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The viewers in St. Louis have spoken… they hate the new brand. https://fb.watch/oQ4xwXcG2n/?

This de-affiliation trend of their logos is going to be interesting if it ever reaches the fox affiliates. Especially stations like WALA and WVUE who have branded as "Fox 10 and "Fox 8" for almost a generation. However, this could come in handy in Mobile, especially if they decide to snag NBC away from WPMI after next year and put it on 10.2. It also unifies the branding in markets like Biloxi and Hattiesburg, these are both markets that have dual affiliations but run the same newscast in many time slots. WLOX and WDAM largely refer to themselves by their call letters.

I completely agree. I don't think the "WMTV" brand is strong enough to stand on its own (I'm not even sure that a majority of Madison TV viewers are aware that channel 15 is WMTV, much less call them by that). It's a very different situation than WKOW, for instance, which has used their call letters in their branding for as long as I can remember and has a lot of built-in equity in their local brand. Gray's decision to drop network branding unilaterally, regardless of market conditions, has left me scratching my head. Not to discredit the hard-working staff at WMTV, but I just don't think that their brand can hold its own against NBC in the Madison market.

God Speed to the staff https://www.kvrr.com/2023/12/01/coastal-television-reaches-agreement-to-acquire-red-river-broadcast/

I'll bite. Just had a nice little glass of bourbon, so let's see what we can come up with: When I first started working for TEGNA, I felt like they didn't get enough credit for what they were trying to do. They were investing a ton of money into the brands of these stations and bringing in some interesting people to shake things up on the marketing side. It sounded really exciting and I got sucked into it, leaving a well established market-leading station to jump into this mess. It's no exaggeration to say when I was sitting in the hotel the night before my first day watching WUSA9, I felt immediate regret in my decision and I started working immediately to leave. (It took nearly three years to get out... woof.) When I look back at it all, I think one of the biggest problems is that the news and production folks at these local stations have absolutely no idea how to make good television. Is that really their fault? I don't know. Local news has looked essentially the same since the 1940s. Desk. Chair. Backdrop. Want to shake things up? Have the anchor stand. That backdrop? It's now a monitor. That's about as groundbreaking as these people know what to do. (And that's not just TEGNA, it's an industry-wide issue.) So now you want to revamp your morning show and you bring in a comedian... again, not exactly revolutionary. It's been done. But news leadership is really afraid to lean into this concept, so it's just another straightforward mediocre newscast with a comedian randomly dropped in. The comedian has no one to play off of. Your news anchors and reporters aren't funny, they don't know humor. So you have awkward interactions throughout the show. You blow millions on marketing this 3rd or 4th place show to get folks to "sample" it. Sure, there is a slight spike in ratings - people drop in, have a look, say "what the hell is this?", tune out and never come back. TEGNA would fly in folks from various departments from their stations all around the country every few months for "innovation summits" at their HQ. I got invited to one. A lot of interesting ideas. Absolutely no way to execute it. An idea I had got piloted in Cleveland (of course, I never saw a bonus, not that I expected one ). They flew out the comedian from DC to host it. It was awful. You know why? Your producer who graduated from Elon's school of journalism has absolutely no clue how to make good television. They know how to copy and paste from the wires and re-write stories from the 11p to drop into their AM shows. (Just kidding, that gets copy and pasted as well.) I could go on and on. I haven't even started in on the mediocre general managers with sales backgrounds - that might be an even bigger issue. You think the guy from sales who got the corner office knows how to make good television?? They have an eye for talent? Absolutely not. Local television news isn't dying, it's dead. You're just watching zombies now. Waiting until the next hedge fund comes in to turn the lights off.

The WMTV logo got "de-peacocked" and it looks ridiculous. They should just drop that swoosh element if they're not going to fill the space with anything. Better yet, they should reimagine the logo entirely when they get the new graphics package (which will hopefully come sooner, rather than later, because they have the most dated looking package in the Madison market.) Based on a few recent social media posts, they are now branding themselves as "WMTV" and "15 News," instead of "NBC15."

Hmmm. Hot take. Kinda tired of the ugly wood set. Its very dark boring. But with them replacing the screens.... Something tells me they arent going to be upgrading sets anytime soon. These sets have been around quite a while. With so many new players on the scene. Especially since FOX Weather has launched, I wonder if this aint a good thing. (The ratings cant be that great of course with the exception of major events. Hurricanes, tornado outbreaks. etc)