classy job honoring Elise Finch with the service that went from around 10:34 until 2pm. Dave Carlin spoke, as did Maurice DuBois. They had a video of everyone’s memories of her, too. She is going to be missed dearly, but CBS 2 has been classy the entire time since announcing her passing. I’m sure there were more in the church but I spotted Dana and Dick sitting together, which was nice to see her colleagues honoring her. Rest easy, Elise. Thank you for a great 16 years at the station. You will be forever missed!