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Lowell Register was the one who did that, and that decision was moreso guided by his more socially conservative views. Gray owns WPGA now, so the content of network programming doesn’t matter; all that matters is whether Gray can snap up a major network affiliation. (BTW, WPGA, under Register, was with Fox for the station’s first six months of operation until WGXA took over the affiliation.)

Good.

Here’s an interview with Dagmar. Sounds like she really needed to leave tv: https://timesofsandiego.com/business/2023/10/08/marketink-tv-weathercaster-dagmar-midcap-survives-cult-boyfriends-suicide-now-unemployment/

WOWT (in my market, Omaha, NE) does First Alert weather days whenever weather is at its worst. It happens like every 2 weeks so it’s kinda annoying everytime it happens..

For the past few days, I have noticed that NBC LA's newscasts have originated from the newsroom. And, confirmed in a post on X by anchor Lynette Romero, a new set is indeed under construction right now...

Yesterday, Channel 5 celebrating its 75th anniversary concurrent with this year's Chicago Marathon.

Not to derail this thread but a lot of broadcast design has trended digital-first in the last few years. Heavy 3D and gradients look horrible on highly compressed video formats and contribute to visual clutter. Had smartphones not taken off I think design trends would have gone in a completely different direction.

I was sort of getting at the subtle "Your flashy CGI graphics are cluttered crap and European style rules" crowd. Wanting everything to be like Europe is becoming almost overrated (this is addressed to American TV graphics specifically as I know that there are many Europeans on here too). Not saying it can't go too far the other way either, like WSVN/WHDH in the 90s and early 00s with their over-the-top tabloid format.

They also have a new open with a slightly modified logo. Both debuted a month ago. They are getting new graphics, but the whole thing hasn't debuted yet.

I have to argue that today's main design trend is almost a regression in terms of technical capabilities. Yet there seems to be many non-flat haters out there.

Today [ 10/9/23 ]

Cool to see Rhiannon on WABC at 10am. Guessing they are short staffed today for fill in anchors from local. Also to note — the 10am set was lit in breaking news red/blue for the A block before reverting to yellow/blue later in the show. Nice to see, 12 years later, how versatile they realized their studio is.

Yeah, hearing the backlash to her first couple of weeks it seems like the problem wasn’t merely Chuck.

I wish we could go back to the show being about meeting the press, as in 'not just one person from NBC News'. It's a new face, but the same tired presentation, production and booking behind her, and she can only do so much. They couldn't even be bothered to blow up the entire episode for actual breaking news because they HAD to air yet another not unique interview with Matt Gaetz and his Dennis the Menace act which was already spoiled to death, and a 'but actually' interview with Nicki Haley nobody asked for. MtP is in 80s-esque nadir where the format needs to be blown up.

Sorry I'm not a fan of those graphics at all.. They look cheesy and dated

TNT did a slight, curious change to their branding, with the scoreboard now having a "TNT Sports" logo Which, in turn, seems a bit similar to the new TNT Sports branding introduced in the UK

Y&R beat those shows where it didn't have an advantage in timing. It was a better show back all those decades ago. (And far more people tuned in to Days/AMC than the preceding shows). Several factors interact with each other. But here we are in 2023. It's a vestige of a bygone era with that timing, and until they at least axe B&B, there's not much else to do, realistically, until it's time to put one or both out to pasture. That's the current point--there's nothing to get a leg up on. We've left that era long behind.

They did indeed. I never figured that one out, unless they were (a) seeking to forge a brand new identity (in which case new call letters would seem to have been called for) because WOAY was known to be a very low-quality station, albeit with historically much local content or (b) thought somehow that a high-UHF channel number would be "catchy", possibly seeking to glom onto WVGV/WVNS being on channel 59. At any rate, they're now back on PSIP channel 4. You also have the anomalous situation of WCHS and WOAY both being ABC affiliates within 50 miles of one another. In the analog days, WOAY could easily be received in Charleston, and the local cable carried it. Don't know how easy it is to receive in Charleston being digital and on UHF. When WCHS was CBS, it served as the default affiliate for Bluefield-Beckley-Oak Hill (at least large parts of it), which made sense as WCHS was more or less equidistant from Huntington and Beckley.

Wtoc in action. They’ve appeared to have dropped “live local now” and brought back their old slogan “the southeast news leader” in the open

I somewhat understand this opinion, and also acknowledge that it’s possible for some shows to use swearing as a bit of a crutch, but to me, that’s a problem of bad writing, not the existence of swear words. You could also argue that a complete ban on swear words makes certain shows unrealistic. Can you really suspend your disbelief about the average CBS police procedural when you don’t hear the occasional F-bomb flying around? I understand having no explicit content before, say, 9pm, but I still think a complete ban is unrealistic in 2023. Although, given the fact that we’re about to experience a drought of scripted shows, this is probably a moot point. Oh well, get ready for Deal or No Deal: Electric Boogaloo.

