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Amen. TV news started out as networks filling their government mandated public service quota. Once they realized news divisions could be profitable, the problems we have today began. It's the American way. The people running the business make all the money while the people at the ground level make small potatoes.

I heard this from a colleague who works at an NBC Gray affiliate. It's not an NBC thing. It's a "Gray" thing. Eventually all stations will be removing their affliliation from their logos. The reasoning is to distance the stations from the affiliates and to separate itself from the fake news movement that the national media gets. Basically it's so people trust the LOCAL news and to take on their own branding and identity.

This is confirmation enough for everyone. We don't need a station-by-station report on a peacock removal. From here on, said posts will be hidden. Let us know if a station hasn't changed, at all.

Wait. Are you saying that the mockups that you find on this forum aren't worthy of cable news!?

What you're saying is not wrong but I'm gonna have to hold greedy executive's feet to the fire more on this one. We proclaim that journalists are these "beacons" who hold truth to power. Yet, we don't pay journalists a livable wage, so they leave and work in PR for people like politicians who spin reality. That can't be good for a democratic society. Not to sound extremist, but journalists need to be the next group to strike. This especially as stations rely more on news departments for direct ad revenue with syndication options drying up.

I respect your 'life is unfair so buck up and keep going' attitude but these news heads don't dererve the magnanomousness you are affording them. The journalists making the product (news) that's being sold, deserve to benefit in it's profits aswell. I'm not saying a reporter needs to be paid $300K, but there is no excuse for a television news job requiring a bachelor's degree to pay the salary a teenager can get at Dunkin Doughnuts. At the end of the day, journalists don't have to go into the industry...but again, no journalism isn't exactly great for democracy.

I also just want to say thank you for asking this question. For people outside the industry, most have no idea the crap conditions and pay reporters/MMJs/photogs/mets, etc have to put up with. its time to shine a light on this for the public. You will never see a mass TV journalist strike simply because very, very few are in unions. And any attempts for a newsroom to unionize would likely be fruitless and would almost guarantee contract non-renewals for anyone who tried to unionize. that being said, I fantasize often about a day when I could join a union and show management how truly f*cked they’d be without their news people.

Since the only realistic choice was Sinclair (no way current era Cox would pay to add it to PCNC and KDKA+ isn't quite developed yet), it was the best choice, though hopefully that plain-Jane NESN template is gussied up a bit by next season.

Many things in life aren’t excused, they just are. Some careers pay more. Some fields pay more. Sometimes those overlap. Every place I’ve worked, sales got perks beyond what anyone else did. Life isn’t perfectly even.

The Pirates are staying with SportsNet Pittsburgh, and will co-own the network with the Penguins. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/pirates-penguins-to-jointly-own-cable-tv-sports-channel/ar-AA1lsiCI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a61a902803924d59bbe9d66d185dea7c&ei=9&fbclid=IwAR1eafXYE1oKJ_FAYxGJcKRSeuFJN7760BjpFbwekDKZrwsTJ_Ie_tqCO1M

I will tell you there are alot of fans out here who don't want to see their Serials go. It may not have the big numbers it once had. YR is still #1 and is CBS star line-up. YR contract is up next Sept 2024. When Sony negotiate with CBS for maybe another year or two. CBS News isn't going to pull in 3.5 million that YR is pulling. Bold/YR depending on The Bell Children (The Bells own Bold outright) probably by 2026 would move into CBS/Paramount streaming platform. Here the thing YR/Bold make $$$ overseas. ABC owns General Hospital outright, and many fans out here aren't into news 24/7. People like to be entertained, and if they want news they will find it. I'm a news junkie too, but I also like a balance with entertainment shows. The networks have to look at their audience and there's an audience who still like escapism. CBS/NBC/ABC it just can't be news 24/7. People aren't going to watch The 8th hour of Today or the 5th hour of GMA. CBS News doesn't have the cache like the other two networks. CBS has been able to find other niche than news and has an older audience, but there has to be a balance. 24/7 News runs on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and many other cable news outlets. There are many executives who want to keep the daytime audience mean and lean and find some shows that going to get eyeballs.

