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Gray also reached a deal to air select New Orleans Pelicans games across their stations in Louisiana (KALB, KPLC, WAFB, KNOE, KSLA, WVUE) Mississippi (WLOX, WDAM, WTOK, WLBT) and Alabama (WALA). https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/12/31/fox10-gray-tv-stations-reach-deal-televise-10-this-seasons-pelicans-games/

Going through the archives, News Central had typical intros and standup segments the week of December 11th. The weeks of December 18th and December 25th have all had desk shots. While the PM edition has gravitated towards the desk more often recently, I’d reason that most of this is due to the holidays. CNN News Central is a very graphics intensive program, which means increased staff to program all of the graphics for each segment. Switching to a Newsroom style format for a couple of weeks allows more staff time off around the holidays.

Meanwhile, WPCH has agreed to air Hawks games on Friday nights starting January 12th: https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2023/12/30/atlanta-hawks-partner-with-grays-peachtreetv-broadcast-10-games-free-over-air/ Of course, that station did air Hawks games years ago as WTBS. The first two games will also air on WANF.

New WRC/T44 newsroom looks nice.

They'll probably switch in the new year. Additionally I think we'll see alot of stations getting GrayONEd once fresh content enters the primetime schedule. (Late January into February with the super bowl (CBS Affiliates))

KOMO anchor Steve McCarron, who's been tapped to helm a new morning program on KUNS using the ARC brand (running from 8:00-10:00 a.m.) when that station switches to The CW on New Year's Day, answered this on X/Twitter: BTW, it looks like Weigel's KVOS will be taking over for KUNS as Seattle's Univision affiliate.

Not even kidding, first all-male, co-anchored, weeknight evening newscast on 7 in...at least 35 years? "The newsroom is calling the Bro Show." "All you need is a glass of scotch, and you're right back to the good ol' days." All that's missing is the circle 7 jackets.

Funny, I actually just came here to make the same observation that the the AM and PM versions seem to have almost entirely dropped the stand-ups that were meant to define the show in favor of anchors stationed at a desk. Bit of a shame, in my opinion. I think Licht was onto something -- the stand-ups did give the show more of an active feel that differentiated it from the rest of the day's desk-based programming.

I’m not an expert on affiliation renewals or the processes involved with them, but I really don’t think logo removals are an indicator of much. I feel like if 81 stations were suddenly going to change affiliation, we’d know about it by now. If I had to guess, perhaps Gray wants to push local branding to distinguish local stations from the networks. Keep in mind that many of Gray’s CBS affiliates have also dropped the network logo, and former O&O WTVG has dropped their network logo as well. Unless proven otherwise, I don’t really think there are any immediate implications surrounding those branding changes.

A 1983 topical promo for KTVK's Eyewitness News and the opening minutes of ABC's World News This Morning with coverage of the '83 Coalinga earthquake:

CNN Max has a few original newscasts but also simulcasts a lot of CNN International (which is itself often a simulcast of CNN/U.S.). I'm not sure how much might have changed since the September launch but this was my post of the schedule then:

I've been thinking of making a similar observation here, as I have CNN on in the background while at work, but I'm not watching too closely. I wasn't sure if this was due to the increase in breaking news, mostly Trump legal news and news from Israel. I have noticed occasional standup-type presentations, but it used to be almost everything. I very much dislike the desk setup. It's a boring desk with a very boring background.

Gray likely saw what happened to Nexstar when they caved in to CBS in their last deal, so they didn't take any chances should NBC have pulled their affiliation from a station or two, or 53. We're probably at the point where existing piecemeal deals are about to be all entire group deals that line up to the point that affiliation switches could be done much easier.

...and NBC has an agreement with Gray "in principle" to renew all of their stations' affiliations. The current agreement expires at the end of this year. https://tvnewscheck.com/business/article/gray-television-renews-all-its-nbc-affiliations/ Despite what people have been saying, I really think this was all a scare tactic by Gray to force a renewal, or to be ready for NBC to pull up stakes if a deal wasn't made. Now how long before the peacock starts showing up again on all of these stations?