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WGN, Chicago; 9 p.m., 1982:

Wow! I had no clue he left WFTS. It shows how much I watch either station. I watch WFLA and WTVT way too much.

Today, January 5 marks one year since the KCBS/KCAL rebrand and the beginning of the then new KCAL News Mornings. It’s not perfect but things have continued to improve with the newscast since then and let’s see what happens in the future.

Oh great. Now where am I going to find out the latest in vinyl flooring or mortgage rates?

Do you have any ratings data to support this? Or a source for Jeff Skversky supposedly being a newsroom cancer? And how do you explain Ronnie Duncan suddenly leaving? I’d genuinely be shocked if they are beating WXYZ. No offense, but this sounds like gossip.

WPHL meteorologist Monica Cryan did the weather on PIX this morning (I believe remotely). I also realized that WPHL has nearly identical graphics to WPIX.

Times Square - New Years 1964 Circle 7 billboard Happy New Year!

Good. For crying out loud, it’s Christmas. Skipping a morning newscast is perfectly fine.

WABC has always done it right with the weather and also fellow NY station WNBC as well. These two stations are weather powerhouses. NBC is the only station with an exclusive 10 day forecast superceding WABC's 7 Day. WABC is prudent and wise to continue to invest and build in the weather department because most people tune in, just for that. Why? Because the weather directly affects the viewer. Decisions are made because of the weather so its a crucial element for any broadcast if not the most important segment of the broadcast in my opinion. Also it helps to know that, viewing habits are changing. The era of Live Television has steadily been declining. As millenials and Gen-Zrs get older and are coming of age, we rely on our mobile devices to fast track to the content we are looking for. We are not sitting down on a couch watching TV (unless its a sports event). So this also allows WABC to continue to build and solidify their online presence and produce quality content for ABC7NY and their social media platforms. So really kudos to WABC for expanding, lets see what 2024 brings!

John Elliott announced this morning that the team will be on early tomorrow morning covering the storm, with him in the studio and new meteorologist Tony Sadiku joining from the Mobile Weather Lab. It appears Tony signed off from Fox 13 Tampa Bay in early November, with the anchors announcing he was headed for NYC. https://www.facebook.com/tonysadikuwx/videos/last-day-at-fox-13/1493233278208256/ Unclear if WCBS is expanding the size of the weather department or if Tony is replacing Craig or someone else. On related note: I have grown to consider John Elliott the hardest working on air personality in NYC. When he first came and replaced Audrey Puente, I was annoyed thinking WCBS was replacing a true New Yorker and doing what they were best at in the late 90s and early aughts— bringing outsiders in for a year or two before replacing them. But John has grown on me over the years. He is always a versatile, happy warrior. From the “Live from the Couch” days, when he did 4.5 hours straight, to WCBS-FM after ‘Couch’ ended, to being pushed to weekends where he would somewhat regularly work mornings and nights, he is always there doing it. Since Elise’s passing, he has really shown how hard he works. There was one period when he did 10 days straight, including a Thursday where he did weather on every broadcast from 4:30am until 11:35pm and then back on air Friday at 4:30. He has filled in on weekend mornings for Craig (including today), he has done on the road hits on weekend mornings even when he isn’t doing weather. Last week he did 7 in a row, including filling in for Craig from the food bank with Dana and Johnny Green, back in the studio for a 12pm digital update, then doing the evening forecasts on Saturday and Sunday. And this is on top of the 6 live hours of television he plays a substantive role in every weekday. And… he isn’t bad! We’ve seen him save awkward interviews and he transitions seamlessly with ANY anchor he is working with. While he may be goofy sometimes, I think he generally makes anyone he is on air with appear stronger.

Here's something from the Houston area in terms of weekend syndication that @SS8609 may have missed: In addition to "iCrime" airing at 3:30am on KPRC, KTXH (who had aired season 1 on weekday last season) also airs five episodes said show on their Saturday afternoon lineup prior to a movie presentation (or "Whacked Out Sports" or other programming, depending on the length of the movie).

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.

