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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:

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.

I wonder if Ken Rosato’s return to tv was supposed to be for Good Day New York, since we still haven’t seen him pop up anywhere. If so, FOX 5 missed a huge marketing opportunity to have Scotto & Rosato!

Except for possibly the First Alert logo, this is a 1:1 preview of WOIO’s take on GrayONE.

He will be doing the full 7-10 and apparently during the NFL season he’ll do Tuesday-Friday

Not to get too off-track, but don't forget Bryant Gumbel's sports background, too.

Exactly what I was coming to say. Teresa has been screwed over more than once there. And I don't see Bianca as an evening anchor type. Very odd. That said. I learned about this change from Teresa's IG story feed.

That's odd. I just watched NBC broadcast the All-American Bowl which used the new College Football/Basketball graphics so that look is definitely not tied to the Big Ten or Notre Dame exclusively. Makes no sense why they would do this with the Atlantic 10. Basically shows that NBC Sports views that conference as lower production value.

Wait, signing off is a matter of the public interest? Huh?

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...

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'm sorry, all I can hear is the sound of a tongues scraping across the soles of boots. All joking aside, how is allowing far off corporations to control the country supposed to promote localism? For that matter, how the hell is any of the consolidation that's happened over the past several years done anything but screw over the little guy? I'm no fan of big government myself, but this recent change is one of the few I've completely agreed with, and before you point to "market realities" (I don't think you know what that word means), let's not kid ourselves; a lot of the wounds the broadcast industry has suffered over the years have been entirely their own fault (iHeartMedia and Sinclair say hi), and things like retransmission consent and reverse compensation have served little purpose than to further alienate the consumers they supposedly speak for.

I disagree with him.

Because after being taxed to death by the NFL and college football (well, sort of through rising TV rates and such) all America needs is another football league after the season is over, right?

Better them than airing TND IMO. At least WPXI is local.

Maybe the 432nd time will be the charm.

FOX 12 Oregon I'm pretty sure would keep their branding with FOX if they could. They do not see it as a liability. Yes, people repulsed by FOX probably don't watch just due to the name, but the local content is not skewed conservative, though they do run FOX News packages to fill time. FOX 12 gets high ratings as-is, so I think they are content with their audience. As for the logistics of changing their branding, it would be a big change to drop FOX. Like you said they could go back to the old branding of Oregon's 12, which I like but I'm not sure if it sounds fresh and modern or old timey. I'm also not sure if any instance of using their call letters as branding would be on the table. The only time they mention them is referring to their website, KPTV.com. I think it would be too clunky in opens and whatnot along with their slogan (First. Live. Local.) and show titles. Then again, I thought it was clunky when KGW dropped NewsChannel 8 from their branding and just went with KGW News, but I got used to it, but it works for them as they have no slogan or separate show names.....just KGW News at 5, etc, etc. The duopoly station (KPDX) currently is FOX 12 Plus, but was previously branded as PDX TV which they could go back to. Maybe use some form of that on KPTV???

I guess it depends on the station. IMO it would work at a station like WBRC, but not a station like KVVU.

I still don't understand how you only make a two-year deal and call it a 'multiyear' deal, especially when RTC deals are usually on a three-year cycle. The two-year cycle suggests either some acrimony from Comcast that they now prefer bi-yearly deals, and certainly panic on Paramount's side so they can keep the unseen lights on for a few of their zombie networks as long as possible. Going by current year-end cable rankings (the one Variety article I must read at the end of the year), Nick/@ Nite went from being ranked in the lower top 10-top 20 to now #54 by average. There is no literal kid's cable market any longer outside rare events and several series, and by the time any deal for PG is finished, CBS, Paramount+ with Showtime and the library will be the only value left. On another note, that 21% drop-off for The CW versus Ion and Me is concerning. I expected a drop, but not that hard.

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))

And I should mention that WNEM is using the GrayONE version of the First Alert Weather intro to the weather segment.. I'm thinking within the next week or so they'll switch over...

I'd be very, very surprised to see if Gray drops the "Fox" branding from their stations. I don't think Fox would stand for it, and the way that most Fox stations are branded, anything else would be very disorienting to a lot of viewers.

That’s.. new.

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.

There are actually cases where an existing competitor would serve the market BETTER by picking up another affiliation than letting it be run by another party. Case in point, Mobile & Pensacola. Since WPMI has been gutted by Sinclair, both WEAR and WPMI have suffered. Mobile is having to pad out their newscasts with Pensacola stories, and on the weekends, WEAR produces and simulcasts their weekend shows. Deflating the argument that Mobile and Pensacola are better served by separate stations, even WEAR is watering down their shows to air Mobile stories on a regular basis. Now if WALA is granted the NBC affiliation as a subchannel, Mobile viewers would have a more-local option, plus the option of having a dedicated 6pm newscast since Jeopardy! is on at 6 on WALA's main feed.

...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?

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.

My only issue with the "stripping" of affiliate logos from these stations is that these affiliations lend a form of credibility to them. Bad actors have been lifting and creating fake logos for use on illegitimate "news" sites for the sole purpose of spreading disinformation. Even with FOX affiliates, despite any link to their affiliates and "news" channel. The link between them is minimal and any well-educated person should know that. Being a heritage station and Raycom's idea to use their highly visible longtime neon sign as their main brand is a brilliant branding move. Same with WAVE in Louisville resurrecting their "WAVE" logo from years past.

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

Bialik and Jennings were pretty good. Found it strange that they opted for alternating dual hosts, but it worked. Bialik aside, Jeopardy had a gargantuan task in filling Trebek's shoes, unfortunately it seems any successor candidate has come under intense public scrutiny. It's just a gameshow hosting job, not the presidency, give the new host a chance.

Mayim Bialik is out on syndicated J!

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).

The guidelines made clear it has to be added anytime the station does a logo refresh; as all three haven't done that in decades, they get to keep their logos plain (though there are wedged-in added logos for use on Hulu and ABC's live streaming portal). Hearst's stations could have also done technically with their stations like WISN and WCVB but they complied voluntarily to add it in.

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.

Well that makes sense, and I completely understand why. Everyone probably knows what network each station is affiliated with in their area, so that's not an issue. And if not, a quick Google search will solve that problem. I just don't think it should be a group wide thing...

No switch to GrayONE yet, but WMTV got the new brand (15 News) and new music (Unite from Stephen Arnold Music) on Wednesday.

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.

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

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.

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 didn’t think ET was allowed to air before 6pm similar to Wheel of Fortune.

There just needs to plain be a rule that RTC announcements are limited to commercial time and that's it. They're not on the level of EAS/NOAA warnings and non-applicable to folks who don't have these providers, and just generally interfere with watching a program. It's absurd with cable disputes, but at least there they have the excuse of having to transmit to multiple broadcasters. There's less excuse with both a local TV station, and the ability to just not send the ticker on a certain provider if you have that direct connection to the headend, and it simply shouldn't appear for OTA viewers outside Dish disputes (because they're still in 1982 as far as signal acquisition).

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.

For the most part these are games are played by public schools on public property and team rosters are publicly available (same with private schools), so there are no privacy concerns here. Please stay on topic.

And, in the case of ratings, has failed and backfired IMO on WPLG tremendously.