Hope I haven't veered too far from NN Daily. *Network executives keep soely pointing to (rather saying blame) shifts in viewing habits without recognizing bad writing plays a role. If you look at the trend of when viewers started leaving soaps--the mid 90s--that's when alot of bad writing trends began, in addition to the OJ trial, shifting viewing habits, etc. "If there was some magic formula for success and a profitable bottom line, someone would be trying it. Millions upon millions of dollars overall are at stake, people's jobs are at stake. No one is just sitting around ordering up another hour from the news division on a whim or so they can get out the door in time to make it to happy hour." --- I would like to belive that, but it's clear, whatever sells milk it. We see it in the movies with heavily recycled franchises and now we see it on tv with news. Not to stray too off topic but As for soaps, they don't have to be five days weekly. They've locked themselves into that model. As we can see having one hour scripted content five days a week with no summer break is an expensive model that is collapsing. If they did Y&R Mon to Wed and one hour B&B Thu/Fri *might* work. You are absolutely right, tastes do change, but the appetite for serialized drama is still there as we see with streaming. Y&R just got a ratings bump from bringing back old characters, showing that there is still an interest (the demo is a different story). All in all, the worse programing gets, the remaining viewers will also turn away and networks heads will still point to streaming as the only reason they can't pull an audience. Just like cable execs keep citing cord cutting as the only reason for it's collapse, without acknowledging the loss of niche programming and poor content. NBC News Daily is just symptomatic of a larger programming issue. We saw it with the over proliferation of soaps, talk shows, and cable dramas. The bubble burst and the same is likely to happen for news.

Scott Chapin is retiring from voiceover work, for good this time. The end of an era for many Fox affiliates nationwide.

In recent years, the talent pool has really dried up, and the broadcasting companies' only way to recruit employees is to hit up the college campuses to staff their newsrooms and sales departments. So basically, it's one giant revolving door of college grads..when their contracts are up, they recruit a new bunch to take over. It's rarer and rarer to see new employees move on to a second or third station or renew their contract, unless they are highly specialized or well liked at their station. On the sales end, broadcast airtime is a fraction of what it used to be. With all of the extra selling for the other platforms (web, ott, etc), the companies also carve out their own slice of airtime to sell their own "national ads" as well. And with all of the consolidation of things, local ad sales is much more fragmented, with a lot of "one offs" and clients you never thought you would see on TV....think "Ferryman Funeral Homes" and "Red Wigglers...the Cadillac of Worms!"

You sound just like a couple GMs I’ve worked for

It is often popular and easy to blame some general group of people and paint them as some kind of Snidely Whiplash cartoon villain, but sometimes people with a specific skill set who excel in their field make what the market will support. Is it fair someone who can hit a baseball will collect whatever hundreds of millions the most recent contract was for? Makes me roll my eyes, but in reality, if they think that investment will fill the seats and move the merchandise to recoup the cost (and of course, I know it's part of a team, and the team being successful is part of the filling seats/selling merch equation), then whatever. Lots of other people in the organization undoubtedly work hard and do their best, and they aren't making that bank (I'm talking staff here, not players). Strikes are powerful tools, and if someone can organize one and make it successful, more power to them. It's not easy. Hell, it's often very risky to understate it. It's also not always an easy sell to garner public sympathy--sometimes yes, sometimes no. We're in a bit of a time in the nation where more attention is paid to the CEO/average worker gap, and there may be ways to leverage that, or it could end up backfiring, so to speak. I would suggest that the best target is the CEO type position, it's an easier concept to sell. Joe the sales guy who happened to make a nice living because he's darned good at selling doesn't make the same compelling comparison when you're trying to get sympathy on a large scale. Bob Iger? Ok, that's doable. Not going to win over everyone, but there's a difference there. (And not to pick him specifically, he was just the first example that popped to mind.)