This came up in the Discord the other day and isn't even true. Sinclair executives have a base salary close to or equal to that of most of their peers, and even with stock grants are lower than others. Compensation in 2022 (Source: salary.com) Chris Ripley (President and CEO, Sinclair Broadcast Group): $9,632,015 total compensation, $1,379,700 base pay. (David Smith has an identical pay) Perry Sook (Chairman and CEO, Nexstar Broadcasting): $39,318,892 total compensation, $1,995,193 base pay. Hilton H. Howell Jr. (Executive Chairman and CEO, Gray Television): $7,922,375 total compensation, $1,350,000 base pay. Adam P. Symson (President and CEO, E.W. Scripps): $15,043,797 total compensation, $1,200,000 base pay. David T. Lougee (President and CEO, Tegna Inc.): $7,271,601 total compensation, $975,000 base pay. Any of these 5 could take a symbolic salary of $1 and live solely off their stock grants (which makes up the majority of the difference between base pay and total compensation) and all it would net the company is a little wiggle room for a handful of station's CapEx budget. The FCC is not going to revoke anyone's licenses because they canceled local news and replaced it with a regional newscast. That's insane. It would be a political nuclear bomb that would likely end up gutting the FCC of those and other powers. How long have New Jersey politicians been complaining about WWOR's news coming from New York City? Literally nothing has happened there and it's been going on for almost 15 years.

Exactly this...FCC and other federal agencies aren't going to take action on any company based on corporate shell games and shifting affiliations around, along with their E/I issues that in the grand scheme didn't affect anyone that much. If Sinclair is going to get caught, it's going to be for something we won't even notice until it's revealed like one of their station holding companies getting sloppy with accounting, an advertising contract gone wrong, or tax-related issues.

The most egregious, in the eyes of the FCC was trying to pass off WGN to a closely-aligned sidecar company (related to one of their major advertisers) in the failed Tribune merger. Way back when RKO General lost all their licenses, they may as well have been a mom and pop company (by the number of stations they were allowed to own at the time) compared to the sheer number of stations Sinclair has been able to own and control under current regulations. And all it took for RKO to have their licenses revoked was some simple corporate misconduct. Reciprocal trade. I can guarantee you not only has that happened at Sinclair, but in such multitude and frequency, to make RKO General's punishment seem like a slap on the wrist compared to what Sinclair should be facing.

Until these groups finally realize that they need to get a local resident to file a detailed and proper complaint, they're going nowhere. There must be a local person behind it that's just an average viewer (not the ones long checked off to the spam box who think a woman meteorologist wearing pants is somehow a violation of community norms), not a whistleblower engineer who knows too much. This is why radio license appeals usually go nowhere, because the average listener finds the obvious voicetracking and 14 minute ad breaks to be tolerable as background noise, and even the worst produced syndicated radio show with obnoxious bias still 'sounds' better and is tightly edited to the millisecond better than any local afternoon show was circa 1992. The other thing is that local news still makes up a minority of the broadcast day. The old days where a license could be pulled because of things viewers easily noticed, like network programming being pulled for offending the GM's morals or their racial views are gone; they air the shows without any changes because they lose their affiliation if they don't and can't refuse shows outside breaking news. The network also controls the technical quality, so you're not seeing licenses revoked for poor on-air quality or using a Peacock stream for the on-air feed. The burden is extremely high to revoke a license and must involve all 168 hours a week of programming, not just news.

It would likely face the same fate as the petitions to revoke Fox Television Stations’ license for WTXF, it’s not gonna happen. In both instances, it would take either company being proven of engaging in something closer to RKO General levels of business misconduct to warrant the revocation of their broadcast licenses. The issues with Sinclair’s newsroom operations aren’t really fraud (as the filing states) as it is corporate incompetence. As noted in the filing, Sinclair’s newsroom cutbacks are mainly the result of its “ill-advised” purchase of Bally Sports, however Sinclair was already dealing with substantial debt predating that purchase, which its post-2011 purchases only contributed to. (Sinclair nearly went bankrupt itself only a few years before its buying spree began.) Side note: The ex-news director who filed the complaint, when citing stations affected by the news cuts (a list that included stations that dropped newscasts but still have an in-house or partially outsourced news operation), left out WPMI from the list; its morning and noon newscasts were canned in favor of the morning edition of The National Desk and a run of Family Feud this Spring. Then there’s one nugget I noticed towards the end: According to the Baltimore Sun, Smith was once arrested in August 1996, for “committing a perverted sex act in a company-owned Mercedes.” First time I’ve heard about this.

I know this a pipe dream, but I would love to see Kaity anchoring weekdays again.

This Tulsa setup is clearly a test by a very desperate Sinclair. If they’re willing to torpedo a newsroom in a market that size, the sky’s the limit for them. They’ve obviously done the math and know that, even with lower ratings, they’ll come out ahead due to the cost savings from shedding all those salaries. I could totally see them doing something similar in Austin, for example, where KEYE has been in the cellar forever, moving production an hour south on I-35 to the WOAI/KABB studios in San Antonio.

