Leaderboard

The 3rd place broadcast newsroom combining with the 3rd place cable newsroom does not make a powerhouse. At what point with all the consolidation does anti-trust finally apply?

There’s plenty of time for investigating particulars. Perhaps people can hold off on casting aspersions for just a bit.

rip CBS News

The reality is that to a viewer, it's just TV. And that's the way the business needs to operate. Yes, for the time being, they're feeding out some things in linear fashion, but that is one component of a video business. Consumers braving more choices is a good thing. If enough people want a soap, great, Days can happily do its thing over on Peacock, and if you want to watch it at 1 pm daily, that's a perfectly fine option. Being "free" to do things is always preferable.

I could see Paramount merging with a pre-WBD Discovery, as the latter was basically just a bunch of cable channels at the time. But this.....

If it comes to fruition thats big.

Horribly tragic. They’ve confirmed both individuals aboard were killed, which seemed inevitable from what little was shown of the crash site.

Or perhaps two versions where Gray has 2 separate stations with separate news departments and identities (e.g,, KÖLN/KGIN and KSNB/KNOP). Just a thought (and apologies if I’ve missed this concept in an earlier post). Jim

Don't forget flagship CW station WPIX in New York, they brought back the 1997 version of the WPIX Custom News Package by Non-Stop Music and used it until 2017.

The alternate graphics in question are just a reskin of an already existing pre-GreyOne template, so maybe there's a technical issue unique to those stations (i.e., incompatible equipment with GreyOne) and this is a band-aid until Grey decides to pony up the cash to fix it.

Agreed. And let that mindset be a warning to anyone thinking about entering the industry. If you have to move away from home, don't do it unless you have enough savings to carry you through a few contracts of small market sweatshop pay. Being on tv is not worth being working poor. This applies to almost every job, not just news: your job does not care about you. You are just a number. Ideally, companies would exist for the shared wealth of every one involved. Realistically they're set up to benefit the owners, share/stakeholders, and to a lesser extent the customer. The employees be damned. People realizing this has fueled the "great resignation". On top of all this, employers will cry of a labor shortage while being highly selective despite paying low...back on topic. I used to be turned off by big-name anchors demanding huge salaries. Now I see you have to squeeze these companies for as much as you can get because they'll pay you as little as possible given the chance.

This is the exact mindset killing this industry. Current Boomer-aged executives are they to have their cake and eat it too. They’re trying to make money off TV in the short term, while setting it up to fail in the long term, but they’ll be retired by then, so it’ll be Gen Z’s problem. Prime examples of this are Nexstar’s ban on livestreaming news, or the industry’s move as a whole to grow more and more dependent on retrans agreements with dying cable companies as revenue sources. yes, these will maximize profits right now. but what about when everyone has cut the cord, so there are no retrans agreements to be had, and everyone who watches news watches it via live stream, but they won’t know nexstar stations exist. but we’ll let the future generation deal with that. let’s squeeze this sponge for all it’s worth first and the take our golden parachutes.

It’s a company wide initiative to improve our local imaging and branding. Not to be rude but you might as well wait because soon you’ll be able to put every Gray station on your list that doesn’t have a network logo included in their branding.

WBRC's news dominance isn't built around their affiliation to FOX. They don't need to emphasis it.

Given that Fox has historically had more rigid branding conventions than the other major networks (the only ones to deviate from using network-centric branding including WSVN, KHON, WDRB and KVRR), I think culling network references from Gray’s Fox affiliates would be much harder to implement. ABC has apparently been requiring affiliates to include the “circle” logo into their station logos, making it also unclear whether they can pull network branding.

While I would interested to see what CBS might come up with, I think it would be a shot in the foot for them. All of their weekday newscasts get third/last-place in viewers, odds are this wouldn't be any different. The only way for it to work is if they were to have it run right after the morning game show block, which is where I think they could get the most viewers who just did not change the channel (I am in my tweenties, and whenever i was sick I'd watch the game shows), plus they'd have have to figure out which talent to use to anchor it, but I'll leave that for another post. Also, at this point should this thread be renamed to something like "Midday Network News"

I see shows like Daily as programming that can assist in extending the lifespan of broadcast TV and local stations by at least another couple decades. If Daily/GMA3/whatever CBS launches to replace Y&R/Bold can make enough ad dollars to keep them from selling off their broadcast networks to a company like Sinclair Broadcast Group or Byron Allen Media(I have no beef with them owning a broadcast network, but many do) then that is a win for viewers. Afternoon news programming can also be viewed as a statement against disinformation. Daytime as a whole lost a lot of viewers due to OJ, cable and streaming, but the big dropoff happened thanks to social media playing a huge role. Many get their soap operas(thanks to cooked up drama from reality TV/celebrities, whatever your neighbors are doing, political arguments with your Facebook Friends), your sports highlights, and their news from social media. Programs like Daily you could say provide people with headlines vs. hyperbole, facts vs. “what I heard,” and makes the audience watching more curious to actually do their research. As more people cut the cord or have their high speed internet data capped, programs like Daily(aiding local news) will be helpful in providing basic headlines. Afternoon News isn’t a fad that’s going away… NBC, by happy accident, went from being the laughing stock of daytime afternoons to becoming thought leaders. There’s no way CBS, Nexstar CW, and even ABC isn’t looking at what they’re doing to see how they can replicate it. Also wanted to mention that I’m on PTO this week and was curious about what sort of ads aired during Daily so I watched my local station’s feed… not once did I see a national ad for life insurance for 65+, As Seen on TV appliances/cookware, or an injury lawsuit CTA. It was 85-90% prescription drug ads(including Ozempic, a drug they’ve not always covered positively) and the rest consumer goods. Compare that to the ads you’ll see on YR/Bold/GH. Clearly Daily is more successful than some are willing to admit.