Facts aren't blame, really. Some things just are. And there isn't always a unicorn out there, "if only" someone spent more or wrote better or whatever. People were leaving soaps for long time. Then gas tanks almost empty there; throwing more money at a dying genre is pointless. Its not blame to say key audiences in 2023 aren't the same as in 1983. It's also overly broad to just label all news division programming with one brush. It struck me on a recent NY visit to the NBC store the distinct merchandise for the third and fourth hours of Today. There is, of course, the main show umbrella, but the other hours are treated as somewhat unique entities. The content isn't identical, and that is typically true at the local level as well. There's a whole thread here somewhere about how the 10 am hour on WABC is noticeably different from the other newscasts, and even among more traditional newscasts, tonality varies. If there was some magic formula for success and a profitable bottom line, someone would be trying it. Millions upon millions of dollars overall are at stake, people's jobs are at stake. No one is just sitting around ordering up another hour from the news division on a whim or so they can get out the door in time to make it to happy hour. You have a population segment that gravitates toward the likes of Maury and Springer. Some that like the Kelly and Mark or Kelly Clarkson type shows. Some who can't get enough court shows. And then there are a bajillion streaming options, sports galore, cable channels with movies out the wazoo, dramas, sitcoms, etc. That pie has been sliced six ways from Sunday. It's easy to say "do something different." It's much harder to actually find that "something" that delivers the profits it needs to. This is really interesting. Cutting back from 5 days is one thing, but that is a guarantee you're off the broadcast network. You're not getting a three-day a week slot (or whatever) there. But to the point of less characters and sets...from what I saw of those days seeing Y&R, there were very few characters. Generally the same old actors from before and a few seemingly disposable new ones--generally offspring or other relatives--and that's it. Two or three people to a storyline being told that day, and maybe 2 or 3 storylines being covered max. Even then, the characters seemed to them mix and match among scenes, so you really weren't getting more actors, they just shuffled among the sets and fellow castmates in some kind of weird, soapy square dance. Also didn't count many sets. At least a half dozen over that span looked pretty much like they did years ago. I'm assuming they got some fresh paint here and there. The others looked like SNL skit sets--in that they could easily be repurposed with minimal effort to become something else generic for limited use. Of course, casts and crew cost money, so I am not literal when I say this, but I have to wonder where the money is going. It isn't into the product. And I know the soaps were never high production value. They were cheesier than cheesy. Always. But it looks like they're down to fumes, and that makes sense. Tastes change.

Totally agree. The look is very Sprectrum News. Flat. White. Uninspiring. Not awful but not remarkable. As we know from their tract record, NBC can do better than this. People may object because news is not supposed to be "flashy", but whoever handles graphics and sets for sports networks like FS 1, ESPN, and NBC sports, need to help out network and cable news. CNBC has always been heavily graphics oriented so it can apply.

It's not the fault of news emplyees, it's the network heads who keep demanding more news. They keep blaming splintered audiences for low ratings. That's only part of the puzzle. Low effort or *low quality* programming is also to blame. Spitting out cheap Byron Allen court shows, repeditive newscasts and recycling tired police procedurals is bound to negatively affect ratings. I know countless people who say TV sucks now so they watch Netflix It is lazy in a sense. Rather than being creative with programming, networks can simply have their news crew that's around (doing a lot as it is) churn out yet another newscast for no added cost. Profit comes first but, there has to be a way to achieve that without showing news 17 hours a day.

Local television news isn’t journalism. It’s a business.

Adding to this, smaller market stations pay less money. If a reporter is in market 115 for example, they might keep climbing up markets until they can make it to a top 30 market station where the pay is better. Larger markets require experience. If your hometown is a larger market like NYC, you're at a disadvantage trying to enter the industry. You'll most likely have to move to a small market (away from eveything you know) and rack up years of experience in order to make it back home. I respect the fact that someone has to toil in the D leagues before reaching the NBA. But to set up the industry in a way that talent has to move their life for a job that pays near minimum wage --despite being required to have a bachelor's degree -- and be locked into a near two-year contract at often toxic newsrooms is pretty nasty. This is a huge reason why so many people leave the industry.

Thank you for this question. A lot of us are enthralled by tv news, but learn the harsh reality upon working in the industry. The short answer is money. A reporter contract is 1-3 years and reporters typically ask for more money every time they extend their contract. It's cheaper for stations to have a revolving door of one contract term reporters than to keep paying them more every renegotiation. Sales department, management, and the corporate bosses make significantly more than the news. Trust me, the pay at alot of stations is a few dollars above minimum wage for reporters, even less for producers and photographers.

Wow, this has to be the biggest departure from WEWS since Ted Henry retired back in 2009. I'll have to catch some of their newscasts in the next few weeks to see how "Scripps-i-fied" they've become. A sad transformation for a station built and put on the air by Scripps to become what it is today.