An absolutely disgusting move by Sinclair, especially after reassuring their employees that these cuts were "done". I guess they changed their minds after more bad financial news. Basically, if anyone from Sinclair reads this, and your station is poorly ranked, under-invested....GET OUT NOW!!!

FTVLive’s Scott Jones, who once worked at KTUL, had some choice words about the gutting of its news department. The headline of his article on it says it all.

That's mostly your problem, Mr. Ripley. Regulators and other groups have no desire to work with Sinclair because of their behavior over the years.

Speculating here, but it seems his heart wasn’t really into the “news anchor” role. He’s very active on social media, and pretty much every post is Philly sports. Not every sports anchor can seamlessly transition to news.

That would be absurd. Disney is not just going to sell ABC without ESPN. Because a big chunk of ABC’s ratings are tied to ESPN and the sports department runs as one joint unit, it would be impossible to sell to Allen in this sense without causing a mass disruption of the sports media market. The most ideal situation for ABC and ESPN would be Hearst teaming with Berkshire Hathaway (just like the latter funded Capital Cities’ purchase of ABC long ago) to buy the networks and perhaps National Geographic which could be collapsed into the A&E Networks structure. I would however consider Freeform instead of FX though - since FX is still in form a Fox network at heart airing Fox repeats, even if they are no longer a News Corporation Fox entity. All that Hearst can then do is turn its ABC affiliates into O&Os along with WBAL in Baltimore (which Hearst has owned from day one in 1948), and sell most of the rest of its stations to Scripps. It’s not that Byron Allen isn’t capable of pulling off a big acquisition, but to me him acquiring a significant share of Gray and playing a key cog in further investing into the Atlanta media scene where the likes of Tyler Perry and Steve Harvey have had a sizable presence (and Allen already has links to CBS via TWC and NBC dating back to his days with Real People) would make more sense. Atlanta is already home to TWC as well and has been since day one.

Daystar's YouTube thumbnails are all high quality design work, it wouldn't surprise me if they did that all in-house and WWJ just went with it. The logo is probably official, because someone had the common sense to refuse to slap anything with the word "News" on this show. Don't get your hopes up that they'll start rolling it out elsewhere... I'd wager this was done specifically to distance this from their news product, regardless of what time it airs.

I knew WOOD was always running away with #1 and thought ZZM was #2 and WWMT was in third. Somewhere I read that, but then found out WWMT does well in Battle Creek side while ZZM does well in Grand Rapids. It seems when it was last few years under Gannett the money stop flowing. If you weren't KSDK, KARE, KUSA, WUSA those were the money maker stations. Then when it became TEGNA- well it became another mediocre media company.

Sounds like Bally couldn't come to terms with the Phoenix Suns and they are going back to OTA, which I think is going to be great for all sports. Independent TV stations are a wasteland of crappy syndicated programming. Back in the old days sports was one of their prime focuses. It'll be nice to return to that again. https://arizonasports.com/story/3522489/bally-sports-arizona-owner-diamond-sues-suns-mercury/

That’s a really good point; CBS does provide the best/easiest way to access their local newscasts digitally, especially compared to the other stations in the market. I wish ratings companies would take digital impressions into account; viewers are viewers at the end of the day, and it shouldn’t matter where they’re watching.

Since CBS is taking their local news channels to the digital realm, the opportunity for viewership is much greater than if it was just a TV station. Many of the viewers are probably going to be coming this way, and because of their investment in this, it makes sense to put it on TV as a side-effect...to provide a valuable service once and for all for the long-beleaguered "CBS Detroit" Basically, any TV viewership is likely going to be eclipsed by "impressions" or hits on the digital side of things.

Sinclair is a unique situation, considering Diamond Sports’s bankruptcy (largely resulting from the loss of vMVPD carriage in concurrence with the acceleration of cord-cutting following its purchase of the group from Disney, though some appear to blame the absence of sports events on the then-Fox Sports regional networks in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though it’s possible both can be factors) may be impacting the company’s bottom line. Sinclair has also had debt issues for decades, and nearly went bankrupt at least once before; the Bally Sports mess, buttressed by its boatload of station acquisitions during the 2010s as its was getting out of financial trouble, only put them back into that situation. In hindsight, it seemed difficult for a family-owned station group to maintain the diverse portfolio it has with such a large number of stations, and not run into financial difficulties. That’s why most family-owned broadcasters only run 10 or fewer stations, and a handful of miscellaneous properties (take Griffin Media for example, which in addition to owning KWTV/KSBI and KOTV/KQCW [both of which have Sinclair stations as competitors], also runs an outdoor advertising business [technically two subunits serving its two main markets, which are branded after its respective CBS stations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa], a cluster of radio stations in Tulsa, and a statewide news-based radio syndication network). Most successful family-owned broadcasters that still exist (like the Griffins) know that they must keep their portfolios manageable to maintain stewardship long-term, something the Smiths chose not to do.