Hiring Oscar-winning writers isn’t going to change the trajectory of soaps. They are a relic of a bygone era with a few left chugging along, closer to the end than the beginning. Throwing money you don’t have at a dying genre isn’t going to change it. So great, squeeze what you can out of it and look toward the future, not the past. Audiences aren’t the same and aren’t going to want the same things. Splitting the soaps down on the broadcast schedule to alternating days is pointless beyond getting a portion of the schedule open for something else. Daytime is a 5x a week pattern for good reason—it’s the most common way we live our lives. Of course there are exceptions to this, but by and large we go to school and work during the same times (primarily daytime) weekdays. A soap twice a week simply makes no business sense; daytime doesn’t follow the prime time approach (although CBS has been turning prime time this fall into a good approximation of daytime with so many Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal specials ). Viewers aren’t going to burn out if you offer more news because they’re not watching all of it. That just isn’t a thing that people are tuned to one channel from 4 am to midnight, actively engaged and suddenly experiencing news fatigue because the station added a newscast. They watch bits and pieces that fit their schedules. There seems to be a fascination with counting the number of hours in forums like this, but your average viewer is not doing that. (And if people totally burned out on news available much of the day, someone better warn Ted Turner back in the 1980s .) NND fits better in today’s reality than Days. Sorry old-schoolers, it just does. It’s more economical, it connects to the brand and it’s helping some affiliates. And while ABC rides GH into its inevitable sunset, GMA3 is a better fit than if they’d kept another dying soap. Heck, it fits better than the Chew. That was a perfectly fine effort that had a nice solid run. But this is strategically better. CBS is a bit different in that their morning show has never had the success of a Today or GMA. It’s harder to build a base there for an afternoon news hour, though certainly not impossible. Just a heavier lift with results that would need to be viewed in that context IF they ever went that way. Not saying they will. They managed to get new life out of Price is Right, and have a decent enough counterpart in Let’s Make a Deal, so what comes next in a post-soap world will be interesting to see.

That's refreshing when you hear so much negatives about companies like Nexstar etc..

It's a common theme with most of the ABC O&Os. They're stable and well-run.

CBS as a brand won't go anywhere. It's got nearly a century of legacy on its own. Still... glad to see they went with Paramount instead of Viacom.

And just as I grew to love (read: tolerate) ViacomCBS lol. This is a name they should've went with the first time (either that or CBSParamount) but personally I'm satisfied with the change nonetheless.

Axios is reporting that Paramount is in talks to be merged with WBD: https://www.axios.com/2023/12/20/warner-bros-paramount-merger-discovery-streaming?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=social

The first two options would be more likely if the soaps were to be canned (or moved to P+)….Noon/11am CT, Y&R’s time slot outside the Eastern Time Zone in most markets…or 1pm/Noon. Outside the Eastern Time Zone stations would have the choice of the CBS newscast or local news at 11am and the other at noon. 3pm ET /2pm CT is still LMAD’s time slot in some markets unless they were willing to move it to the morning. Any of those time slots could go head to head with NBC News Daily somewhere. Most eastern stations would likely go head to head with it. 3/2 could work as a leadin to 4pm news in the East but then affiliates would have to program 1pm-2pm ET.

Yeah thats horrible. Hope they can identify the cause quickly so that way if there is an inherent risk with these choppers they can resolve it on all of the helicopters that are up in the air right now. It doesn't bring the lives lost sadly. Very tough situation and such horrible timing being the holiday season.

Devastating news . Praying for the families of those on board and the Channel 6 family

Without getting into the 6th met thing, I do think Sam could be stepping down soon given the scale down in his on-air duties.

WRC chopper photographer Brad Freitas died a few days ago at 42: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/remembering-friend-and-colleague-chopper4s-brad-freitas/3495164/

Veteran WICU-WSEE anchor/reporter Emily Matson has died at 42. She was killed after being hit by a train in her hometown of Fairview Township, PA, in an apparent suicide, as determined by the Erie County Coroner's Office.

Veteran WJLA investigative reporter Horace Homes passed away at 66: https://wjla.com/news/local/horace-holmes-wjla-7news-on-your-side-remembers-anchor-i-team-reporter-journalist-investigations-dc-virginia-maryland-baltimore-news-channel-8-wmar-death-passed-obituary-local-news-dmv-washington

Jack Hanson, longtime KGO-TV weatherman and host of AM San Francisco passed away at 91. https://abc7news.com/jack-hanson-abc7-dies-at-91-am-san-francisco/14167809/