Ehhh... I like that broadcast remains mostly clean. I don't think shows should have to curse or have explicit sex scenes in order to be good. A good drama can stand on its own without those elements. We've all seen how low standards can go when they're relaxed (example the VMAs).

Rabbit ears analog was way better. I preferred the static over scratching and glitching from digital.

I miss analog tv.

Recall the wood grain elements WRC retrofitted onto its prior set after its original stark Clickspring debut…wood elements that were signature to the set that replaced… Mu guess is viewers were off put by something so stark the first time around. So generally yes viewers probably don't obsess the details but if the change is too stark they can find it distracting or hard to identify and stations can get caught flat footed. Thats probably more pronounced at the minority of stations that have deep generational viewing habits.

This, however, poses a Catch-22 for Scripps. The subchannels that will carry the Coyotes games don’t have satellite or vMVPDs to rely on for additional distribution, unlike with KTVK (which has enough available options to view most Suns and Mercury games shown on the station that it mitigates any risk to the revenue stream Gray gets from its pay-TV carriage). Dish and DirecTV/DTV Stream subscribers thus would have to resort to either using an antenna or switching to a cable provider that carries the subchannels (e.g., Cox) to see the games. (Reception issues come into play for residents living in hillier regions of Arizona served by KNXV, KGUN and certain translators of theirs; luckily, the planned Coyotes streaming service will be an available backup option for those who have trouble receiving the OTA signals reliably.) Thus, Scripps would technically be risking taking a loss in subscriber fees from defecting customers of providers that carried BSAZ that can’t view the KNXV/KGUN subchannels on their lineup, a risk that it could mitigate by putting the games on the wider-distributed CW stations it owns in Phoenix and Tucson. Scripps and other station groups still rely on that revenue, even as the un-level carriage negotiating power by media companies (through the poorly regulated and long-broken retransmission consent structure) is responsible for accelerating the downturn of the pay-TV ecosystem.

I dunno, it would have been feasible to delay CW programming until late evening, once game-delayed editions of KASW and KWBA’s prime time newscasts concluded. By not putting the games on KASW and KWBA, Scripps put the Coyotes at somewhat of a coverage disadvantage in comparison to the Suns and Mercury, given that KTVK (which is/will be carrying most of their games) has distribution on satellite, YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, while KNXV and KGUN’s DT2 subchannels (due to them being Antenna TV and Laff affiliates, respectively) as well as KUPX and KSTU-DT2 in Salt Lake City (both of which will be alternating carriage of Coyotes telecasts there, and the latter lacking satellite and vMVPD coverage for the same reason as KNXV and KGUN subs) have no pay TV distribution beyond cable in their respective markets. Between this issue and the Coyotes planning to launch their own streaming service for the games, some ‘Yotes fans (read: those that subscribe to satellite or DirecTV Stream) have good reason now to cord-cut. (Cable subs in those areas just have to switch to a different channel.) Although I saw the writing on the wall for Bally Sports Arizona when the Diamondbacks, Suns and Mercury all ditched, it’s interesting they didn’t choose to carry on with the Coyotes, other than for financial reasons. It wouldn’t have been the only Bally Sports network to center around just one team, given that former owner News Corp/Fox built four of the RSNs around just the Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres, New Orleans Pelicans and Oklahoma City Thunder (only the San Diego service has lost the rights to their sole team thus far), while compensating for the lack of other team rights by carrying games from the sister RSNs they spun off from. (The New Orleans and Oklahoma feeds were both spun from Fox Sports/Bally Sports Southwest when the Thunder and Pelicans relocated from Seattle and Charlotte, while the Kansas City and San Diego feeds were spun from from Fox Sports/Bally Sports Midwest and Fox Sports/Bally Sports West when the Royals shut down their broadcast/cable syndication service and the Padres cut ties with Cox’s 4SD local access channel, respectively.)

I think WTVJ's is a miss compared to their previous set. It's a very large and nice set but I think it is just bland overall like WNBC's. WMAQ, WRC, WCAU, KXAS and maybe even WBTS have the better sets within the group. There is more character and elements to their sets. KNBC's is starting to age but still held up well and had some character. We'll see if they get something similar to WMAQ and WRC and not the way of WTVJ and WNBC.

Many in your echo chamber, which is thankfully slowly disappearing.