It looks like the ax came for Macon, where the news output is being reduced. Spotted this Wikipedia edit, and I have confirmed at least the 10 p.m. part... They are also losing one of their meteorologists, Eric Garlick, to a destination unknown. KMEG was a third-wheel station in the worst way. It was a UHF in a part of the country with very few UHF network affiliates. It only was a CBS affiliate because KCAU correctly judged that it could serve Sioux Falls and Sioux City by going to ABC (a decision that proved to be the right one as the station then had its best 15 years ever). It had no local news for quite some time until 1999.

Allen Media has a long way to go to decent respectability. Owning the Weather Channel is a good start, but the bottom line is Allen Media (and Entertainment Studios) are the slumlords of daytime TV with all of their cheap "court" shows.

Yo, what exactly has Gray Television done that would provoke CBS to leave WANF?? Everyone keeps saying this. I don't get it. If CBS wanted to move to 69, they'd have done so back in 2006 or a long time ago. There is a reason why they sold 69 only to regain it coincidentally just after merging with Viacom. If things went South with the CW, they'll just either run an independent, do something else we don't expect them to do with 69 or sell 69 into a duopoly with one of the other stations and MAYBE get something back. But I don't even see any reason why they'd dump the CW as long as they still have that small ownership stake. Otherwise, they'd have dumped the full 100 in Nexstar's lap. To say nothing of just how badly Gray could screw CBS up if CBS really tried to pull its programming from 46. Remember, there are many more CBS stations owned by Gray. By this logic, WTTV should still be the CW affiliate and WBXI should be CBS.

No wonder why they must've been delayed so many times since announcing their return to news. They wanted everything right and they didn't launch until the full quality was perfect. Take it like a company that was releasing a new product. You see something wrong with one of the new features. Do you release that product with the flaw, or just delay it until you fix it? A quality company would delay it, and that's the case with CBS News Detroit. By the way...you don't see many companies doing that nowadays

Having recently done extensive research into the histories of a number of the biggest post-New World station builds, they mostly were staggered over a period of months. KSHB had an existing 9pm news which moved to 10 at the time of switch. A 5 was added in October 1994, a 6 in March 1995, but mornings had to wait until the summer of 1996. WDJT added two newscasts at the same time in its March 1996 news debut and then a third shortly thereafter. Weekend news was added the next year. Took them until 2001 to compete in mornings. KNXV started news at 10 on August 1, 1994. They added a 6 in about October, 5 in December, and mornings and middays in January 1995 when the remainder of the ABC programming moved over. WFTS aired its first news on December 12, 1994, but only at 6 and 11. The remaining newscasts showed up in the first four months of 1995. WGNX was not like many of the others. They were not producing a full line of newscasts until the new millennium: just noon, 6, and 11. It was not until Meredith took over that they added morning and 5 p.m. newscasts. WPTY went in all at once in evenings. When they debuted, they had 5, 6, 9 (WLMT) and 10. It took them at LEAST a decade to start a morning newscast! WWJ started with 6 and 11 (not including streaming hours) and has added a newscast in each of the two following weeks. Mornings do seem like they will take a little longer, and I'd expect that because of the time slot. Evening news additions tend to be more incremental, while mornings require a whole other team of on- and off-camera personnel.

Apples and oranges. Sinclair could not legally keep either the 33 or 40 of “ABC 33/40” and if they filed such a request to claim VC 33 or 40 in the present day, it would be rejected. And AGAIN, people have no trouble finding James Spann when there’s a tornado and he rolls up his sleeves.

The entire 7pm streaming hour today was a WGPR/WKBD reunion, with Amyre Jr. interviewing her mother and former director Ken Bryant.

4pm might not be far off at this rate, which would match up with their intended launch plans (after considerable revision). One thing I’m legitimately surprised about is WWJ running Entertainment Tonight at 1:35 a.m. … why not at 7:30 p.m.?? Amyre Sr. got her big break in 1975 as one of the first anchors for WGPR-TV’s Big City News, so it really does come full circle.

