Leaderboard

I clicked on this wanting to hate it- but I don't. Their logic for taking "The" out of the logo is sound, they're using a color palate that stands out in the field, and is a fresh coat of paint that actually looks decent given what Nexstar seems to be going for. Keep in mind that green/white have been the primary colors for CW since its launch in 06. That said, the programming has to back up the refresh. The logo revamp is to show they're superhero network anymore, which is fine; but for your first major rebrand in 18 years (and that whole viewership drop in 2023 thing), you need to have programming and content to back it up. I have to admit that their sports coverage wasn't terrible- announcers for the Barstool Sports Bowl made me keep watching on their own.

I hate this package. The way the theme music has been chopped up and abrubtly cut off on some or quickly turned off. It doesnt even feel like COX anymore. They were always still the best at news opens and the correct timings and flow of the opens with the music and graphics. There were never rushed and they always had proper opens. Not these rushed anchor introduced 2 second opens most stations use today. These are just awful. IMO complete downgrade.

EDIT 1/16/24: WAFB has moved to GrayONE as of Noon on 1/16/24. Put WAFB/Baton Rouge on the clock for GreyONE - this new logo just popped up on their website: Previous logo, in place for decades with the CBS eye logo added along the way:

I guess Nexstar didn't want a repeat of the WADL mess, hence no Mission this time. Apparently the Londens were far more amenable to such a deal than Kevin Adell.

Any market that has to deal with a significant amount of severe weather/tornadoes/hurricanes, I can see at most 6. Have 2 in-studio, and instead of using reporters/mmjs, use the other 4 out in the field for reports, so they can give first-hand meteorological reports of damages, etc and fill-ins... I don't know why stations all of a sudden had a need to have a different meteorologist for each damn newscast of the day... No wonder they are starting mets at $15k a year.. there's no work

I think five is sufficient. Four main on-air ones plus a fifth as a behind-the-scenes producer/fill-in.

I didn't realize that Blake Burman took over as moderator of The Hill on Sept. 5th last year. At first I was thinking this move was going to have an impact on Leland's ability to host the show, but here it turns out he's been gone from the show for a while. As for weekday Morning in America, man that show just keeps going through so many changes. I guess ending at 9am ET brings them in line with a typical cable news morning show schedule. Weird seeing them shift back to a solo-host format. I figured that they were going to keep two anchors as multiple anchors are pretty standard for mornings.

Or at least moving Michelle or Toni to weekend evenings to be with Joe.

I'm surprised they're not keeping Toni Yates with Michelle. I thought they were a great pair. Yes I've been wondering this as well. Hasn't been on since Nov 28th.

It looks like the new WNJU studio is being using by MSNBC this week.

Working at WABC as an intern helps. Congrats to Sandra. We've certainly had old late 90s weekends with Bill and Sandra working so much on weekdays.

From this press release, It's official. After 25 years on the weekends, Sandra Bookman is moving to the Noon show. Also announced, former KTLA reporter/anchor Pedro Rivera will anchor Weekend Mornings, beginning February 3rd.

KOLD has the GrayOne graphics and went with red.

The Oklahoma City Thunder and Griffin Media have announced a deal to televise a package of eight Friday night games over-the-air on KSBI in Oklahoma City and KOTV-DT3 (which otherwise runs KOTV news simulcasts and rebroadcasts) in Tulsa through the end of the 2023–24 regular season, starting with a January 26 away game against the New Orleans Pelicans. The games will also air regionally on Gray's KSCW (CW)/Wichita and KSWO-DT3 (MeTV)/Lawton–Wichita Falls and Morgan Murphy's KOAM-KFJX/Joplin (the linked story doesn't specify which station will air the games in that market, whether only on CW affiliate KFJX-DT2 or alternating between both stations' CBS, Fox and CW feeds). The team's main broadcaster, Bally Sports Oklahoma, will carry the Thunder's other remaining regionally exclusive game broadcasts during the remainder of the season.

Especially since the Baltimore stations thoroughly cover this part of Maryland in the local news… Whatever happened to “significantly viewed” status?

A courtesy…to who? It’s not a courtesy to anyone.

MLB has arranged carriage of games on regular cable TV (usually on the spare channel on cable systems carrying news or filler content), and it's only a gametime broadcast rather than wrapped around wobbly Jenga content to create a 24/7 'regional sports network' that's anything but (if that was true, legend's tennis and poker would not have a home). You're paying the same cost for Bally anyways, so it might as well go to a quality game broadcast than countless fishing and poker shows.

Not a good move from a fan prospective. The MLB does better than Bally's when it comes to producing the broadcasts, but their pay to watch structure has been a pain for DBacks and Padres fans. Rockies fans will experience the same thing. It's just as bad as Bally Sports. But with Baseball, TV deals have to become more expensive so teams can build up a higher player salary. The Dodgers are able to build a super team because of their TV deal with Spectrum. The MLB at some point needs to enforce a salary cap if they don't want to lose fans. That way, teams can cut an easier deal with local TV stations so games will be a more available to watch on TV. And it will be more competitive across the league so teams like the Dodgers don't reach the World Series every year.