While the fact that revenue is shrinking and money is drying up and the industry is basically dead is true, stations have been screwing over reporters and MMJs for money in favor of their sales buddies since the dawn of TV news, even when the cash was flowing deep

I’ll say this and then I’ll leave it alone: CBS’ flyover comedies and westerns were top rated shows and executives cancelled them to evolve as a broadcaster. YR may be higher rated than NND, but again… it’s a show CBS has no ownership stake in. I’m willing to bet NND makes more money for NBC than YR does for CBS. They get ad dollars from the news demo (not just injury lawsuits, As Seen on TV, and 65+ Insurance Ads, but consumer products). An article from Variety revealed awhile back that GMA3 commanded more ad dollars than Days in 2021. And that international revenue you speak of means nothing to them because they don’t own or distribute it; they pay a licensing fee to Sony to air it. Which is why I think CBS is done with it(and Bold) in 2024. They get to use that money to pay to bring someone from a competitor to afternoons. Both of those serials are expected to vacate TVC in Hollywood because of the renovations Hackman is currently doing to the studio. CBS likely has no backup plan for assisting in relocation… even moving to Radford(also owned by Hackman) would be costly for them for many reasons(feel free to DM if you want my additional thoughts on it, but I’m not going to bog down an NND thread over soap opera). I also saw Kate and Zinhle(who were on assignment working on a piece on Race in America) doing their thing in LA. I hope they shot some local ads for the NBC LA station there while they were working. Hope all four of them end up traveling for NND at some point. I think the only thing the show lacks(which it doesn’t really need) is a better connection to time and the audience. In the first year, the 2PM EST hour team(yes… the four hours are split between two separate production teams) opened with the time in various parts of the country. Little touches like that (esp. shoutouts to cities in local markets that carry the hour) would help Daily establish that it’s “live(with some repeat segments)” all the time instead of running a traditional news wheel(like CBSN). But not all affiliates get a live broadcast of Daily(including LA), so it wouldn’t be cost-effective.

Yes they have, after a year and nearly a half after launching their First Alert Weather graphics and nearly a couple of months for First Alert Traffic. how it looks and sounds like: RPReplay_Final1702406448.mp4

Considering the debate's other iffy sponsors...they lucked out big time in getting their logo as visible as it was since the Free Beacon and Rumble were its main sponsors and them, along with Megyn's SXM show, only got bookend mentions. Could have been a lot worse for them.

Lurking for a minute on this post and decided to throw my change in the bucket: I think the moment Kate Snow announced prior to launch that Daily wouldn’t be an “opinion show,” I was on board. It’s very old school CNN Headline News(or OG CBSN with a better budget), something I feel the daypart has desperately needed for about a decade since it opted to slowly phase out of a lineup of serials. I’m one of those “four hours of news” junkies… doesn’t suck for me. It makes the workday go by faster, I catch great health and lifestyle segments, and I’m more curious to research news after hearing their take. I usually autopilot on streaming at work(or WFH) because it’s softer around the desk than music, I like following any real breaking news that comes up(ex. Mitch McConnell’s freezing spells), and they do a good job of keeping it straight with very little fluff. I think entertainment talk shows and even serials are great, but there’s only so much you can do with those in 2023 and in the case of the serial, the networks aren’t making huge profit margins from shows they don’t own. Local stations are seeing a desert of new syndicated options and aren’t willing to pay high licensing fees for anything that can’t sell ads. I agree with whoever said the Daily Team should only be in charge of network special reports during those hours. I’m a CBS News guy, so I usually flip to Norah if Lester Holt pops up on my screen. I have no doubt because of Daily’s success that CW(infrastructure in place thanks to NewsNation and their abundance of local affiliates) and CBS(by shuffling Y&R out of 12/12:30AM if they even keep it past 2024) will want to foray into afternoon news at some point. Let’s hope they’re taking notes from NBC on how to do it right.

NBC News Daily has been a ratings hit among affiliates, and some stations are considering taking two hours of the newscast.

Space City Home Network doesn’t exactly convey a place to watch sports. The name’s giving… local version of HGTV. At least rename it Space City SportsNet to drive home that the network is still the home of the Astros, the Rockets and other local teams.

Not sure if this is the place for this question or not, but please move it if it isn't... Anyways, my question is: What's up with anchors/mmjs/etc constantly moving after 1-2 years?? Doesn't this make them less credible?? I'm just curious why stations are hiring people, only to have them leave after a year... I've been doing some searches and haven't come across a somewhat clear answer...

The blue is a little overpowering. Wouldn't mind seeing some warmer hues in it.

CNBC logo has been Tinkered, bringing along a refresh to the graphics as well. https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/cnbc-ticker-overhaul-screen-graphics-tv-news-1235832629/

This is also true. Soap executives cheifly blame splintered audiences and working women for poor ratings, when bad writing is also a factor. The genre may have to cut back from a one hour, five day per week model so they can need less characters for airtime, less sets, and less scripts to write, reducing costs if any supposed to be rebooted.