I think it's necessary to reference @Myron Falwell's post from the KCAL thread as it's extremely relevant to the ongoing channel number discussion. Long story short, look at Birmingham's WBMA, which brands as "ABC 33/40". It has not transmitted on the Channel 33 satellite since 2014, and is now regulated to the .2 on 40. WBMA's own low-power signal was on 58, which is also what their Virtual Channel is, but they didn't brand with any mention of 58 at all. What they do have is this mess, none of which have anything to do with the 33 in their brand, and And yet everyone still figures out where to watch James Spann when there's a tornado. In the words of one of our favorite media bloggers: JUST SAYING...

The bitter part is that WGPR-TV has a legacy. It was merely erased from channel 62 in 1994 when CBS was forced to buy the station under duress and is now confined to a museum.

Of note, Fox affiliate branding conventions came from how the MetroMedia chain identified themselves for decades. What had been “MetroMedia Channel #” was altered to “Fox Television Channel #” when Rupert bought the chain. By 1988, it was simplified to “Fox #”.

Including the very old demos that seek out cable talk channels regardless of the high channel number they are on? Surprised that no one has pointed out that those channels are listed as “CBS”, “ABC”, “Fox” and “PBS” … not “News8”, “10News”, “Fox 5/69” or “KPBS”. The generic displays on YouTube TV lend themselves DIRECTLY to CBS’s new branding convention.

I’m trying to understand the logic of debating the importance of channel numbers when they’ve been falling into irrelevance since the DTV switchover… and will further become irrelevant as ATSC 3.0 is rolled out. This isn’t 1994.

Since they added WDJT to my cable system, it's been just either '9' or '605' in the Roledex of my mind so I knew where to tune, and now it's just 'CBS 58' because that's what they've been every day since December 1994 and never changed the branding. Their first priority was to get established, then build a news division; on that front they've been very successful and now you nearly forget that CBS bounced around 6, 12 and 18 for so many decades, and they've got a good syndicated schedule. Meanwhile, WWJ has just...kinda existed. They just pass through CBS-owned content in syndication and outside of a few Lions games here and there and watching CBS, there's really been nothing to keep you there because 2, 4 and 7 are always there in their niches. Same when they purchased WKBD and made it just another bland UPN/CW station. And it's either 62 CBS, CBS Detroit, CBS, WWJ, CBS 62...never any consistent branding. And it didn't help that CBSNS had old guard management at the Westinghouse stations that wasn't changing a thing any time soon, or dysfunctional idiots with battling egos who bought stations to get into a golf club, and in Detroit, just never really tried. Still ended up a better result than getting WADL as an affiliate, though; that entire station is a headache and a half as it is now. Imagine having to fight them every few years on affiliation terms.

Or even in the case of WCCO-TV, KDKA-TV and WBZ-TV, the mere fact that they have to share their call letters with unrelated radio stations. For KDKA-TV, it’s already shown to be a liability.

Channel numbers only really matter to legacy brands, where the number transcends the dial and is the cornerstone of the identity (certain stations with a certain, stylized 7 come to mind). Call letters CAN fall into the same group. CBS Detroit and too many other CBS O&O's have little-to-no such legacy, unless you count decades of falling in 3rd place...or 4th...or 5th.

The discussion about channel numbers is missing the entire premise of CBS News Detroit. Somebody please show me how to tune my phone or web browser to Channel 62... This is an operation built on a "streaming first" mentality. The fact that it airs OTA is just a bonus. CBS appears to be, by and large, moving towards "streaming first". This is exactly how I've publicly predicted TV will move over the coming years. Channel numbers are an outdated concept in a world where more and more people are watching OTT where those precious numbers mean nothing. Traditional TV viewers are not bumbling morons and will figure out where to watch. Millions of senior citizens have figured out where to watch Fox News without it branding with channel numbers.

WWJ has one of the biggest signals of any full-service television station in Michigan and they have good cable placement. They don’t need a superfluous LPTV. They just need investment. Weigel has “CBS 58” Milwaukee and “ABC 57” South Bend and you don’t see them being embarrassed about those numbers because they invested in the stations and have tried. CBS never did that with WWJ for a garden variety of reasons, and wound up making “62” a tainted brand by negligence and inaction.

https://www.tvpassport.com/tv-listings/stations/cbs-wwj-detroit-mi/128/2023-09-11 Starting September 11th, CBS News Detroit at 9 am moves to a full hour and a rerun of CBS News Detroit at 11 pm replaces Entertainment Tonight at 1:37 am. Looks like Family Feud will be the only syndicated program left on WWJ.