With the Comics Unleashed reruns on CBS set to end later this month with the premiere of After Midnight, I have to think the owners and managers of some affiliates must be quietly relieved -- specifically, anyone who owns or runs a CBS affiliate in a market where Allen Media owns a competing station. Sure, the episodes are all over a decade old and yes, we're talking about the 12:30am ET time slot, but the show was hosted by the guy who now owns a station that directly competes with them. At the very least, it must have been a bit weird.

Comcast should have pushed harder for some of those zombies to be dropped, especially the ones that only show music videos. We have YouTube for that. But, then, someone at Comcast seems to think MusicChoice is worth keeping around, so...

I just ran across this (which I wrote 21 years ago...). Good for a quick laugh, if you can catch your breath (and try to say it all in one breath!)... Live, Local and Latebreaking, First on NewsChannel 37 Eyewitness News from the NewsCenter, being clear, accurate and to the point with all the news you need from your hometown newsleader, in touch, in-depth and up to the minute, together we're making a difference on your 24-hour Action NewsSource, covering the (Region/City) where the news comes first on your local News Station with your choice for news and coverage you can count on, your number 1 News Leader with today's news tonight. Now with breaking news, live from the NewsPlex X with News, Y with Weather, and Z on Sports, on FirstNews Non-stop 11 at 11. Happy New Year!

Those blue/yellow/orange stripes remind me so much of MARTA's (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) logo...

WKBT has had them for over a year. They debuted them when they debuted Ross Overdrive in 2022. It was a test to see if their VP of news actually liked this vision or if he wanted to switch back to the old look. (I worked there during this transition.)

I disagree with him.

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))

Given Weigel once ran Univision on WCIU, this is a bit of a full circle deal.

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.

1) Since it's staying around, it's gonna take a while to forget that this network name was last associated with home design, cooking and DIY shows. 2) That logo looks like one of a 90s haircare brand. Considering it's new strategy, while not bad, it's a bit too on-the-nose IMO. haha

Dabl rebranded/relaunched as a Black-focused comedy network a day earlier than the linked schedule indicated, switching formats at 6:00 a.m. ET today (December 29) with two back-to-back airings of The Parkers. This is the new logo: (Also, this Dabl discussion should probably be moved to the Paramount thread in "Corporate Chat".)

And here comes the crybabying defense squad. Hilarious that they think that allowing local monopolies would make them "compete better", rather than, y'know, just making the situation worse. How's iHeartMedia doing right now?

I watched all of em and liked em but One on One, Moesha and The Parkers were the best.

They've used a production cut for pre-recorded headlines for a while (I was there in the mid and late 2010's). They were using it when I was there. The previous news director thought Inergy wasn't urgent enough, so they added The Rock. Apparently, they've added the production track to it. It sounds like they've taken that cut and put it into their music computer. It was literally a computer they opened the track on and played through VLC or Windows Media Player.

Someone actually created an ESPN graphics overlay and tried to sync up the Wyoming radio feed to drown out the "noise" from the actual game.

I tried to watch this game, which was on their app last year, it was dreadful. Here are some of the highlights ... Standards and practices (if they even have one) will have their work cut out for them. Expect Perry Sook's swear jar to be overflowing...

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

With the runaway costs of programming, much of the blame lies with the content providers (station owners).

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.

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.

Breaking news! Binghamton’s WBNG has officially launched GrayONE. And this one was way needed. A small market like that really deserves recognition. You can watch the official confirming video on (what else?) Studio 31 Media Archive on YouTube.

If you put it one way or another, you could see on one end that Tegna has good production values, but on another, you get an annoying news theme (C Clarity) that “all stations HAVE to use”. I’ve seen stations like KYTX (on their morning show called “Morning Y’all”) use other themes for stuff. Totally weird.

WCBS actually had The People's Court at 4pm before Judy's return to Channel 2 in 2006 (after 7 years on WNBC). Before that newscast ended completely in 2003, it was truncated to a half-hour at 4:30pm. Filling that first half hour in Jan. 2002 was the Weakest Link. And that got replaced the following fall by Millionaire.

I wonder what it would be like if Hearst and/or Graham owned a lot of small market stations as well though. Combined, they have only one station in markets below #100.

From what I have heard, Hearst and Graham run their stations well. Also they don't own as many stations when compared to Gray, Nexstar, or Sinclair, which allows them to invest in the quality of their stations.

It aired at 4pm for a long time on some stations, including WBBM; like Inside Edition they push out editions every half hour with updates if needed up to a certain time.

I'm glad to see Dr Phil reruns dipping into the archives and not just playing episodes from the last 4 to 5 years. They were even doing so when the show was making new episodes. Similarly, I also like that Judge Mathis had a flashback case segment within newly released episodes. l know long running sydicated shows have an aversion to "dated" episodes but they are cool to see.

Technically, Sox Entertainment (don’t know how new to the distribution game it is) is the one distributing it. Seems odd that Amazon didn’t assert syndication rights to Judy Justice through MGM.

Judy Justice is headed for syndication next fall.

Feels like a mix of elements of the SNF look with the aesthetic of the old graphics (particularly the gloss and the blue-grey color from before).

New graphics for NBC's Notre Dame (and I assume B1G) broadcasts. Looks like an evolution of the SNF look. Same font used.

Well, the one thing people watch local news for more than anything these days is for the weather. Even with that in mind, 7 or 8 mets on staff seems like overkill; but then again I'm not the one hunkered down in the weather center during a EF5.