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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/

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."